That Piagetian epistemology has the dynamics of knowledge growth as its core consideration predetermines a need to consider it as potentially applicable to teaching. This paper addresses that need by first outlining the Piagetian theory of equilibration and then applying it to the construction of methods of teaching science.

I call an experiment “crucial” when it makes possible a decisive choice between conflicting hypotheses. Joharmsen's selection for size and weight within pure lines of beans played a central role in the controversy over continuity or discontinuity in hereditary change, often known as the Biometrician-Mendelian controversy. The “crucial” effect of this experiment was not an instantaneous event, but an extended process of repeating similar experiments and discussing possible objections. It took years before Johannsen's claim about the genetic stability of pure (...) lines was accepted as conclusively demonstrated by the community of geneticists. The paper also argues that crucial experiments thus interpreted contradict certain ideas about the underdetermination of theories by facts and the theory-ladenness of facts which have been influential in recent history and sociology of science. The acceptance of stability in the pure lines did not rest on prior preference for continuity or discontinuity. And this fact permitted a final choice between the two theories. When such choice is characterized as “decisive” or “final”, this is not meant in an absolute philosophical sense. What we achive in these cases is highly reliable empirical knowledge. The philosophical possibility of drawing (almost) any conclusion in doubt should be distinguished from reasonable doubt in empirical science. (shrink)

Critics of Laudan's normative naturalism have questioned whether methodological rules can be regarded as empirical hypotheses about relations between means and ends. Drawing on Laudan's defense that rules of method are contingent on assumptions about the world, I argue that even if such rules can be shown to be analytic in principle (Kaiser 1991), in practice the warrant for such rules will be empirical. Laudan's naturalism, however, acquires normative force only by construing both methods and epistemic goals as instrumental to (...) practical concerns, and issues only in context-specific and not general methodological principles. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of science has long been a desired outcome of science education, despite ongoing disagreements about the content, structure, and focus of NOS expectations. Addressing the concern that teachers likely focus only on student learning expectations appearing in standards documents, this study examines the current state of NOS in science education standards documents from nine diverse countries to determine the overt NOS learning expectations that appeared, NOS statements provided near those learning expectations, but not identified as learning outcomes, (...) and NOS statements found in ancillary text. Findings indicate that NOS ideas rarely occur as expectations for student learning and are far more commonly found in ancillary material. Moreover, consensus was not apparent in the overt learning outcomes for students. Given the well-documented poor state of NOS instruction and the consistent lack of NOS appearing in published curriculum materials, the NOS standards appearing in nearly all documents analyzed are unlikely to provide sufficient conceptual or pedagogical support for NOS to be accurately interpreted or translated into meaningful experiences for students. (shrink)

Today, Larry Laudan is known predominantly for his work on the pessimistic metainduction and for his discussion of science and values. This essay examines a less familiar part of Laudan’s work, his typology of historical methodologies from the late 1970s. My aim is to elucidate Laudan’s typology and to examine one of the types in more depth, namely, the “pragmatic, symbiotic” model of historical methodology. Laudan expounded the model in the essays that eventually became his 1981 book Science and Hypothesis. (...) Laudan himself characterized this approach to methodology as “history of philosophy of science” and described a number of historiographical guidelines for this history. Several of Laudan’s questions about past scientific methodologies are still worth pursuing, although—and in part because—the concept of scientific methodology changed dramatically as philosophers turned to experimentation in the late twentieth century. Moreover, the study of Laudan’s work in the historical context in which it was devised can shed light on the historical turn in philosophy of science. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of a project, outlined by Laudan et al. (1986) recently in this journal, for empirically testing philosophical models of change in science by comparing them against the historical record of actual scientific practice. While the basic idea of testing such models of change in the arena of science is itself an appealing one, serious questions can be raised about the suitability of seeking confirmation or disconfirmation for large numbers of specific theses drawn from a massive (...) list of claims abstracted from the writings of a few philosophers of science. The present paper discusses what one might reasonably expect from a model of change in science and then compares some clusters of theses from Laudan et al. with developments in recent theoretical physics. The results suggest that such straightforward testing of theses may be largely inconclusive. (shrink)

A longstanding philosophical premise perceives simplicity as a desirable attribute of scientific theories. One of several raised justifications for this notion is that simple theories are more likely to indicate the true makeup of natural systems. Qualitatively parsimonious hypotheses and theories keep to a minimum the number of different postulated entities within a system. Formulation of such ontologically simple working hypotheses proved to be useful in the experimental probing of narrowly defined bio systems. It is less certain, however, whether qualitatively (...) parsimonious theories are effective indicators of the true nature of complex biological systems. This paper assesses the success of ontologically simple theories in envisaging the makeup of three complex systems in bacteriology, immunology, and molecular biology. Evidence shows that parsimonious theories completely misconstrued the actual ontologically complex constitutions of the three examined systems. Since evolution and selective pressures typically produce ontologically intricate rather than simple bio systems, qualitatively parsimonious theories are mostly inapt indicators of the true nature of complex biological systems. (shrink)

Philosophers use historical case studies to support wide-ranging claims about science. This practice is often criticized as problematic. In this paper we suggest that the function of case studies can be understood and justified by analogy to a well-established practice in biology: the investigation of model organisms. We argue that inferences based on case studies are no more problematic than inferences from model organisms to larger classes of organisms in biology. We demonstrate our view in detail by reference to a (...) case study with a long history: Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause of childbed fever. (shrink)

The usual account of Auguste Comte, thinker of the “positive” science, overshadows his attention to the “spectacle of destruction”, to which the metaphysical state of human knowledge and humanity offers the stage. I first illustrate the understanding of this Comtian metaphysical state as both a progressive and self-destructive transformation of “theology”, using an example drawn from the history of astronomy. The broader relevance of this conception is then assessed in the field of social philosophy, so that the realm of natural (...) sciences is finally re-examined with the analysis of Comte’s criticisms of the theory of chemical affinity. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Imre Lakatos’s account on the relation between the history and the philosophy of science, if properly understood and also if properly modified, can be valuable for the philosophical comprehension of the relation between the history and the philosophy of science. The paper is divided into three main parts. In the first part, I provide a charitable exegesis of the Lakatosian conception of the history of science in order to show that Lakatos’s history cannot be (...) a caricature. In the second part, I describe what I believe are the real problems of Lakatos’s account on a metaphysical and on a methodological level. In order to address these problems, I take advantage of the recent critique of the so-called “confrontation model”. Finally, in the third part, I suggest that a proper modification of Lakatos’s perspective can resolve the aforementioned problems without distorting Lakatos’s central aspiration, which is that the philosophical theories of scientific rationality can be assessed with the help of the history of science without losing their normative content. (shrink)

Critics of Laudan's normative naturalism have questioned whether methodological rules can be regarded as empirical hypotheses about relations between means and ends. Drawing on Laudan's defense that rules of method are contingent on assumptions about the world, I argue that even if such rules can be shown to be analytic in principle, in practice the warrant for such rules will be empirical. Laudan's naturalism, however, acquires normative force only by construing both methods and epistemic goals as instrumental to practical concerns, (...) and issues only in context-specific and not general methodological principles. (shrink)

Over the years, nursing research and practice have been through remarkable transformations in response to evolving and emerging healthcare systems and practices. Regarding research, nurses moved beyond merely using the quantitative methodology to combining qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. In practice, nurses have transitioned from the delivery of medical‐based care to nursing theory‐guided practice, evidence‐based practice, knowledge translation and transformative practice. Some domains of nursing research and practice became progressive, while others degenerated. This paper aims to examine how different domains (...) of nursing research and practice progress and degenerate using Imre Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs. Lakatos differentiated scientific and pseudoscientific knowledge and coined the idea of scientific research programs. He believed that science in any discipline develops so that some programs are more progressive and others’ degenerative. The degeneration and progression of programs occur steadily and rationally and are determined based on the extent of development and programs’ potential to predict new solutions to old problems. Adopting this idea could enable nurses to critically analyse research programs in everyday knowledge development to use valid and legitimate programs for informing nursing practice. (shrink)

For a number of years now, we, as philosophers of science, have been enjoined by more and more of our colleagues to understand the task of developing a philosophy of science to be itself a scientific task. We are told that if we want to understand science we have no better (and perhaps indeed no other) path to such an understanding than the path of science itself. We should view ourselves as ultimately attempting to arrive at a relatively complete theoretical (...) understanding of how science proceeds. This is a call tonaturalizephilosophy of science.Somewhat more recently some philosophers of science have become impatient even with those who have taken up the naturalist banner. It isn’t enough, they tell us, to arrive at an understanding of the nature of philosophy of science that proclaims it to be one science among many. (shrink)

This paper is a detailed critical study of Adolf Grünbaum's work on the Duhemian thesis. I show that (a) Grünbaum's geometrical counterexample to the (D1) subthesis is unsuccessful, even with minimal claims made for what the counterexample is supposed to show, and (b) the (D2) subthesis is not a reasonable one (and cannot correctly be attributed to Duhem). The paper concludes with an argument about the relation between the Duhemian thesis, concerning component hypotheses of a scientific theory, and the view (...) that it is impossible to falsify entire theories conclusively. (shrink)

The usual account of Auguste Comte, thinker of the “positive” science, overshadows his attention to the “spectacle of destruction” (and of obsolescence), to which the metaphysical state of human knowledge and humanity offers the stage. I first illustrate the understanding of this Comtian metaphysical state as both a progressive and self-destructive transformation of “theology”, using an example drawn from the history of astronomy (Longomontanus). The broader relevance of this conception is then assessed in the field of social philosophy, so that (...) the realm of natural sciences is finally re-examined with the analysis of Comte’s criticisms of the theory of chemical affinity (Berthollet). (shrink)

In this essay I will discuss and appraise two conflicting answers to the question of whether there was a crisis in Ptolemaic astronomy prior to the Copernican revolution. I will begin by giving a brief account of why anybody should be interested in this question. I will discuss the two conflicting answers of Kuhn (1962, 1970), who claims to present evidence which shows that Ptolemaic astronomy was anomaly-ridden at the time of Copernicus, and of Gingerich (1975), who claims that the (...) supposed anomalies, which have been passed down in the historical literature due to poor scholarship, are fictitious. Finally I will appraise Gingerich’s criticism of Kuhn, giving my own evaluation of Gingerich’s arguments. I conclude that Gingerich’s arguments against the existence of a technical crisis in Ptolemaic astronomy prior to Copernicus appear to be, either arguments against the efficacy of the Copernican system, or arguments based on definitions of complexity which are not directly attributable to Kuhn. (shrink)

The paper presents an example of unified theory bearing interest from both a historical and systematic point of view. The example is chosen from evolutionary population genetics (neo-Darwinian synthetic theory). It exhibits various aspects of theoretical change in science that have been shown in Part I (Geiger, 1988) to be characteristic of syntheses of theories.

Nearly thirty years after the first stirrings of the Kuhnian revolution, history and philosophy of science continues to galvanize methodological discussions in all corners of the academy except its own. Evidence for this domestic stagnation appears in Warren Schmaus's thoughtful review of Social Epistemology in which Schmaus takes for granted that history of science is the ultimate court of appeal for disputes between philosophers and sociologists. As against this, this essay argues that such disputes may be better treated by experimental (...) psychology. Humanistic methods typically (though not always) blind the historian to cognitive biases and limitations that make it difficult for philosophers and sociologists to mobilize historical research for settling their differences. It is also observed that the failure of philosophers to incorporate the methods and findings of experiemental psychology is symptomatic of an artificially restrictive understanding of the normative dimension of their enterprise. (shrink)

Since the publication of Science and Values in which Laudan unveiled his “reticulated model of scientific change” (Laudan (1984)), he has published a series of articles emphasizing the naturalistic axiology inherent in this model. (Laudan (1986), (1987a), (1987b), (1989), and (forthcoming)). His epistemic naturalism makes the business of fixing rational beliefs about facts, theories, methodologies, and aims all together “cut from the same piece of empirical cloth.” Laudan’s position has numerous attractive qualities: It allows one to accept a great deal (...) of the wisdom in historicism without caving in to relativism. It allows one to accept the seemingly inevitable annexation of the theory of knowledge by the sciences and yet still maintain a normative epistemology. Finally, it awakens philosophers of science’s dogmatic slumbers regarding the axiology of scientific inquiry, and stimulates historical research into the relation between practiced means and professed ends in the sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the problem of scientific change as an explanatory problem, that is, as a philosophical problem concerning what logical forms of explanation we should employ in order to un...

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 (...) esta base, señalo cómo esta controvers. (shrink)