Hans Reichenbach was a formidable figure in early-twentieth-century philosophy of science. Educated in Germany, he was influential in establishing the so-called Berlin Circle, a companion group to the Vienna Circle founded by his colleague Rudolph Carnap. The movement they founded—usually known as "logical positivism," although it is more precisely known as "scientific philosophy" or "logical empiricism"—was a form of epistemology that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths. Reichenbach, like other young philosophers of the exact sciences of his generation, was deeply impressed (...) by the far-reaching changes in physics brought about by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Reichenbach responded to scientific advances by doing fundamental work in space-time theories, in quantum mechanics, in statistical mechanics, and in the development of probability theory—making him the most important philosopher of physics in the first generation of logical empiricism. Forced from his academic position by the Nazi race laws in 1933, Reichenbach wrote _Experience and Prediction_ at the University of Istanbul, where had had fled, expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. In the two decades following World War II, during the explosion of scientific advances in North America, logical positivism was the reigning theory of the philosophy of science and Reichenbach was at the peak of his career. But, inevitably, support for logical positivism began to wane as it became obvious that the justification of scientific theories could not be entirely resolved by relying on strictly formal, technical processes. The growth of the discipline of the history of philosophy of science, which has created an audience of scholars eager for seminal classics in scientific philosophy, and the evidence supporting a historicist paradigm within logical positivism are two important reasons to make _Experience and Prediction_ available once again. "Hans Reichenbach's_ Experience and Prediction_ is one of the most important books in twentieth-century philosophy of science. Its author was, along with Rudolf Carnap, one of the two principal ambassadors to North America of the exciting new European philosophical movement known here under the names 'Logical Positivism' and 'Scientific Philosophy.' In 1938, when the book was published, Reichenbach was an exile from his native Germany, teaching in Istanbul, Turkey, and about to emigrate to the United States to take up a prestigious position at UCLA. He wrote_ Experience and Prediction_ in English as his calling card to his new American colleagues. More than any other single book,_ Experience and Prediction_ set the agenda for the new discipline of the philosophy of science that was to emerge after World War II as, perhaps, the most exciting new area in North American philosophy. Many of the problems still at the focus of discussion were given their classic formulations in this book. Long out of print,_ Experience and Prediction_ appears here in a new edition accompanied by a splendid historical introduction by the noted young philosopher and historian of the philosophy of science, Alan Richardson. A jewel of a book may once again be appreciated in its proper setting." —Don A. Howard, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)

First published in 1949 expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. Reichenbach, with Rudolph Carnap, founded logical positivism, a form of epistemofogy that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths.

New computer systems of discovery create a research program for logic and philosophy of science. These systems consist of inference rules and control knowledge that guide the discovery process. Their paths of discovery are influenced by the available data and the discovery steps coincide with the justification of results. The discovery process can be described in terms of fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence such as heuristic search, and can also be interpreted in terms of logic. The traditional distinction that places (...) studies of scientific discovery outside the philosophy of science, in psychology, sociology, or history, is no longer valid in view of the existence of computer systems of discovery. It becomes both reasonable and attractive to study the schemes of discovery in the same way as the criteria of justification were studied: empirically as facts, and logically as norms. (shrink)

Does the viability of the discovery program depend on showing either (1) that methods of generating new problem solutions, per se, have special probative weight (the per se thesis); or, (2) that the original conception of an idea is logically continuous with its justification (anti-divorce thesis)? Many writers have identified these as the key issues of the discovery debate. McLaughlin, Pera, and others recently have defended the discovery program by attacking the divorce thesis, while Laudan has attacked the discovery program (...) by rejecting the per se thesis. This disagreement over the central issue has led to communication breakdown. I contend that both friends and foes of discovery mistake the central issues. Recognizing a form of divorce helps rather than hurts the discovery program. However, the per se thesis is not essential to the program (nor is the related debate over novel prediction); hence, the status of the per se thesis is a side issue. With these clarifications in hand, we can proceed to the next stage of the discovery debate--the development (or revival) of a generative conception of justification which goes beyond consequentialism to forge a strong linkage of generation (or rather, generatability) with justification. (shrink)

It is widely believed that if a piece of evidence for a theory was known at the time the theory was proposed, then it does not confirm the theory as strongly as it would if the evidence had been discovered after the theory was proposed. I shall call this view the predictivist thesis. Those who have endorsed it include Leibniz (1678), Huygens (1690, preface), Whewell (1847 vol. 2, p. 64f.), Peirce (1883), Duhem (1914, ch. II, §5), Popper (1965, p. 241f.), (...) Lakatos (1970, p. 123), and Kuhn (1977, p. 322). On the other hand, the thesis has been rejected by a number of philosophers, including Mill (1872 bk. III, ch. 14, §6), Keynes (1921, p. 305), Rosenkrantz (1977, p. 169f.), Horwich (1982, pp. 108-117) and Schlesinger (1987). Others, while not rejecting the predictivist thesis, nevertheless regard the justification of the thesis as problematic; these include Hempel (1966, p. 38) and Gardner (1982). (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that philosophical difficulties regarding scientific discovery arise mainly because philosophers base their arguments on a flawed picture of scientific research. Careful examination of N. R. Hanson's treatment of Kepler's discovery not only puts the rationality of this discovery beyond question, it also reveals what its rationality consists in. We can retrieve the point stressed by Hanson concerning the rational character of discoveries such as Kepler's even as we reject the type of "logical" analysis (...) he proposes. (shrink)

As a logical consequence of recent developments in the philosophy of science the concept of rationality has lost much of its impact. It seems that the rationality of methodological decisions in science can be defined no longer in an absolute sense but only in relation to a given context and in hindsight. This failure of methodology in assessing once and for all the rights and wrongs of scientific decisions is taken as a clue for reanalyzing the strategical intervention-points of methodological (...) norms. It is shown that relativism and irrationalism are to be avoided by not cutting the process of scientific investigation into intrinsically different portions: context of justification and context of discovery. This dichotomy opens a logical and psychological gap between different stages of scientific evolution that the idea of comparing factual contents or degrees of justification is no longer able to bridge. In two case studies, the development of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries and the development of special and general realtivity it is shown that the dichotomy is inherently implausibel. But if it is possible to analyze the context of justification and the context of discovery in same terms, the logical chain of reasoning is closed. This problem-shift defies both irrationalism and relativism and leads to a different view of scientific progress as an increase of information-processing capacity that can be measured by a certain set of indicators radically different from the received one. (shrink)

It is argued in this paper that the valid argument forms coming under the general heading of Demonstrative Induction have played a highly significant role in the history of theoretical physics. This situation was thoroughly appreciated by several earlier philosophers of science and deserves to be more widely known and understood.

The selectionsfrom the work of fourteen contemporary philosophers not only display the multiplicity of approachesbeing pursued since the breakup of any consensus on what philosophy is, but also help to clarifythis proliferation of views and ...

This paper examines the famous doctrine that independent prediction garners more support than accommodation. The standard arguments for the doctrine are found to be invalid, and a more realistic position is put forward, that whether evidence supports or not a hypothesis depends on the prior probability of the hypothesis, and is independent of whether it was proposed before or after the evidence. This position is implicit in the subjective Bayesian theory of confirmation, and the paper ends with a brief account (...) of this theory, and answer to the principal objections to it. (shrink)

A widely endorsed thesis in the philosophy of science holds that if evidence for a hypothesis was not known when the hypothesis was proposed, then that evidence confirms the hypothesis more strongly than would otherwise be the case. The thesis has been thought to be inconsistent with Bayesian confirmation theory, but the arguments offered for that view are fallacious. This paper shows how the special value of prediction can in fact be given Bayesian explanation. The explanation involves consideration of the (...) reliability of the method by which the hypothesis was discovered, and thus reveals an intimate connection between the 'logic of discovery' and confirmation theory. (shrink)

Pure consequentialists hold that all theoretical justification derives from testing the consequences of hypotheses, while generativists maintain that reasoning (some feature of) the hypothesis from we already know is an important form of justification. The strongest form of justification (they claim) is an idealized discovery argument. In the guise of H-D methodology, consequentialism is widely supposed to have defeated generativism during the 19th century. I argue that novel prediction fails to overcome the logical weakness of consequentialism or to render generative (...) methodology superfluous. Specifically, Bayesian consequentialism is not an alternative to generativism but reduces to an instance of it. (shrink)

This paper suggests a new principle for confirmation theory which is called the principle of explanatory surplus. This principle is shown to be non-Bayesian in character, and to lead to a treatment of simplicity in science. Two cases of the principle of explanatory surplus are considered. The first (number of parameters) is illustrated by curve-fitting examples, while the second (number of theoretical assumptions) is illustrated by the examples of Newton's Laws and Adler's Theory of the Inferiority Complex.