The purpose of this article is to respond to Thomas Uebel´s criticisms of my comments regarding the current revisionism of Carnap´s work and its relations to Kuhn. I begin by pointing out some misunderstandings in the interpretation of my article. I then discuss some aspects related to Carnap´s view of the history of science. First, I emphasize that it was not due to a supposed affinity between Kuhn´s conceptions and those of logical positivism that Kuhn was invited to write the (...) monograph on the history of science for the Encyclopedia. Three other authors had been invited first, including George Sarton whose conception was entirely different from Kuhn´s. In addition, I try to show that Carnap attributes little importance to history of science. He seldom refers to it and, when he does, he clearly defends a Whig or an “old” historiography of science, to which Kuhn opposes his “new historiography of science”. It is argued that this raises serious difficulties for those, like Uebel, who hold the view that Carnap includes the historical or the social within the rational. (shrink)

Scientific progress is a hot topic in the philosophy of science. However, as yet we lack a comprehensive philosophical examination of scientific progress. First, the recent debate pays too much attention to the epistemic approach and the semantic approach. Shan’s new functional approach and Dellsén’s noetic approach are still insufficiently assessed. Second, there is little in-depth analysis of the progress in the history of the sciences. Third, many related philosophical issues are still to be explored. For example, what are the (...) implications of scientific progress for the scientific realism/antirealism debate? Is the incommensurability thesis a challenge to scientific progress? What role does aesthetic values play in scientific progress? Does idealisation impede scientific progress? This book fills this gap. It offers a new assessment of the four main approaches to scientific progress (Part I). It also features eight historical case studies to investigate the notion of progress in different disciplines: physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, seismology, psychology, sociology, economics, and medicine respectively (Part II). It discusses some issues related to scientific progress: scientific realism, incommensurability, values in science, idealisation, scientific speculation, interdisciplinarity, and scientific perspectivalism (Part III). (shrink)

Dieser Bericht enthält zunächst eine Skizze der Entwicklung der Wissenschaftsgeschichtsschreibung in den USA und Canada. Sodann werden die Aktivitäten der History of Science Society of North America besonders vorgestellt. Schließlich betrachtet der Bericht besonders wichtige Publikationen im einzelnen. Im Anhang finden sich Übersichten über die jährlichen Versammlungen, eine vergleichende Statistik der Forschungsschwerpunkte der amerikanischen und internationalen Tätigkeit auf den einzelnen Gebieten sowie eine Liste der Forschungsstätten und der "Grading Programs".

Alexander Bird and Darrell Rowbottom have argued for two competing accounts of the concept of scientific progress. For Bird, progress consists in the accumulation of scientific knowledge. For Rowbottom, progress consists in the accumulation of true scientific beliefs. Both appeal to intuitions elicited by thought experiments in support of their views, and it seems fair to say that the debate has reached an impasse. In an attempt to avoid this stalemate, we conduct a systematic study of the factors that underlie (...) judgments about scientific progress. Our results suggest that (internal) justification plays an important role in intuitive judgments about progress, questioning the intuitive support for the claim that the concept of scientific progress is best explained in terms of the accumulation of only true scientific belief. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 256-259, March 2021.

ABSTRACT The view that science is typically a cumulative, progressive process, as suggested by some historians of science and some scientific realists, is undermined both by history and by evolutionary considerations about the nature of science. The attempts to use evolutionary biology to portray scientific development as continuous are based on unfortunate analogies to the evolu tion of life. A proper application of evolutionary biology, in combination with neuroscience, defeats the case for the realism in question and leads to the (...) realization that science is not only open to radical transformation, as history indicates, but that it should be so. Non-evolutionary approaches for the historical continuity of science, such as Lakatos', do not fare much better. As I will argue, science is a radical form of knowledge. (shrink)

The scientific work of Leonardo da Vinci may have served as the main inspiration for the historical research of George Sarton. Although he never produced a work he felt was worthy of its subject, the little that he did write about Leonardo reveals the importance he attributed to him in the history of science. This is especially clear in Sarton´s treatment of Leonardo and a discovery he did not make: William Harvey´s discovery of blood circulation in the 17th Century. In (...) this article, we refer to this particular episode to trace Sarton´s conception of the development of science. It is a conception that illustrates well the traditional historiographic perspective that is the target of Thomas Kuhn´s criticisms. Although Kuhn never wrote about Leonardo or Harvey, we aim to show that he clearly positioned himself contrary to Sarton, albeit indirectly, with respect to this particular historical episode, as well. (shrink)