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This thesis develops a hermeneutic philosophy of science to provide insights into physics education. -/- Modernity cloaks the authentic character of modern physics whenever discoveries entertain us or we judge theory by its use. Those who justify physics education through an appeal to its utility, or who reject truth as an aspect of physics, relativists and constructivists, misunderstand the nature of physics. Demonstrations, not experiments, reveal the essence of physics as two characteristic engagements with truth. First, truth in its guise (...) |
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This paper utilizes Scott domains (continuous lattices) to provide a mathematical model for the use of idealized and approximately true data in the testing of scientific theories. Key episodes from the history of science can be understood in terms of this model as attempts to demonstrate that theories are monotonic, that is, yield better predictions when fed better or more realistic data. However, as we show, monotonicity and truth of theories are independent notions. A formal description is given of the (...) |
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The masses may concede that someone has talent where he has displayed a certain industry and fortune has not been unkind to him; but if he tries to enter another field and diversify his abilities, he appears to damage the claim he once had on public opinion, and therefore his efforts in a new realm are seldom accepted with favor and good will. |
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Historians have long sought putative connections between different areas of Newton’s scientific work, while recently scholars have argued that there were causal links between even more disparate fields of his intellectual activity. In this paper I take an opposite approach, and attempt to account for certain tensions in Newton’s ‘scientific’ work by examining his great sensitivity to the disciplinary divisions that both conditioned and facilitated his early investigations in science and mathematics. These momentous undertakings, exemplified by research that he wrote (...) |
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In this essay the authors explore the nature of efficient causal explanation in Newton’s "Principia and The Opticks". It is argued that: (1) In the dynamical explanations of the Principia, Newton treats the phenomena under study as cases of Hall’s second kind of atypical causation. The underlying concept of causation is therefore a purely interventionist one. (2) In the descriptions of his optical experiments, Newton treats the phenomena under study as cases of Hall’s typical causation. The underlying concept of causation (...) |
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In this historical essay an attempt is made to discuss the problem of decisive experiments both from the point of view of History of Science and of Philosophy of Science. The first part deals with Francis Bacon's idea of instantiae crucis and with the use of the term experimentum crucis mainly in optics. With respect to the experimental confirmation of Maxwell's electrodynamics the Duhem‐Quine Thesis is discussed. Duhem had argued that not a single hypothesis but only a complete theory is (...) |
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Grunbaum has argued that the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis is not ad hoc since the Kennedy-Thorndike experiment can be used to provide a test that is significantly different from that provided by the Michelson-Morley experiment. In the first part of the paper, I show that the differences claimed by Grunbaum to hold between these two experiments are not sufficient for establishing independent testability. A dilemma is developed: either the Kennedy-Thorndike experiment, because of experimental realities, cannot test the uncontracted Fresnel aether theory, (...) |
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In the seventeenth century, Newton published his famous experimentum crucis, in which he claimed that light is heterogeneous and is composed of rays with different refrangibilities. Experiments, especially the crucial experiment, were important for justifying Newton’s theory of light, and eventually his theory of color. A century later, Goethe conducted a series of experiments on the nature of color, especially in contradistinction to Newton, and he defended his research with a methodological principle formulated in “Der Versuch als Vermittler.” Goethe’s principle (...) |
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Maxwell claimed that the electrostatic inverse square law could be deduced from Cavendish's spherical condenser experiment. This is true only if the accuracy claims made by Cavendish and Maxwell are ignored, for both used the inverse square law as a premise in their analyses of experimental accuracy. By so doing, they assumed the very law the accuracy of which the Cavendish experiment was supposed to test. This paper attempts to make rational sense of this apparently circular procedure and to relate (...) |
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Newton claims to have proven the heterogeneity of light through his experimentum crucis. However, Olaf Müller has worked out in detail Goethe’s idea that one could likewise prove the heterogeneity of darkness by inverting Newton’s famous experiment. Müller concludes that this invalidates Newton’s claim of proof. Yet this conclusion only holds if the heterogeneity of light and the heterogeneity of darkness is logically incompatible. This paper shows that this is not the case. Instead, in Quine’s terms, we have two logically (...) |
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