Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 680 pages
- Published by: North Holland
- Edition: 1st Edition August 20, 2007
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0444515488
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0444515483
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Book Dimensions:
9.5 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 3.2 pounds
Product Description
Scientists use concepts and principles that are partly specific for their subject matter, but they also share part of them with colleagues working in different fields. Compare the biological notion of a 'natural kind' with the general notion of 'confirmation' of a hypothesis by certain evidence. Or compare the physical principle of the 'conservation of energy' and the general principle of 'the unity of science'. Scientists agree that all such notions and principles aren't as crystal clear as one might wish.
An important task of the philosophy of the special sciences, such as philosophy of physics, of biology and of economics, to mention only a few of the many flourishing examples, is the clarification of such subject specific concepts and principles. Similarly, an important task of 'general' philosophy of science is the clarification of concepts like 'confirmation' and principles like 'the unity of science'. It is evident that clarfication of concepts and principles only makes sense if one tries to do justice, as much as possible, to the actual use of these notions by scientists, without however following this use slavishly. That is, occasionally a philosopher may have good reasons for suggesting to scientists that they should deviate from a standard use. Frequently, this amounts to a plea for differentiation in order to stop debates at cross-purposes due to the conflation of different meanings.
While the special volumes of the series of Handbooks of the Philosophy of Science address topics relative to a specific discipline, this general volume deals with focal issues of a general nature.
After an editorial introduction about the dominant method of clarifying concepts and principles in philosophy of science, called explication, the first five chapters deal with the following subjects. Laws, theories, and research programs as units of empirical knowledge (Theo Kuipers), various past and contemporary perspectives on explanation (Stathis Psillos), the evaluation of theories in terms of their virtues (Ilkka Niiniluto), and the role of experiments in the natural sciences, notably physics and biology (Allan Franklin), and their role in the social sciences, notably economics (Wenceslao Gonzalez).
In the subsequent three chapters there is even more attention to various positions and methods that philosophers of science and scientists may favor: ontological, epistemological, and methodological positions (James Ladyman), reduction, integration, and the unity of science as aims in the sciences and the humanities (William Bechtel and Andrew Hamilton), and logical, historical and computational approaches to the philosophy of science (Atocha Aliseda and Donald Gillies).
The volume concludes with the much debated question of demarcating science from nonscience (Martin Mahner) and the rich European-American history of the philosophy of science in the 20th century (Friedrich Stadler).
- Comprehensive coverage of the philosophy of science written by leading philosophers in this field
- Clear style of writing for an interdisciplinary audience
- No specific pre-knowledge required
Back Cover Copy
An important task of 'general' philosophy of science is the clarification of concepts like 'confirmation', of principles like 'the unity of science', and of demarcations like 'empirical laws' versus 'genuine theories'. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the main general issues for clarification raised by the sciences. Authors attend to the historical development of the current debates and set the stage for future work.
Topics discussed: Units of empirical knowledge, perspectives on explanation, evaluation of theories, the role of experiments in the natural and social sciences, ontological, epistemological, and methodological positions, reduction and integration as views on the unity of science, logical, historical and computational approaches in the philosophy of science, the demarcation of science from nonscience, and the European-American roots of contemporary philosophy of science.
Reader Reviews
Vitalism is a profoundly science-ejected concept, though many CAM or 'natural health' cabals falsely claim that vitalism survives scientific scrutiny. I quote: "[Psillos] vitalism, [is] the view that the explanation of life and living organisms cannot be mechanical but should proceed in terms of vital forces or principles [p.166...Mahner] the distinction of science and pseudoscience is vital not just to our physical, but also to our cultural and political life [p.517...] it is unclear whether or not many other parascientific claims can be accommodated within ontological naturalism. In any case, they violate so much of what we know about the lawful behavior of things. Homeopaths, for example, claim that high dilutions that no longer contain even a single molecule of the given substance still have a potent pharmacological effect. If what we know about chemistry is roughly true, there can be no such effect. Homeopaths have learned to concede this objection, but now forward the protective hypothesis that, in the mandatory process of shaking the dilutions (called 'dynamization'), somehow the relevant 'information' of the given substance gets transferred to the solvent. So what produces the therapeutic effect is this 'information.' It goes without saying that this supposed information is ill-defined and perhaps even immaterial, because what chemistry tells us that any molecular structure formed by H2O-clusters is too short lived to do any informational work. Moreover, if water (or alcohol or whatever fluid) had a memory, why would it specifically remember only the information of the homeopathic substance rather than that of all the other chemicals it had contained previously. Another example is therapeutic touch. By moving her hands about ten cm. over the patient's body, the healers attempts to adjust the patient's 'vital energy,' whose 'imbalance' is always among the causes of whatever disease is to be healed. Needless to say, biology has abandoned any idea of vital energies long ago. These examples show that many of the ideas occurring in the parasciences and paratechnologies are not necessarily supernatural in the traditional sense of involving powerful personal entities like gods or demons, but nevertheless paranatural [...] in the sense of that they are not compatible with the naturalist-materialist outlook of the factual sciences [p.555...] a frequent feature of parascientific knowledge is its anachronistic character [...] what many parascientists propagate as revolutionary new insights or at least as rival 'scientific' theories is in fact [p.563] very old news, so old indeed that they have long been discarded by science. For example, alternative medicine teems with mysterious vital energies that supposedly are out of balance when we are sick. Thus, the basic ideas of homeopathy only make sense when we go back 200 years when vitalism was still going strong in biology and medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine presupposes the existence of some vital energy (qi or ch'i), flowing in channels (meridians) unknown to biology. And the practitioners of therapeutic touch and reiki (ki is the Japanese equivalent of qi) claim that they treat the imbalances in the 'human energy field,' whereas so-called prana healers refer to the Hinduist equivalent prana. The creationists still defend views that may have been legitimate 200 years ago. Then there are the pseudophysicists who try to build perpetua mobilia or other so-called free energy machines as though thermodynamics were nonexistent, or who desperately strive to refute Einstein's two relativities in order to re-establish good old Newtonian ism. Finally, astrology is another prime example of a world view that has been superseded for several hundred years [p.564]." -r.c.
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