Instrumentalism is an approach to science that treats a theory as a tool and only as a tool for computation; it dispenses with the concept of truth.Conventionalism treats a theory as true by convention if it forms a pattern of observations from which correct predictions can be made.Operationalism denies meaning to the concepts of a theory unless they can be defined operationally. It is argued in this paper that truth-value is indispensable to science, because a theory can be rejected only (...) if an empirical consequence is false and if falsity of a conclusion entails falsity of a premise. This undermines the above positions. The fourth interpretation isinduction. Induction, by contrast, uses the notion of truth-value. What is focused on here is its reliance on the ultimacy ofobservation. The present thesis is that instrumentalism, conventionalism, and induction are different attempts to handle observations. The common problem is the gap between data and theory.All these interpretations share a philosophy of observationalism. The aim of this paper is to show that the several orthodox interpretations of science all fail to solve the problem of the data-theory gap, and to show that they all presuppose a philosophy of observation. (shrink)

D. H. Sharp has recently argued that Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen failed to make good their claim that elementary quantum theory provides only an incomplete description of physical reality. Sharp expounds in detail three criticisms (a fourth is mentioned) which focus largely on formal features of the quantum theory. I argue, on grounds centered largely in our search for an adequate physical understanding of the micro domain, that each of these criticisms must be rejected. The original criticism of quantum theory (...) reemerges as a still-important baseline in our search for an adequate understanding of quantum theory. (shrink)

The problem to be discussed here concerns ontology so far as it may not be formed by scientific theory. In brief terms, the problem arises in the following way. On the one hand, the world surely consists of whatever is there, irrespective of whether human beings are around or not, and irrespective especially of whether human beings have constructed any scientific theories depicting the nature of the world; on the other hand, scientific theories are subject to the limitation that we (...) can never verify them or prove them to be true, so that the ontology prescribed by scientific theory is not firmly established but is only what is attributed to the world by a fallible scientific theory at any given time. The problem could also be put in terms of ‘conceptual networks’ or in terms of language-systems. (shrink)

In recent times it has become fashionable to emphasize the role of conceptual change in the history of science. To judge from recent writers, every significant theoretical change in science is first and foremost a revolution in scientific concepts—a conceptual revolution. According to this view, every level of experience is affected by each fundamental theoretical change: physical theory, experimental practice and even perceptual experience. The Aristotelian patrician who watched the sun sink beneath the horizon not only had different beliefs about (...) the phenomenon but actually saw something different from the Newtonian gentleman who saw the horizon rise above his eye-sun line, and the Einsteinian professional who saw the sun's varying geometrical relations to the world light-geodesics on which successive temporal stages of his eye world-line lay. Moreover, such is the completeness of the conceptual-experiential shifts undergone in a fundamental scientific change that it is impossible to meaningfully discuss the one theory within the confines of the other or, indeed, to provide any systematic, cumulative comparison of successive theories. (shrink)

The paper has two main aims. The first is to reformulate Hempel's version of the thesis of the symmetry of explanation and prediction, as regards the deductive covering-law model, so as to generalise it and make it no longer subject to some of the criticisms which have been directed at it (Section II). The second aim is to consider, with special critical reference to Hempel's recent treatment in Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York and London, 1965), some central criticisms of (...) both the constituent parts of the above symmetry thesis, viz. that adequate explanations are potentially predictive (Section III), and that adequate predictive arguments are potentially explanatory (Section IV). (shrink)