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  1. State of the field: Are the results of science contingent or inevitable?Katherina Kinzel - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 52:55-66.
    This paper presents a survey of the literature on the problem of contingency in science. The survey is structured around three challenges faced by current attempts at understanding the conflict between “contingentist” and “inevitabilist” interpretations of scientific knowledge and practice. First, the challenge of definition: it proves hard to define the positions that are at stake in a way that is both conceptually rigorous and does justice to the plethora of views on the issue. Second, the challenge of distinction: some (...)
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  • The resolution of discordant results.Allan Franklin - 1995 - Perspectives on Science 3 (3):346-420.
    Experiments often disagree. How then can scientific knowledge be based on experimental evidence? In this paper I will examine four episodes from the history of recent physics: the suggestion of a Fifth Force, a modification of Newton’s law of gravitation; early attempts to detect gravitational radiation ; the claim that a 17-keV neutrino exists; and experiments on atomic-parity violation and on the scattering of polarized electrons and their relation to the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions. In each of these (...)
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  • Catching the WAVE: The Weight-Adjusting Account of Values and Evidence.Boaz Miller - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 47:69-80.
    It is commonly argued that values “fill the logical gap” of underdetermination of theory by evidence, namely, values affect our choice between two or more theories that fit the same evidence. The underdetermination model, however, does not exhaust the roles values play in evidential reasoning. I introduce WAVE – a novel account of the logical relations between values and evidence. WAVE states that values influence evidential reasoning by adjusting evidential weights. I argue that the weight-adjusting role of values is distinct (...)
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  • A Survey of Inductive Generalization.John D. Norton - unknown
    Inductive generalization asserts that what obtains in known instances can be generalized to all. Its original form is enumerative induction, the earliest form of inductive inference, and it has been elaborated in various ways, largely with the goal of extending its reach. Its principal problem is that it supplies no intrinsic notion of strength of support so that one cannot tell if the generalization has weak or strong support.
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  • Data meet theory: up close and inferentially personal.Ioannis Votsis - 2011 - Synthese 182 (1):89 - 100.
    In a recent paper James Bogen and James Woodward denounce a set of views on confirmation that they collectively brand 'IRS'. The supporters of these views cast confirmation in terms of Inferential Relations between observational and theoretical Sentences. Against 1RS accounts of confirmation, Bogen and Woodward unveil two main objections: (a) inferential relations are not necessary to model confirmation relations since many data are neither in sentential form nor can they be put in such a form and (b) inferential relations (...)
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  • After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method.Robert Nola & Howard Sankey (eds.) - 2000 - Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
    Some think that issues to do with scientific method are last century's stale debate; Popper was an advocate of methodology, but Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others are alleged to have brought the debate about its status to an end. The papers in this volume show that issues in methodology are still very much alive. Some of the papers reinvestigate issues in the debate over methodology, while others set out new ways in which the debate has developed in the last decade. The (...)
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  • A bayesian analysis of strategies in evolutionary biology.David Wyss Rudge - 1998 - Perspectives on Science 6 (4):341-360.
    : Most work done in philosophy of experiment has focused on experiments taken from the domain of physics. The present essay tests whether Allan Franklin's (1984, 1986, 1989, 1990) philosophy of experiment developed in the context of high energy physics can be extended to include examples from evolutionary biology, such as H. B. D. Kettlewell's (1955, 1956, 1958) famous studies of industrial melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia. The analysis demonstrates that many of the techniques used by evolutionary biologists (...)
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  • L’étalonnage des instruments de mesure en physique expérimentale : le cas du télescope spatial James Webb.Carlo Calvi - 2024 - Dissertation, Université de Montréal
    Philosophers and scientists have often adopted the orthodox version of calibration which involves standardizing an instrument using a known phenomenon. The essential link between theoretical concepts and empirical data, in the philosophy of measurement, has generated the formulation of principles of coordination, synthetic a priori, and revisables. Operationalist thinking wanted to limit the scope of concepts to operations of measurement that are actually achievable. The coherentist perspective in the philosophy of measurement has operated a recovery of coordinationist epistemology and operationalism, (...)
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  • Calibration.Allan Franklin - 1997 - Perspectives on Science 5 (1):31-80.
    Calibration, the use of a surrogate signal to standardize an instrument, is an important strategy for the establishment of the validity of an experimental result. In this paper, I present several examples, typical of physics experiments, that illustrate the adequacy of the surrogate. In addition, I discuss several episodes in which the question of calibration is both difficult to answer and of paramount importance. These episodes include early attempts to detect gravity waves, the question of the existence of a 17–keV (...)
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  • Stopping rules as experimental design.Samuel C. Fletcher - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (2):1-20.
    A “stopping rule” in a sequential experiment is a rule or procedure for deciding when that experiment should end. Accordingly, the “stopping rule principle” states that, in a sequential experiment, the evidential relationship between the final data and an hypothesis under consideration does not depend on the experiment’s stopping rule: the same data should yield the same evidence, regardless of which stopping rule was used. In this essay, I reconstruct and rebut five independent arguments for the SRP. Reminding oneself that (...)
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  • Scientific models, simulation, and the experimenter's regress.Axel Gelfert - 2011 - In Paul Humphreys & Cyrille Imbert (eds.), Models, Simulations, and Representations. New York: Routledge.
    According to the "experimenter's regress", disputes about the validity of experimental results cannot be closed by objective facts because no conclusive criteria other than the outcome of the experiment itself exist for deciding whether the experimental apparatus was functioning properly or not. Given the frequent characterization of simulations as "computer experiments", one might worry that an analogous regress arises for computer simulations. The present paper analyzes the most likely scenarios where one might expect such a "simulationist's regress" to surface, and, (...)
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  • Splendours and miseries of the science wars.Nick Jardine & Marina Frasca-Spada - 1997 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 28 (2):219-235.
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  • Are the Ideals of Rationality Rational? On the Experimenter’s Regress, the Theoretician’s Regress, and the Epistemologist’s Progress.Olga E. Stoliarova & Столярова Ольга Евгеньевна - 2024 - RUDN Journal of Philosophy 28 (1):136-147.
    The research is devoted to the problem of philosophically justifying rationality, which inevitably takes the form of a circular argument: to define what rationality is, we must refrain from referring to its criteria, which must be rationally defined beforehand. This epistemic circle is compared to the so-called “experimenter’s regress”. The experimenter’s regress involves reasoning in which judging the correctness of obtained scientific results can only be based on the correctness of the procedure of obtaining them and judging the correctness of (...)
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  • Calibrating Chromatography: How Tswett Broke the Experimenters’ Regress.Jonathan Livengood & Adam Edwards - 2022 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (3):685-710.
    We propose a new account of calibration according to which calibrating a technique shows that the technique does what it is supposed to do. To motivate our account, we examine an early twentieth-century debate about chlorophyll chemistry and Mikhail Tswett’s use of chromatographic adsorption analysis to study it. We argue that Tswett’s experiments established that his technique was reliable in the special case of chlorophyll without relying on either a theory or a standard calibration experiment. We suggest that Tswett broke (...)
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  • Computer Modeling and Simulation: Increasing Reliability by Disentangling Verification and Validation.Vitaly Pronskikh - 2019 - Minds and Machines 29 (1):169-186.
    Verification and validation of computer codes and models used in simulations are two aspects of the scientific practice of high importance that recently have been discussed widely by philosophers of science. While verification is predominantly associated with the correctness of the way a model is represented by a computer code or algorithm, validation more often refers to the model’s relation to the real world and its intended use. Because complex simulations are generally opaque to a practitioner, the Duhem problem can (...)
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  • L'empirisme modal.Quentin Ruyant - 2017 - Dissertation, Université Rennes 1
    The aim of this thesis dissertation is to propose a novel position in the debate on scientific realism, modal empiricism, and to show its fruitfulness when it comes to interpreting the cognitive content of scientific theories. Modal empiricism is an empiricist position, according to which the aim of science is to produce empirically adequate theories rather than true theories. However, it suggests adopting a broader comprehension of experience than traditional versions of empiricism, through a commitment to natural modalities. Following modal (...)
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  • The experimenters' regress: from skepticism to argumentation.Benoı̂t Godin & Yves Gingras - 2002 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 33 (1):133-148.
    Harry Collins' central argument about experimental practice revolves around the thesis that facts can only be generated by good instruments but good instruments can only be recognized as such if they produce facts. This is what Collins calls the experimenters' regress. For Collins, scientific controversies cannot be closed by the ‘facts’ themselves because there are no formal criteria independent of the outcome of the experiment that scientists can apply to decide whether an experimental apparatus works properly or not.No one seems (...)
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  • Economics and the laboratory: some philosophical and methodological problems facing experimental economics.Francesco Guala - 1999 - Dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science
    Laboratory experimentation was once considered impossible or irrelevant in economics. Recently, however, economic science has gone through a real ‘laboratory revolution’, and experimental economics is now a most lively subfield of the discipline. The methodological advantages and disadvantages of controlled experimentation constitute the main subject of this thesis. After a survey of the literature on experiments in philosophy and economics, the problem of testing normative theories of rationality is tackled. This philosophical issue was at the centre of a famous controversy (...)
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  • The Functional Complexity of Scientific Evidence.Matthew J. Brown - 2015 - Metaphilosophy 46 (1):65-83.
    This article sketches the main features of traditional philosophical models of evidence, indicating idealizations in such models that it regards as doing more harm than good. It then proceeds to elaborate on an alternative model of evidence that is functionalist, complex, dynamic, and contextual, a view the author calls dynamic evidential functionalism (DEF). This alternative builds on insights from philosophy of scientific practice, Kuhnian philosophy of science, pragmatist epistemology, philosophy of experimentation, and functionalist philosophy of mind. Along the way, the (...)
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  • Gravity waves and neutrinos: The later work of Joseph Weber.Allan Franklin - 2010 - Perspectives on Science 18 (2):pp. 119-151.
    How does the physics community deal with the subsequent work of a scientist whose earlier work has been regarded as incorrect? An interesting case of this involves Joseph Weber whose claim to have observed gravitational waves was rejected by virtually all of the physics community, although Weber himself continued to defend his work until his death in 2000. In the course of this defense Weber made a startling suggestion regarding the scattering of neutrinos. I will summarize the history of gravity (...)
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  • Meta-analytic Holism: In Response to Harry Collins.Yasuo Deguchi - 2010 - Journal of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 38 (1):19-37.
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  • Everything you did not necessarily want to know about gravitational waves. And why.Yves Gingras - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 38 (1):268-282.
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  • Against defaultism and towards localism in the contingency/inevitability conversation: Or, why we should shut up about putting-up.Alex Aylward - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 74:30-41.
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  • How Did Kettlewell’s Experiment End?David Rudge - unknown
    The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth of interest among scholars of science and technology in both particular experimental episodes and the process of experimentation. Among the most influential accounts have been those developed by Allan Franklin (1986, 1990), Deborah Mayo (1996) and Peter Galison (1987), each of which was developed primarily with reference to examples drawn from the history of physics. One useful way to access the generality of an account of experiment is to see how it (...)
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  • Doing science, writing science.Jutta Schickore - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (3):323-343.
    This article identifies a fundamental distinction in scientific practice: the mismatch between what scientists do and what they state they did when they communicate their findings in their publications. The insight that such a mismatch exists is not new. It was already implied in Hans Reichenbach's distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification, and it is taken for granted across the board in philosophy of science and science studies. But while there is general agreement that the mismatch exists, the (...)
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  • Experimenter’s regress argument, empiricism, and the calibration of the large hadron collider.Slobodan Perovic - 2017 - Synthese 194 (2):313-332.
    H. Collins has challenged the empiricist understanding of experimentation by identifying what he thinks constitutes the experimenter’s regress: an instrument is deemed good because it produces good results, and vice versa. The calibration of an instrument cannot alone validate the results: the regressive circling is broken by an agreement essentially external to experimental procedures. In response, A. Franklin has argued that calibration is a key reasonable strategy physicists use to validate production of results independently of their interpretation. The physicists’ arguments (...)
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  • The electrical universe: Grand cosmological theory versus mundane experiments.Helge Kragh - 1997 - Perspectives on Science 5 (2):199-231.
    This article examines in detail a remarkable but short-lived cosmological theory of 1959. The theory depended crucially on a hypothesis that could be, and was, tested in the laboratory. I use the case to discuss the nature of testing in cosmology and to argue against ideas about astronomy suggested by Ian Hacking. The case of the electrical universe exemplifies how disagreements can be settled by good experiments and also how experiments of wide-ranging theoretical significance need not be biased by either (...)
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  • Computer Image Processing: An Epistemological Aid in Scientific Investigation.Vincent Israel-Jost - 2016 - Perspectives on Science 24 (6):669-695.
    In many scientific fields, today’s practices of empirical enquiry rely heavily on the production of images that display the investigated phenomena. And while scientific images of phenomena have been important for a long time, what is striking now is that scientists have found ways to visualize such widely different types of phenomena. In the past twenty or thirty years, we have become accustomed to seeing images of galaxies, of cells, of the human brain but also of blood flow or of (...)
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  • Measurements of gravitational redshift between 1959 and 1971.Klaus Hentschel - 1996 - Annals of Science 53 (3):269-295.
    The paper presents and discusses measurements of gravitational redshift made between 1959 and 1971 by Pound and Rebka, Schiffer and Marshall, Brault, Blamont and Roddier, and finally by Snider. It emphasizes the importance of new measurement techniques such as wavelength modulation, electronic amplification, and scattering of atomic beams to the emergence of new tests of Einstein's GRS prediction, which were perceived by the scientific community as the first ‘clean’ verifications of GRS. In particular, the race to be the first to (...)
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  • Controversia con escépticos sobre la justificación de afirmaciones en filosofía de la ciencia con evidencia de la historia de la ciencia.Dubian Cañas - 2022 - Ideas Y Valores 71:237-262.
    Una manera de integrar historia y filosofía de la ciencia consiste en usar estudios históricos de caso como evidencia de conclusiones filosóficas sobre la ciencia. A pesar de tener ejemplos representativos en la actualidad, varios autores han puesto esta metodología en tela de juicio con un argumento escéptico de circularidad epistémica. En este artículo reivindico el estatus epistémico de esta metodología mediante una estrategia que muestra que este argumento no funciona o que el escéptico estaría finalmente en desventaja dialéctica. Sobre (...)
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