Part VII: Philosophy of Science

Chapter 20

Study questions for What is Science?

  1. Should philosophers of science aim to give an accurate description of actual scientific practice, or should they make normative recommendations on how to improve science?
  2. Can conflicts between the manifest image and the scientific image be resolved? If so, how?
  3. Is the covering law model of scientific explanation more appropriate for some scientific disciplines than for others?
  4. Can explanation and prediction come apart in other ways than the ones discussed above?
  5. Are there questions that science cannot, as a matter of principle, answer? Are such questions necessarily pseudo-questions?

Multiple Choice Questions

Weblinks for What is science?

Hansson, S. O. (2014). ‘Science and Pseudo-Science’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/. [An up-to-date overview of the debate about how to distinguish between science and pseudoscience, including comments on the unity and/or disunity of science.]

Research Topics and Readings in History and Philosophy of Science. University of Cambridge, http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/research/. [Intended as a research guide for advanced undergraduates, this website contains useful annotated bibliographies on many issues in the history and philosophy of science.]

Introductory further reading for What is science?

Hacking, I. (1983). Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge University Press. [A stylishly written and very readable introduction to selected topics in the philosophy of science, written by one of the most influential contemporary philosophers of science.]

Rosenberg, A. (2012). Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge. [This is a comprehensive and systematic introduction, which covers all the major issues in contemporary philosophy of science.]

Advanced further reading for What is science?

Hanson, N. R. (1958). Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science. Cambridge University Press. [A classic discussion of the problem of theory-ladenness of observation.]

Hempel, C. (1970). Aspects of Scientific Explanation (and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science). Free Press. [Contains Hempel’s papers on the deductive-nomological model of explanation, and other classic papers that give a flavour of mid-twentieth-century philosophy of science in the logical empiricist tradition.]

Longino, H. (2001). The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton University Press. [This book attempts to bridge the gap between descriptive science studies and more traditional philosophy of science, and seeks to overcome many of the dichotomies that arise from the perceived antagonism between rational and social factors in science.]

Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge. [A collection of papers that summarises Popper’s views on such issues as the demarcation between science and non-science, the role of falsifiability, and the growth of knowledge.]

Strevens, M. (2011). Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Harvard University Press. [At 536 pages and 1.8 pounds, this book does not lend itself to bedtime reading; however, it provides a thorough and original up-to-date discussion of scientific explanation in all its facets.]