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The Comprehensibility of the Universe: A New Conception of Science

Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK (1998)

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  1. Does the Scientific Community Misconstrue the Nature of Science?Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - Global Journal of Research and Review 8 (5):83.
    The scientific community takes for granted a view of science that may be called standard empiricism. This holds that the basic intellectual aim of science is truth, nothing being presupposed about the truth, the basic method being to assess theories with respect to evidence. A basic tenet of the view is that science must not accept any thesis about the world as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence, let alone in violation of evidence. But physics only accepts unified (...)
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  • How Universities have Betrayed Reason and Humanity – And What’s to be Done About It.Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - Frontiers 631.
    In 1984 the author published From Knowledge to Wisdom, a book that argued that a revolution in academia is urgently needed, so that problems of living, including global problems, are put at the heart of the enterprise, and the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, and not just acquire knowledge. Every discipline and aspect of academia needs to change, and the whole way in which academia is related to the rest of the social world. Universities devoted to the (...)
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  • The key to the solution of the world crisis we face.Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - Human Affairs 31 (1):21-39.
    Humanity faces two fundamental problems of learning: learning about the universe, and learning to become civilized. We have solved the first problem, but not the second one, and that puts us in a situation of great danger. Almost all of our global problems have arisen as a result. It has become a matter of extreme urgency to solve the second problem. The key to this is to learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. (...)
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  • The Need for a Revolution in the Philosophy of Science.Nicholas Maxwell - 2002 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 33 (2):381-408.
    There is a need to bring about a revolution in the philosophy of science, interpreted to be both the academic discipline, and the official view of the aims and methods of science upheld by the scientific community. At present both are dominated by the view that in science theories are chosen on the basis of empirical considerations alone, nothing being permanently accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. Biasing choice of theory in the direction of simplicity, unity (...)
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  • We Need to Recreate Natural Philosophy.Nicholas Maxwell - 2018 - Philosophies 3 (4):28.
    Modern science began as natural philosophy, an admixture of philosophy and science. It was then killed off by Newton, as a result of his claim to have derived his law of gravitation from the phenomena by induction. But this post-Newtonian conception of science, which holds that theories are accepted on the basis of evidence, is untenable, as the long-standing insolubility of the problem of induction indicates. Persistent acceptance of unified theories only in physics, when endless equally empirically successful disunified rivals (...)
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  • Toward a Purely Axiological Scientific Realism.Timothy D. Lyons - 2005 - Erkenntnis 63 (2):167-204.
    The axiological tenet of scientific realism, “science seeks true theories,” is generally taken to rest on a corollary epistemological tenet, “we can justifiably believe that our successful theories achieve (or approximate) that aim.” While important debates have centered on, and have led to the refinement of, the epistemological tenet, the axiological tenet has suffered from neglect. I offer what I consider to be needed refinements to the axiological postulate. After showing an intimate relation between the refined postulate and ten theoretical (...)
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  • Can Scientific Method Help Us Create a Wiser World?Nicholas Maxwell - 2016 - In Nikunj Dalal, Ali Intezari & Marty Heitz (eds.), Practical wisdom in the age of technology: insights, issues, and questions for a new millennium. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 147-161.
    Two great problems of learning confront humanity: (1) learning about the universe, and about ourselves as a part of the universe, and (2) learning how to make progress towards as good a world as possible. We solved the first problem when we created modern science in the 17th century, but we have not yet solved the second problem. This puts us in a situation of unprecedented danger. Modern science and technology enormously increase our power to act, but not our power (...)
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  • Three Criticisms of Newton’s Inductive Argument in the Principia.Nicholas Maxwell - 2013 - Advances in Historical Studies 3 (1):2-11.
    In this paper, I discuss how Newton’s inductive argument of the Principia can be defended against criticisms levelled against it by Duhem, Popper and myself. I argue that Duhem’s and Popper’s criticisms can be countered, but mine cannot. It requires that we reconsider, not just Newton’s inductive argument in the Principia, but also the nature of science more generally. The methods of science, whether conceived along inductivist or hypothetico-deductivist lines, make implicit metaphysical presuppositions which rigour requires we make explicit within (...)
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  • Three philosophical problems about consciousness and their possible resolution.Nicholas Maxwell - 2011 - Open Journal of Philosophy 1 (1):1.
    Three big philosophical problems about consciousness are: Why does it exist? How do we explain and understand it? How can we explain brain-consciousness correlations? If functionalism were true, all three problems would be solved. But it is false, and that means all three problems remain unsolved (in that there is no other obvious candidate for a solution). Here, it is argued that the first problem cannot have a solution; this is inherent in the nature of explanation. The second problem is (...)
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  • Unification and Revolution: A Paradigm for Paradigms.Nicholas Maxwell - 2014 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 45 (1):133-149.
    Incommensurability was Kuhn’s worst mistake. If it is to be found anywhere in science, it would be in physics. But revolutions in theoretical physics all embody theoretical unification. Far from obliterating the idea that there is a persisting theoretical idea in physics, revolutions do just the opposite: they all actually exemplify the persisting idea of underlying unity. Furthermore, persistent acceptance of unifying theories in physics when empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted means that physics makes a persistent (...)
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  • Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Aim-Oriented Empiricism.Nicholas Maxwell - 2005 - Philosophia 32 (1-4):181-239.
    In this paper I argue that aim-oriented empiricism (AOE), a conception of natural science that I have defended at some length elsewhere[1], is a kind of synthesis of the views of Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos, but is also an improvement over the views of all three. Whereas Popper's falsificationism protects metaphysical assumptions implicitly made by science from criticism, AOE exposes all such assumptions to sustained criticism, and furthermore focuses criticism on those assumptions most likely to need revision if science is (...)
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  • Karl Popper, Science and Enlightenment.Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - London: UCL Press.
    Karl Popper is famous for having proposed that science advances by a process of conjecture and refutation. He is also famous for defending the open society against what he saw as its arch enemies – Plato and Marx. Popper’s contributions to thought are of profound importance, but they are not the last word on the subject. They need to be improved. My concern in this book is to spell out what is of greatest importance in Popper’s work, what its failings (...)
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  • Philosophical responses to underdetermination in science.Seungbae Park - 2009 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 40 (1):115–124.
    What attitude should we take toward a scientific theory when it competes with other scientific theories? This question elicited different answers from instrumentalists, logical positivists, constructive empiricists, scientific realists, holists, theory-ladenists, antidivisionists, falsificationists, and anarchists in the philosophy of science literature. I will summarize the diverse philosophical responses to the problem of underdetermination, and argue that there are different kinds of underdetermination, and that they should be kept apart from each other because they call for different responses.
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  • “Do We Need a Scientific Revolution.Nicholas Maxwell - 2008 - Journal for Biological Physics and Chemistry 8 (3):95-105.
    Many see modern science as having serious defects, intellectual, social, moral. Few see this as having anything to do with the philosophy of science. I argue that many diverse ills of modern science are a consequence of the fact that the scientific community has long accepted, and sought to implement, a bad philosophy of science, which I call standard empiricism. This holds that the basic intellectual aim is truth, the basic method being impartial assessment of claims to knowledge with respect (...)
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  • Non-empirical requirements scientific theories must satisfy: Simplicity, unification, explanation, beauty.Nicholas Maxwell - 2004 - Philsci Archive.
    A scientific theory, in order to be accepted as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, must satisfy both empirical and non-empirical requirements, the latter having to do with simplicity, unity, explanatory character, symmetry, beauty. No satisfactory, generally accepted account of such non-empirical requirements has so far been given. Here, a proposal is put forward which, it is claimed, makes a contribution towards solving the problem. This proposal concerns unity of physical theory. In order to satisfy the non-empirical requirement of unity, (...)
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  • Popper's paradoxical pursuit of natural philosophy.Nicholas Maxwell - 2016 - In Jeremy Shearmur & Geoffrey Stokes (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Popper. Cambridge University Press. pp. 170-207.
    Philosophy of science is seen by most as a meta-discipline – one that takes science as its subject matter, and seeks to acquire knowledge and understanding about science without in any way affecting, or contributing to, science itself. Karl Popper’s approach is very different. His first love is natural philosophy or, as he would put it, cosmology. This intermingles cosmology and the rest of natural science with epistemology, methodology and metaphysics. Paradoxically, however, one of his best known contributions, his proposed (...)
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  • Scientific metaphysics.Nicholas Maxwell - 2004 - Philsci Archive.
    In this paper I argue that physics makes metaphysical presuppositions concerning the physical comprehensibility, the dynamic unity, of the universe. I argue that rigour requires that these metaphysical presuppositions be made explicit as an integral part of theoretical knowledge in physics. An account of what it means to assert of a theory that it is unified is developed, which provides the means for partially ordering dynamical physical theories with respect to their degrees of unity. This in turn makes it possible (...)
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  • Reviewing Reduction in a Preferential Model‐Theoretic Context.Emma Ruttkamp & Johannes Heidema - 2005 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 19 (2):123 – 146.
    In this article, we redefine classical notions of theory reduction in such a way that model-theoretic preferential semantics becomes part of a realist depiction of this aspect of science. We offer a model-theoretic reconstruction of science in which theory succession or reduction is often better - or at a finer level of analysis - interpreted as the result of model succession or reduction. This analysis leads to 'defeasible reduction', defined as follows: The conjunction of the assumptions of a reducing theory (...)
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  • The Aim of Science- Knowledge or Wisdom.Peeter Müürsepp - 2013 - Problemos 84:72-83.
    The typical way to express the aim of science is to connect it with knowledge pursuit. This aim has been so strongly felt that sometimes typical scientific research has been called knowledge-inquiry. There is nothing wrong with knowledge as such. Especially when we have the knowledge of the highest quality, the scientific one, in mind. Still, science today should aim higher, surpass knowledge as its final goal and reach for wisdom. This brings about the need to implement wisdom-inquiry instead of (...)
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  • Reply to comments on science and the pursuit of wisdom.Nicholas Maxwell - 2010 - Philosophia 38 (4):667-690.
    In this article I reply to comments made by Agustin Vicente and Giridhari Lal Pandit on Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom (McHenry 2009 ). I criticize analytic philosophy, go on to expound the argument for the need for a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic aim becomes wisdom and not just knowledge, defend aim-oriented empiricism, outline my solution to the human world/physical universe problem, and defend the thesis that free will is compatible with physicalism.
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  • Muller’s Critique of the Argument for Aim-Oriented Empiricism.Nicholas Maxwell - 2009 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 40 (1):103-114.
    For over 30 years I have argued that we need to construe science as accepting a metaphysical proposition concerning the comprehensibility of the universe. In a recent paper, Fred Muller criticizes this argument, and its implication that Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism is untenable. In the present paper I argue that Muller’s criticisms are not valid. The issue is of some importance, for my argument that science accepts a metaphysical proposition is the first step in a broader argument intended to (...)
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  • Books Received. [REVIEW][author unknown] - 1999 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (3):431-436.
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  • How a Modest Fideism may Constrain Theistic Commitments: Exploring an Alternative to Classical Theism.John Bishop - 2007 - Philosophia 35 (3-4):387-402.
    On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...)
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  • (1 other version)Nicholas Maxwell: In Praise of Natural Philosophy: A Revolution for Thought and Life: McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal 2017, 342 pp, 88,56 € (hardcover), 27,50 € (paperback), ISBN: 9780773549036. [REVIEW]Harald Walach - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4):603-609.
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  • In Defense of Seeking Wisdom.Nicholas Maxwell - 2004 - Metaphilosophy 35 (5):733-743.
    Steven Yates has criticized my claim that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry, so that the aim becomes to promote wisdom rather than just acquire knowledge. Yates's main criticism is that the proposed revolution does not have a clear strategy for its implementation, and is, in any case, Utopian, unrealizable and undesirable. It is argued, here, that Yates has misconstrued what the proposed revolution amounts to; in fact it is realizable, urgently (...)
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  • How Simple is it for Science to Acquire Wisdom According to its Choicest Aims?Giridhari Lal Pandit - 2010 - Philosophia 38 (4):649-666.
    Focusing on Nicholas Maxwell’s thesis that “science, properly understood, provides us the methodological key to the salvation of humanity”, the article discusses Maxwell’s aim oriented empiricism and his conception of Wisdom Inquiry as advocated in Maxwell’s (2009b, pp.1–56) essay entitled “How Can Life of Value Best Flourish in the Real World?” (in Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell 2009, edited by Leemon McHenry) and in Maxwell (2004 & 2009a).
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  • Karl Popper and the 'the problem of induction': A fresh look at the logic of testing scientific theories. [REVIEW]I. Grattan-Guinness - 2004 - Erkenntnis 60 (1):107-120.
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  • Critical Contextual Empiricism as a Version of Pluralist Realism.Peeter Müürsepp, Gulzhikhan Nurysheva, Akmaral Syrgakbayeva & Raushan Sartayeva - 2019 - Acta Baltica Historiae Et Philosophiae Scientiarum 7 (3):5-22.
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  • (1 other version)Nicholas Maxwell: In Praise of Natural Philosophy: A Revolution for Thought and Life.Harald Walach - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4):603-609.
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  • In Defence of Constructive Empiricism: Maxwell’s Master Argument and Aberrant Theories.F. A. Muller - 2008 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 39 (1):131-156.
    Over the past years, in books and journals (this journal included), N. Maxwell launched a ferocious attack on B. C. van Fraassen’s view of science called Constructive Empiricism (CE). This attack has been totally ignored. Must we conclude from this silence that no defence is possible and that a fortiori Maxwell has buried CE once and for all? Or is the attack too obviously flawed as not to merit exposure? A careful dissection of Maxwell’s reasoning will make it clear that (...)
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  • Beyond the Hoax : A Response to Emily A. Schultz.Alan Sokal - unknown
    For the complex or boundary objects in which I am interested . . . dimensions implode . . . they collapse into each other . . . story telling . . . is a fraught practice . . . In no way is story telling opposed to materiality, [sic] But materiality itself is tropic; it makes us swerve, it trips us; it is a knot of the textual, technical, mythic/oneric [sic], organic, political and economic.
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