Prof.
Randall R. Dipert 105
Park Hall
Personal
Webpage: http://www.neologic.net/rd 645-2444
ext 105
E-mail: rdipert@acsu.buffalo.edu Off
hours:T 10-11
W 10-11, Th 9-10
This
will be an introduction to the philosophical of science. We will also dicuss the history of science
(phlogiston, ether, and other reasonable but non-existent things), and about
the hypothetico-deductive method (and Mill’s methods), Peirce’s view of the
method of science (as abduction, deduction and abduction), and modern views of
confirmation. We will address all of
the well-known pithy counterexamples (what confirms “Ravens are black,” Nelson
Goodman’s Grue,), some history of science and the tales it tells—or rather, the
tales about the tales it tells.
John Losee, A Historical
Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Paperback)
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions (2nd edition, paperback)
This
is an introductory course on some of the main issues in the philosophy of
science. There is no prerequisite,
either philosophical or scientific.
Some of the topics we will consider are:
1. What was the first science?
What method did it use?
(Ancient
Greece: Aristotle, Pythagoreanism, Atomism)
2.
Where did the modern view of scientific method that we learn in school
come from?
What are its
weaknesses and strengths?
3.
The Demarcation Criterion. What
counts as science, what doesn’t?
4.
Positivism, Verificationism and Falsificationism: how does evidence and
data
fit
into science?
5.
The Problems of Induction and the mystery of causation:
Hume,
Hempel and Goodman.
6.
Is there a scientific method?
7.
Does data uniquely determine the correct, rational scientific theory?
(“Underdetermination”)
8.
Growth and Progress in Science:
Is there progress? Is it
rational? (Kuhn)
9.
The metaphysical status of “scientific” entities: Are they real? Are they mere posits?
One
side benefit of the course is that you will gain some deeper wisdom about
epistemology, namely what “knowledge” is. Another benefit is that you will
learn something about the history of science. This is a fascinating and important field, and deserves more study
than it receives by scientists and in school.
III. Course Requirements.
1. Papers ( Three: two shorter,
one longer) 40%
2.
Tests and quizzes 40%
3.
Attendance, being prepared for class, class contributions. 20%
The
“tests and quizzes” will include tests at the end of topics or units, announced
well in advance. Quizzes will include
small tests (20-30 minutes) on class reading, some announced one class in
advance, some unannounced.
IV. Content Description: The Place of the Philosophy
of Science in the History of Philosophy.
Until the 20th century, there did not exist a subject to
study called “philosophy of science.” [Why is this?] Aristotle and others thought much about how to investigate the
world, but didn’t have a view of this as an independent branch of
philosophy. The philosophy of science
includes many quite different problems: some are narrowly associated with
issues in one specialized subscience, such as physics or biology, and the
varied problems in the philosophy of science do not even fall in the same
branch of philosophy, being questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and even
ethics.
If one had to place the philosophy of
science into one branch of philosophy, it would probably be into epistemology:
the theory of knowledge—what knowledge is and how we get it. The British empiricists, with their emphasis
on the role of “experience” in producing knowledge, sharpened the distinction
between what can be known without any special experiences. Namely, there is a priori knowledge: I don’t
need to have gone to China to see how trigonometry works there, but can figure
it out in my head, by reason alone. And
there is a posteriori knowledge: in order to determine that there are
freshwater sharks in the Amazon, I or someone,
has to have gone there and looked. While this is an isolated, particular fact
that is not part of what everyone considers science, it can be used to refute
or falsify the possibly more scientific statement “All sharks are saltwater
animals” and its logical equivalent “No sharks are freshwater animals.”[1] [Why would someone say that science does not contain isolated particular
facts? What would they say science does consist of?]
Once it is admitted that there exists
some a posteriori knowledge—and not
quite everyone admits this—it follows that some of what we come to believe on
the basis of experience is knowledge, and some isn’t (it’s false, or true but
unjustified, confused, or whatever).
The philosophy of science thus has its roots, historically and
logically, in the presumption that some of our beliefs are somehow properly
based on our experience, and some aren’t. The philosophy of science is the
attempt to describe the ideal ways we could—and maybe should—base our beliefs
on experience. (Most philosophy of
science is preoccupied with questions about general or theoretical beliefs
based on experience, rather than with simple beliefs about particular
things.) This ideal way of coming to a posteriori knowledge is sometimes
loosely called the “scientific method.”
In its search for this ideal method, the philosophy of science has been
guided by a kind of hero worship. It assumes
that this ideal method is whatever the greatest scientists of the past used,
such that even though they might not have reached what we now believe is the
truth, they made huge leaps forward beyond their predecessors. The best-known
such figures include Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Darwin. (In chemistry, Priestley and Lavoisier; in
geology, Wegener, and so on.)
Especially since the 1960’s, a large
number of questions have been raised about this “rationalistic” picture of the
philosophy of science as the theory of how to arrive at a posteriori knowledge (or reasonably close to it). They think there is notify theory about how
good science in the past was done, and how good science should be done. Has there been progress in knowledge? Are we closing in on the truth about
physical reality? Have scientists—even
just the great or good ones—really used just one method? Should we use these methods too if we are
aiming for knowledge? Why?
Earlier in the 20th century,
many philosophers became concerned with what has become known as the Demarcation
Criterion: how do we distinguish
science from non-science? While the
“scientific method” might be the best—and maybe only--way to achieve a posteriori knowledge, science doesn’t always produce knowledge. Newton’s laws of gravity have turned out to
be not (precisely) true, but they were still science, a kind of noble effort
using approved techniques. Of
particular interest in this tradition was the question of what kinds of
statements science accepts or seriously considers. It does not investigate, for example, “Love is beautiful” or even
2 + 2 = 4, but can consider “The moon is made entirely of dairy products” or
“Entities can be alive and reproduce only if they are above absolute
zero.” There are two major proposed
answers: scientific (or “meaningful”)
statements must be verifiable, held by the Logical Positivists (and more
vaguely by earlier positivists), and scientific statements must be falsifiable, held by Karl Popper.
VI. Readings List: Classics in the Philosophy of Science.
In order to have a solid background in
the philosophy of science, one must have poked around in these books, or
understood their main issues from secondary sources:
Francis
Bacon (1620), sections of Novum Organum
William
Whewell (1840), The Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences
J.S.
Mill (1st 1843), (sections of) A
System of Logic.
C.S.
Peirce (c. 1878), Essential Works Vol I, especially essays in belief and
scientific method.
Pierre
Duhem (1861-1916), Essays in the History
and Philosophy of Science
Henri
Poincaré (1905), Science and Hypothesis
Karl
Popper (1934), The Logic of Scientific
Discovery (mistranslation of Logik
der Forschung)
A.J.
Ayer (ed. anthology 1959), Logical
Positivism
Phillip
Frank (1949), Modern Science and its
Philosophy
N.R.
Hanson (1958), Patterns of Discovery
Thomas
Kuhn (1962, 1970), The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions
Carl
Hempel (1965), Aspects of Scientific
Explanation
Imre
Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (1970),
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
Paul
Feyerabend (1975), Against Method
Philip
Kitcher (1993), The Advancement of
Science
Additionally, there are many shorter essays or
articles that are important to have read.
One of these is, for example, W.V. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.”
VII. Web Resources on the philosophy of science.
Generally dependable supersites and encyclopedias in philosophy:
Episteme
Links http://www.epistemelinks.com/index.asp
Stanford
Encyc. of Phil. http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
A very fine article on Popper.
Internet Encyc of Philosophy http://www.utm.edu/research/iep
29 Jan T Pythagorean mathematics and science; Plato; Greek atomism Losee 14-25
31 Jan Th Quiz Saving appearances: Copernicus, Kepler Losee 39-45
5 Feb T Galileo, Bacon, Descartes Losee 46-71
7 Feb Th “ “
12 Feb T Test: Greek and Renaissance science and phil. of science
14 Feb Th NO CLASS
19 Feb T Newton 72-85
21 Feb Th Leibniz, Hume, Kant 89-97
26 Feb T Short Paper I due Topics TBA