Download or read book The Methodology of Pierre Duhem written by Armand Lowinger and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Methodology of Pierre Duhem written by Armand Lowinger and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Can Theories be Refuted written by Sandra Harding and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to a view assumed by many scientists and philosophers of science and standardly found in science textbooks, it is controlled ex perience which provides the basis for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable theories in science: acceptable theories are those which can pass empirical tests. It has often been thought that a certain sort of test is particularly significant: 'crucial experiments' provide supporting empiri cal evidence for one theory while providing conclusive evidence against another. However, in 1906 Pierre Duhem argued that the falsification of a theory is necessarily ambiguous and therefore that there are no crucial experiments; one can never be sure that it is a given theory rather than auxiliary or background hypotheses which experiment has falsified. w. V. Quine has concurred in this judgment, arguing that "our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not indi vidually but only as a corporate body". Some philosophers have thought that the Duhem-Quine thesis gra tuitously raises perplexities. Others see it as doubly significant; these philosophers think that it provides a base for criticism of the foundational view of knowledge which has dominated much of western thought since Descartes, and they think that it opens the door to a new and fruitful way to conceive of scientific progress in particular and of the nature and growth of knowledge in general.
Download or read book Duhem and Holism written by Milena Ivanova and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The holistic thesis developed by Pierre Duhem challenges the idea that our evidence can conclusively falsify a theory. Given that no scientific theory is tested in isolation, a negative experiment can always be attributed to components other than the theory we test – to the auxiliary hypotheses and background assumptions. How do scientists decide whether the experimental result undermines the theory or points at an error in the underlying assumptions? Duhem argues that we cannot offer a rule that directs when the scientist should employ a radical or conservative strategy in light of a negative result, and ultimately they will appeal to their intuition. More recently philosophers have offered a number of strategies of how to locate error and justify the abandonment of a theory or an auxiliary hypothesis. This Element analyses Duhem's response to holism and subsequent accounts of how the problem can be resolved.
Download or read book Pierre Duhem written by R. Niall D. Martin and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 1991 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other major twentieth-century writer, Pierre Duhem has been the victim of ill-informed guesswork. For instance, many references to Duhem stress the importance of his Catholic faith, but nearly all of them draw the obvious-and entirely erroneous-conclusions about the role of Catholicism in Duhem's thinking. This book pays particular attention to the political and intellectual context of French Catholicism, wracked as it was by the tensions of Dreyfus affair and the so-called modernist crisis. Duhem took his inspiration, not from the papally-sponsored revival of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, but from Pascal, a fact that aroused suspicions of skepticism in the minds of conservative Catholics. The tensions between Duhem's work and authoritarian Catholic positions became more explicit as his historical work unfolded. Most famous for his denial of the possibility of a crucial experiment which could unambiguously decide between contending scientific theories, Duhem has often been interpreted as a mere instrumentalist or conventionalist, denying the meaningfulness of a reality behind the theory. Dr. Martin shows that Duhem was a Pascalian who argued for both logic and intuition as indispensable in approaching the truth. Duhem argues that physics could not legitimately be used to attack Christianity, but he held that physics was equally useless for the defense of Christianity, a position which made him unpopular with many Catholics.
Download or read book Uneasy Genius The Life And Work Of Pierre Duhem written by St.L. Jaki and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hundred years have now gone by since in the midsummer of 1882 Pierre Duhem, a graduate of College Stanislas, completed with brilliant success his entrance exams to the Ecole Normale Superieure and embarked on his career as a theoretical physicist. His father, a textile salesman, hoped that Hierre would pursue a career in business, one of the few professional fields where perhaps he would not have succeeded. Not that young Duhem lacked sense for the practical. He could have easily made a name for himself as an artist had he developed professionally his skill to draw portraits and landscapes. His ability to make a point and his readiness to join in a debate, could have earned him fame as a lawyer. A potential actor was in sight when he entertained friends with mimicry. That as a student of physics he entered and stayed first in his class at the Ecole Normale, did not thwart his talents for the life sciences. No less a biologist than Pasteur tried to obtain Duhem for assistant. His command of Greek and Latin would have secured him a career as a classicist. He was a Frenchman, not to be met too often, whose rightful ad miration for and mastery of his native tongue, did not prove a barrier to the major modern languages. As one who taught himself the complex art of medieval paleo graphy, he could easily have mastered the many auxiliary sciences needed by a consummate historian.
Download or read book German Science written by Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 1991 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) is a major influence in twentieth-century thought, a source for many of the ideas of the Vienna circle, Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, and Thomas S. Kuhn. Yet Duhem's arguments have often been perceived as enigmatic, quirky, muddled, or even disingenuous, because his influence has been greatest outside his native France many of his works have never been translated, and Duhem's readers have mostly been ignorant of the peculiar French cultural and political background during Duhem's lifetime. German Science (here translated into English for the first time) is a document of importance for understanding Duhem's better-known works. Duhem's Aim and Structure of Physical Theory has been misunderstood because of ignorance of the position set forth in German Science.
Download or read book Symbol and Physical Knowledge written by M. Ferrari and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces the problem of the symbolic structure of physics, surveys the modern history of symbols, proceeds to an epistemological discussion of the role of symbols in our knowledge of nature, and addresses key issues related to the methodology of physics and the character of its symbolic structures.
Download or read book The Methodology of Experimental Economics written by Francesco Guala and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The experimental approach in economics is a driving force behind some of the most exciting developments in the field. The 'experimental revolution' was based on a series of bold philosophical premises which have remained until now mostly unexplored. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis and critical discussion of the methodology of experimental economics, written by a philosopher of science with expertise in the field. It outlines the fundamental principles of experimental inference in order to investigate their power, scope and limitations. The author demonstrates that experimental economists have a lot to gain by discussing openly the philosophical principles that guide their work, and that philosophers of science have a lot to learn from their ingenious techniques devised by experimenters in order to tackle difficult scientific problems.
Download or read book To Save the Phenomena written by Pierre Duhem and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Duhem's 1908 essay questions the relation between physical theory and metaphysics and, more specifically, between astronomy and physics–an issue still of importance today. He critiques the answers given by Greek thought, Arabic science, medieval Christian scholasticism, and, finally, the astronomers of the Renaissance.
Download or read book The Origins of Statics written by Pierre Duhem and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If ever a major study of the history of science should have acted like a sudden revolution it is this book, published in two volumes in 1905 and 1906 under the title, Les origines de la statique. Paris, the place of publication, and the Librairie scientifique A. Hermann that brought it be enough of a guarantee to prevent a very different out, could seem to outcome. Without prompting anyone, for some years yet, to follow up the revolutionary vistas which it opened up, Les origines de la statique certainly revolutionized Duhem's remaining ten or so years. He became the single-handed discoverer of a vast new land of Western intellectual history. Half a century later it could still be stated about the suddenly proliferating studies in medieval science that they were so many commentariesonDuhem's countlessfindings and observations. Of course, in 1906, Paris and the intellectual world in general were mesmerized by Bergson's Evolution creatrice, freshly off the press. It was meant to bring about a revolution. Bergson challenged head-on the leading dogma of the times, the idea of mechanistic evolution. He did so by noting, among other things, that to speak of vitalism was at least a roundabout recognition of scientific ignorance about a large number of facts concerning life-processes. He held high the idea of a "vital impetus passing through matter," and indeed through all matter or the universe, an impetus thatcould be detected only through intuitiveknowledge.
Download or read book Metaphysical Themes 1274 1671 written by Robert Pasnau and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 811 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Pasnau traces the developments of metaphysical thinking through four rich but for the most part neglected centuries of philosophy, running from the thirteenth century through to the seventeenth. At no period in the history of philosophy, other than perhaps our own, have metaphysical problems received the sort of sustained attention they received during the later Middle Ages, and never has a whole philosophical tradition come crashing down as quickly and completely as did scholastic philosophy in the seventeenth century. The thirty chapters work through various fundamental metaphysical issues, sometimes focusing more on scholastic thought, sometimes on the seventeenth century. Pasnau begins with the first challenges to the classical scholasticism of Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, runs through prominent figures like John Duns Scotus and William Ockham, and ends in the seventeenth century, with the end of the first stage of developments in post-scholastic philosophy: on the continent, with Descartes and Gassendi, and in England, with Boyle and Locke.
Download or read book Exploring the Scientific Method written by Steven Gimbel and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From their grade school classrooms forward, students of science are encouraged to memorize and adhere to the “scientific method”—a model of inquiry consisting of five to seven neatly laid-out steps, often in the form of a flowchart. But walk into the office of a theoretical physicist or the laboratory of a biochemist and ask “Which step are you on?” and you will likely receive a blank stare. This is not how science works. But science does work, and here award-winning teacher and scholar Steven Gimbel provides students the tools to answer for themselves this question: What actually is the scientific method? Exploring the Scientific Method pairs classic and contemporary readings in the philosophy of science with milestones in scientific discovery to illustrate the foundational issues underlying scientific methodology. Students are asked to select one of nine possible fields—astronomy, physics, chemistry, genetics, evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, economics, or geology—and through carefully crafted case studies trace its historical progression, all while evaluating whether scientific practice in each case reflects the methodological claims of the philosophers. This approach allows students to see the philosophy of science in action and to determine for themselves what scientists do and how they ought to do it. Exploring the Scientific Method will be a welcome resource to introductory science courses and all courses in the history and philosophy of science.
Download or read book A Critical Realist s Theological Method written by Douglas W. Kennard and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Critical Realist's Theological Method explores a systematic theology method grounded in critical realism in the wake of Alister McGrath, Imre Lakatos, Nancey Murphy, N. T. Wright, and Dale Allison. Kennard surveys philosophical and traditional theological approaches for contributions and limitations in order to set out a method for theology and science. Kennard extends this method to a Thiselton-Ricoeur hermeneutic that can fund insightful exegesis and Biblical theology in the wake of Ladd, Dunn, Vos, and Goldingay. This Biblical theology method is illustrated by wisdom literature, the traditional reef of the discipline and then developed for the contributions toward systematic theology as Gabler had originally envisioned. With contextualized Scripture sourcing most of the content for systematic theology the trajectory is shown in the subtitle Returning the Bible and Biblical Theology to be the Framer for Theology and Science. The method is exampled in exegesis of creation texts which frame possibilities for science. Likewise, Biblical theology frames a bio-ethics integration of psychology and theology setting out a transactional model for psychological recovery with University of Chicago professor Paul Holmes. A theology for peer review and work is also framed.
Download or read book Scientific Method written by Barry Gower and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central theme running throughout this outstanding new survey is the nature of the philosophical debate created by modern science's foundation in experimental and mathematical method. More recently, recognition that reasoning in science is probabilistic generated intense debate about whether and how it should be constrained so as to ensure the practical certainty of the conclusions drawn. These debates brought to light issues of a philosophical nature which form the core of many scientific controversies today. Scientific Method: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction presents these debates through clear and comparative discussion of key figures in the history of science. Key chapters critically discuss * Galileo's demonstrative method, Bacon's inductive method, and Newton's rules of reasoning * the rise of probabilistic `Bayesian' methods in the eighteenth century * the method of hypotheses through the work of Herschel, Mill and Whewell * the conventionalist views of Poincaré and Duhem * the inductivism of Peirce, Russell and Keynes * Popper's falsification compared with Reichenbach's enumerative induction * Carnap's scientific method as Bayesian reasoning The debates are brought up to date in the final chapters by considering the ways in which ideas about method in the physical and biological sciences have affected thinking about method in the social sciences. This debate is analyzed through the ideas of key theorists such as Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend.
Download or read book Virtue Epistemology Naturalized written by Abrol Fairweather and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents four bridges connecting work in virtue epistemology and work in philosophy of science (broadly construed) that may serve as catalysts for the further development of naturalized virtue epistemology. These bridges are: empirically informed theories of epistemic virtue; virtue theoretic solutions to under determination; epistemic virtues in the history of science; and the value of understanding. Virtue epistemology has opened many new areas of inquiry in contemporary epistemology including: epistemic agency, the role of motivations and emotions in epistemology, the nature of abilities, skills and competences, wisdom and curiosity. Value driven epistemic inquiry has become quite complex and there is a need for a responsible and rigorous process of constructing naturalized theories of epistemic virtue. This volume makes the involvement of the sciences more explicit and looks at the empirical aspect of virtue epistemology. Concerns about virtue epistemology are considered in the essays contained here, including the question: can any virtue epistemology meet both the normativity constraint and the empirical constraint? The volume suggests that these worries should not be seen as impediments but rather as useful constraints and desiderata to guide the construction of naturalized theories of epistemic virtue.
Download or read book Science and Hypothesis written by Larry Laudan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of a collection of essays written between 1965 and 1981. Some have been published elsewhere; others appear here for the first time. Although dealing with different figures and different periods, they have a common theme: all are concerned with examining how the method of hy pothesis came to be the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of science and the quasi-official methodology of the scientific community. It might have been otherwise. Barely three centuries ago, hypothetico deduction was in both disfavor and disarray. Numerous rival methods for scientific inquiry - including eliminative and enumerative induction, analogy and derivation from first principles - were widely touted. The method of hypothesis, known since antiquity, found few proponents between 1700 and 1850. During the last century, of course, that ordering has been inverted and - despite an almost universal acknowledgement of its weaknesses - the method of hypothesis (usually under such descriptions as 'hypothetico deduction' or 'conjectures and refutations') has become the orthodoxy of the 20th century. Behind the waxing and waning of the method of hypothesis, embedded within the vicissitudes of its fortunes, there is a fascinating story to be told. It is a story that forms an integral part of modern science and its philosophy.
