Part VII: Philosophy of Science

Chapter 22

Study questions for Is Science Getting Closer to the Truth?

  1. Scientific realists argue that we should take scientific claims about unobservables ‘at face value’. Are there limits to which unobservables we should consider real, and if so where should we draw the line? Are electrons real? What about virtual particles, chemical orbitals, or selection pressures in evolutionary biology?
  2. Does underdetermination pose a serious threat to scientific realism?
  3. Does the failure of past scientific theories count against the truth of our current best scientific theories?
  4. What would it take to overcome the problem of incommensurability between past and present scientific theories?
  5. Which is a better unit of analysis for making sense of scientific theory change: Kuhn’s notion of ‘paradigm’ or Lakatos’s notion of ‘research programme’?

Multiple Choice Questions

Weblinks for Is science getting closer to the truth?

Bird, A. (2011). ‘Thomas Kuhn’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/. [A summary of Kuhn’s life, work and philosophical influence, along with a thorough discussion of the arguments put forward by Kuhn’s critics, especially against his controversial incommensurability thesis.]

Chakravartty, A. (2011). ‘Scientific Realism’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/. [A comprehensive survey article which outlines and contrasts the main variants of scientific realism and anti-realism, and goes on to their relative philosophical merits.]

Introductory further reading for Is science getting closer to the truth?

Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. [Kuhn’s book is a modern classic and an easy and exciting read.]

Nola, R. and Sankey, H. (2007). Theories of Scientific Method: An Introduction. Acumen. [An excellent survey of the philosophical debate about scientific methodology, which devotes a lot of space to the distinctive theories of method proposed by Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and others.]

Advanced further reading for Is science getting closer to the truth?

Chakravartty, A. (2010). A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Knowing the Unobservable. Cambridge University Press. [An up-to-date discussion of recent positions in the scientific realism debate, including its connections with the metaphysics of science.]

Feyerabend, P. (2010). Against Method. Verso. [First published in 1975, this book argues for the anarchic character of science and against a belief in a single, monist ‘scientific method’.]

Hoyningen-Huene, P. (1993). Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science. University of Chicago Press. [An exceptionally clear and thorough introduction to Kuhn’s philosophy of science.]

Lakatos, I. (1980). The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press. [Contains a detailed exposition of Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programmes.]

Laudan, L. (1981). ‘A Confutation of Convergent Realism’. Philosophy of Science 48(1): 19–49. [This article contains the classic statement of Laudan’s pessimistic metainduction.]

Psillos, S. (1999). Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. Routledge. [A sophisticated and thorough defence of scientific realism.]

van Fraassen, B. (1980). The Scientific Image. Oxford University Press. [A hugely influential and hard-hitting critique of scientific realism, which develops van Fraassen’s distinctive anti-realist alternative, which he calls ‘constructive empiricism’.]

Wigner, E. P. (1960). ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13(1): 1–14. [This is an influential paper which reflects on the puzzling question of why mathematics is so useful in the sciences.]

Wylie, A. (1986). ‘Arguments for Scientific Realism: The Ascending Spiral’. American Philosophical Quarterly 23(3): 287–97. [An excellent article that traces the dialectic of the debate between scientific realists and anti-realists in a clear and readable manner.]