We have previously argued that historical cases must be rendered canonical before they can plausibly serve as evidence for philosophical claims, where canonicity is established through a process of negotiation among historians and philosophers of science (Bolinska and Martin, 2020). Here, we extend this proposal by exploring how that negotiation might take place in practice. The working stock of historical examples that philosophers tend to employ has long been established informally, and, as a result, somewhat haphazardly. The composition of the (...) historical canon of philosophy of science is therefore path dependent, and cases often become stock examples for reasons tangential to their appropriateness for the purposes at hand. We show how the lack of rigor around the canonization of case studies has muddied the waters in selected philosophical debates. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for proposing ways in which they can be improved. (shrink)

The history of the diffusion and confirmation of Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements has proven to be a challenging testbed for contemporary philosophical debates on the role of predictions in science. More than ten years of fruitful literature came after Scerri and Worrall :407–452, 2001) versus Maher and Lipton ; nevertheless, such a long-lasting debate left quite a few open questions. The aim of this contribution is to go through the various cases that emerged during the debate, in an effort (...) to explain them coherently in a weak predictivist perspective. Maher’s early account—according to which the astounding success of the major predictions alone was enough to explain the confirmation of the periodic table—can now be replaced by a more balanced and thorough picture, where both predictions and accommodations do weight. (shrink)

During the last decade new developments in theoretical and speculative cosmology have reopened the old discussion of cosmology’s scientific status and the more general question of the demarcation between science and non-science. The multiverse hypothesis, in particular, is central to this discussion and controversial because it seems to disagree with methodological and epistemic standards traditionally accepted in the physical sciences. But what are these standards and how sacrosanct are they? Does anthropic multiverse cosmology rest on evaluation criteria that conflict with (...) and go beyond those ordinarily accepted, so that it constitutes an “epistemic shift” in fundamental physics? The paper offers a brief characterization of the modern multiverse and also refers to a few earlier attempts to introduce epistemic shifts in the science of the universe. It further discusses the several meanings of testability, addresses the question of falsifiability as a sine qua non for a theory being scientific, and briefly compares the situation in cosmology with the one in systematic biology. Multiverse theory is not generally falsifiable, which has led to proposals from some physicists to overrule not only Popperian standards but also other evaluation criteria of a philosophical nature. However, this is hardly possible and nor is it possible to get rid of explicit philosophical considerations in some other aspects of cosmological research, however advanced it becomes. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the discovery of the DNA structure by Francis Crick and James Watson, which has provoked a large historical literature but has yet not found entry into philosophical debates. I want to redress this imbalance. In contrast to the available historical literature, a strong emphasis will be placed upon analysing the roles played by theory, model, and evidence and the relationship between them. In particular, I am going to discuss not only Crick and Watson's well-known model (...) and Franklin's x-ray diffraction pictures (the evidence) but also the less well known theory of helical diffraction, which was absolutely crucial to Crick and Watson's discovery. The insights into this groundbreaking historical episode will have consequences for the ‘new’ received view of scientific models and their function and relationship to theory and world. The received view, dominated by works by Cartwright and Morgan and Morrison ([1999]), rather than trying to put forth a ‘theory of models’, is interested in questions to do with (i) the function of models in scientific practice and (ii) the construction of models. In regard to (i), the received view locates the model (as an idealized, simplified version of the real system under investigation) between theory and the world and sees the model as allowing the application of the former to the latter. As to (ii) Cartwright has argued for a phenomenologically driven view and Morgan and Morrison ([1999]) for the ‘autonomy’ of models in the construction process: models are determined neither by theory nor by the world. The present case study of the discovery of the DNA structure strongly challenges both (i) and (ii). In contrast to claim (i) of the received view, it was not Crick and Watson's model but rather the helical diffraction theory which served a mediating purpose between the model and the x-ray diffraction pictures. In particular, Cartwright's take on (ii) is refuted by a comparison of Franklin's bottom-up approach with Crick and Watson's top-down approach in constructing the model. The former led to difficulties, which only a strong confidence in the structure incorporated in the model could circumvent. How to Get to the Structure 1.1 X-ray diffraction and its synthesis 1.2 Model building and Pauling's panache 1.3 The structure of proteins 1.3.1 A failed inference to the best explanation 1.3.2 The misleading 5.1 Å spot in proteins and how to get rid of it 1.3.3 Derived predictions from Pauling's alpha-helix of protein molecules The CCV Theory of Helical X-Ray Diffraction 2.1 The role of the CCV theory in the discovery of the DNA structure Killing the Helix 3.1 Appreciating all evidence—in vain Conclusion Epilogue: Chargaff's Ratios CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)