Sahotra Sarkar – Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Science

Автор: Sahotra Sarkar
Название книги: Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Science
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Философия
Страницы: 1005
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

The first in-depth reference in the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia is a two-volume set that brings together an international team of leading scholars to provide over 130 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science.

The areas covered include:

biology
chemistry
epistemology and metaphysics
physics
psychology and mind
the social sciences
key figures in the combined studies of science and philosophy.
The essays represent the most up-to-date philosophical thinking on timeless scientific topics such as: determinism, explanation, laws of nature, perception, individuality, time, and economics as well as timely topics like adaptation, conservation biology, quantum logic, consciousness, evolutionary psychology, and game theory.

Philosophy of science emerged as a recognizable
sub-discipline within philosophy only in the twentieth
century. The possibility of such a sub-discipline
is a result of the post-Enlightenment disciplinary
and institutional separation of philosophy from
the sciences. Before that separation, philosophical
reflection formed part of scientific research—as,
indeed, it must—and philosophy was usually guided
by a sound knowledge of science, a practice
that gradually lost currency after the separation.
In the nineteenth century, philosophical reflection
on science resulted in a tradition of natural philosophy,
particularly in Britain (with the work of Mill,
Pearson, Whewell, and others), but also in continental
Europe, especially in Austria (with Bolzano,
Mach, and others). What is called philosophy of
science today has its roots in both the British and
the Austrian traditions, although with many other
influences, as several entries in this Encyclopedia
record (see, for instance, Duhem Thesis; Poincare´,
Henri).
This Encyclopedia is intended to cover contemporary
philosophy of science. It is restricted to conceptual
developments since the turn of the twentieth
century. Its treatment of major figures in the field is
restricted to philosophers (excluding scientists, no
matter what the extent of their philosophical influence
has been) and, with very few exceptions
(notably Chomsky, Noam; Putnam, Hilary; and
Searle, John), to those whose work is distant enough
to allow ‘‘historical’’ appraisal. Conceptual issues
in the general philosophy of science (including its
epistemology and metaphysics) as well as in the
special sciences are included; those in mathematics
have been left for a different work. This Introduction
will provide a guided tour of these conceptual
issues; individual figures will only be mentioned
in passing.
Historically, the themes treated in the Encyclopedia
are those that have emerged starting with the
period of the Vienna Circle (see Vienna Circle),
including the figures and developments that influenced
it (see Bridgman, Percy Williams; Duhem
Thesis; Mach, Ernest; Poincare´, Jules Henri). The
work of the members of the Vienna Circle provide a
link between the older natural philosophy, especially
in its Austrian version, and the later philosophy
of science, which borrowed heavily from the concepts
and techniques of the mathematical logic
that was being created in the first three decades of
the last century (see Hilbert, David; Ramsey,
Frank Plumpton; Russell, Bertrand; see also Ayer
[1959] and Sarkar [1996a]). The new set of doctrines—
or, more accurately, methods—came to be
called ‘‘logical positivism’’ and, later, ‘‘logical empiricism’’
(see Logical Empiricism; see also Sarkar
[1996b]).Bythe 1930s these views had spread beyond
the confines of Vienna and had attracted allegiance
from many other similarly-minded philosophers
(see Ayer, A. J.; Quine, Willard Van; Reichenbach,
Hans). Two attitudes were widely shared within this
group: a belief that good philosophy must be conversant
with the newest developments within the
sciences (see Rational Reconstruction), and a
rejection of traditional metaphysics imbued with
discussions with no empirical significance (see
Cognitive Significance; Verifiability).
Some members of the Vienna Circle also took the
so-called linguistic turn (see Carnap, Rudolf) and
viewed scientific theories as systems formalized in
artificial languages (Sarkar 1996c). Arguably, at
least, this work lost the prized contact with the
practice of science, and this development contributed
to the eventual rejection of logical empiricism
by most philosophers of science in the late twentieth
century. However, a number of the original logical
empiricists, along with many others, rejected the
linguistic turn, or at least did not fully endorse it
(see Neurath, Otto; Popper, Karl Raimund; Reichenbach,
Hans). The tensions between the two views
were never fully articulated during this period, let
alone resolved, because the Vienna Circle as an institution and logical empiricism as a movement
both came under political attack in Europe with the
advent of Nazism. Most of the figures involved in
the movement migrated to the United Kingdom
and the United States. In the United States, many
of the logical empiricists also later fell afoul of
McCarthyism (see Logical Empiricism).
In the United States, Nagel probably best exemplifies
what philosophy of science became in the
period of the dominance of logical empiricism.
The discussions of Nagel’s (1961) Structure of
Science typically include careful formal accounts
of conceptual issues, but these are supplemented
by detailed ‘‘nonformal’’ discussions in the spirit
of the tradition of natural philosophy—this book
may be viewed as a summary of where logical
empiricism stood at its peak (see Nagel, Ernest).
However, starting in the late 1940s, many of the
theses adopted by the logical empiricists came
under increasing attack even by those committed
to keeping philosophy in contact with the sciences
(Sarkar 1996e). (The logical empiricists had explicitly
advocated and practiced intense self-criticism,
and many of these attacks came from within their
ranks—see Hempel, Carl Gustav.) Some of this
criticism concerned whether cherished doctrines
could be successfully formulated with the degree
of rigor desired by the logical empiricists (see
Analyticity; Cognitive Significance).
However, the most serious criticism came from
those who held that the logical empiricists had
failed to give an account of scientific confirmation
and scientific change (see ‘‘Confirmation,’’ ‘‘Scientific
Discovery,’’ and ‘‘Scientific Change,’’ below).
Feyerabend, for one, argued that the logical
empiricists had placed science under an inadmissible
rational straitjacket (see Feyerabend, Paul). As
philosophy of science took a distinctly historical
turn, analyzing the development of science in increasing
historical detail, many felt that the logical
empiricists had misinterpreted the historical processes
of scientific change (see Hanson, Norwood
Russell; Kuhn, Thomas). Kuhn’s (1962) Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, originally written for an
encyclopedia sponsored by the logical empiricists,
was particularly influential. By the mid-1960s logical
empiricism was no longer the dominant view in
the philosophy of science; rather, it came to be
regarded as a ‘‘received view’’ against which philosophers
of science defined themselves (Suppe 1974).
However, this interpretation of logical empiricism
ignores the disputes and diversity of viewpoints
within the tradition (see, especially, Logical Empiricism),
arguably resulting in a caricature rather
than a responsible intellectual characterization.
Nevertheless, for expository ease, the term
‘‘received view’’ will be used in this Introduction
to indicate what may, at least loosely, be taken to
be the majority view among the logical empiricists.
Scientific realism and various forms of naturalism,
sometimes under the rubric of ‘‘evolutionary
epistemology,’’ have emerged as alternatives to the
logical empiricist interpretations of science (see
Evolutionary Epistemology; Scientific Realism).
Meanwhile, science has also been subject to feminist
and other social critiques (see Feminist Philosophy
of Science). Kuhn’s work has also been used
as an inspiration for interpretations of science that
regard it as having no more epistemological
authority than ‘‘knowledge’’ generated by other
cultural practices (see Social Constructionism).
However, whether such work belongs to the philosophy
of science, rather than its sociology, remains
controversial. While no single dominant interpretation
of science has emerged since the decline of
logical empiricism, the ensuing decades have seen
many innovative analyses of conceptual issues that
were central to logical empiricism. There has also
been considerable progress in the philosophical
analyses of the individual sciences. The rest of
this Introduction will briefly mention these with
pointers to the relevant entries in this work.
Theories
The analysis of scientific theories—both their form
and content—has been a central theme within the
philosophy of science. According to what has become
known as ‘‘the received view,’’ which was developed
in various versions by the logical empiricists
between the 1920s and 1950s, theories are a conjunction
of axioms (the laws of nature) and correspondence
rules specified in a formalized ideal
language. The ideal language was supposed to consist
of three parts: logical terms, observational
terms, and theoretical terms. Logical claims were
treated as analytic truths (see Analyticity), and
were thought by many to be accepted as a matter
of convention (see Conventionalism). Observational
claims were also thought to be unproblematic,
initially understood as referring to incorrigible
sense-data and later to publicly available physical
objects (see Phenomenalism; Physicalism; Protocol
Sentences). The correspondence rules were
supposed to allow the logical empiricists to give
cognitive significance (see Cognitive Significance;
Verifiability) to the theoretical portion of the language,
by specifying rules for connecting theoretical
and observational claims. In their extreme
version, these correspondence rules took the form of operational definitions (see Bridgeman, Percy
Williams). One goal of such attempts was to distinguish
science from non-science, especially what the
logical empiricists derided as ‘‘metaphysics’’ (see
Demarcation, Problem of).
Starting in the 1960s, the received view encountered
a number of problems. Even earlier, difficulties
had arisen for the correspondence rules, which
took various forms over the years as a result of
these problems. Initially understood as explicit
definitions, they were later treated as partial definitions,
and in the end the theoretical terms were
merely required to make a difference to the observational
consequences of the theory. One central
focus of the criticism was on the observationtheory
distinction (see Observation). It was argued
that the theoretical and observational portions of
language are not distinct (Putnam 1962; Achinstein
1968; see also Putnam, Hilary), that the distinction
between entities that are observable and those that
are not is vague (Maxwell 1962), and that observations
are theory-laden (Hanson 1958; see
also Hanson, Norwood Russell; Observation). In
addition, there were problems ruling out unintended
models of theories, which became a source
of counterexamples. In hindsight, it is also clear
that the problem of demarcating science from
non-science was never fully solved.
More recently, a number of philosophers have
questioned the important place given to laws of
nature on this view, arguing that there are scientific
theories in which laws do not appear to play a
significant role (see Biology, Philosophy of; Laws
of Nature). Others have questioned not the occurrence
of laws within theories, but whether any of
these entities should be conceptualized as linguistic
entities (which is quite foreign to the practice of
science). Still others have wondered whether the
focus on theories has been an artifact of the
received view being based primarily on physics, to
the detriment of other sciences. As the received
view fell out of favor, starting in the 1960s, a
number of philosophers developed various versions
of what is known as the semantic view of
theories, which understands theories as classes
of models, rather than as linguistic entities specifiable
in an axiomatic system. While not without
its problems, the semantic view seemed to
bring philosophical accounts of theories more in
line with the practices of scientists and has become
the generally accepted view of theories
(see Scientific Models; Theories). Nevertheless,
there is at present no consensus within the discipline
as to how theories should be philosophically
characterized.