Models as Mediators discusses the ways in which models function in modern science, particularly in the fields of physics and economics. Models play a variety of roles in the sciences: they are used in the development, exploration and application of theories and in measurement methods. They also provide instruments for using scientific concepts and principles to intervene in the world. The editors provide a framework which covers the construction and function of scientific models, and explore the ways in which they (...) enable us to learn about both theories and the world. The contributors to the volume offer their own individual theoretical perspectives to cover a wide range of examples of modelling, from physics, economics and chemistry. These papers provide ideal case-study material for understanding both the concepts and typical elements of modelling, using analytical approaches from the philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

This book is about the methods used for unifying different scientific theories under one all-embracing theory. The process has characterized much of the history of science and is prominent in contemporary physics; the search for a 'theory of everything' involves the same attempt at unification. Margaret Morrison argues that, contrary to popular philosophical views, unification and explanation often have little to do with each other. The mechanisms that facilitate unification are not those that enable us to explain how or why (...) phenomena behave as they do. A feature of this book is an account of many case studies of theory unification in nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics and of how evolution by natural selection and Mendelian genetics were unified into what we now term evolutionary genetics. (shrink)

This paper discusses the mistake of understanding the laws and concepts of thermodynamics too literally in the foundations of statistical mechanics. Arguing that this error is still made in subtle ways, the article explores its occurrence in three examples: the Second Law, the concept of equilibrium and the definition of phase transitions.

A different way of thinking about how the sciences are organized is suggested by the use of cross-disciplinary computational methods as the organizing unit of science, here called computational templates. The structure of computational models is articulated using the concepts of construction assumptions and correction sets. The existence of these features indicates that certain conventionalist views are incorrect, in particular it suggests that computational models come with an interpretation that cannot be removed as well as a prior justification. A form (...) of selective realism is described which denies that one can simply read the ontological commitments from the theory itself. (shrink)

Many standard philosophical accounts of scientific practice fail to distinguish between modeling and other types of theory construction. This failure is unfortunate because there are important contrasts among the goals, procedures, and representations employed by modelers and other kinds of theorists. We can see some of these differences intuitively when we reflect on the methods of theorists such as Vito Volterra and Linus Pauling on the one hand, and Charles Darwin and Dimitri Mendeleev on the other. Much of Volterra's and (...) Pauling's work involved modeling; much of Darwin's and Mendeleev's did not. In order to capture this distinction, I consider two examples of theory construction in detail: Volterra's treatment of post-WWI fishery dynamics and Mendeleev's construction of the periodic system. I argue that modeling can be distinguished from other forms of theorizing by the procedures modelers use to represent and to study real-world phenomena: indirect representation and analysis. This differentiation between modelers and non-modelers is one component of the larger project of understanding the practice of modeling, its distinctive features, and the strategies of abstraction and idealization it employs. (shrink)

Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.--Die Zeit des Weltbildes.--Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung.--Nietzsches Wort "Gott ist tot".--Wozu Dichter?--Der Spruch des Anaximander.

Understanding Scientific Reasoning, Fifth Edition, develops critical reasoning skills and guides students in the improvement of their scientific and technological literacy. The authors teach students how to understand and critically evaluate the scientific information they encounter in both textbooks and the popular media. With its focus on scientific pedagogy, Understanding Scientific Reasoning helps students learn how to examine scientific reports with a reasonable degree of sophistication. The book also explains how to reason through case studies using the same informal logic (...) skills employed by scientists and to analyse a complex series of propositions and hypotheses using sound scientific reasoning--Publisher's blurb. (shrink)

Computational methods such as computer simulations, Monte Carlo methods, and agent-based modeling have become the dominant techniques in many areas of science. Extending Ourselves contains the first systematic philosophical account of these new methods, and how they require a different approach to scientific method. Paul Humphreys draws a parallel between the ways in which such computational methods have enhanced our abilities to mathematically model the world, and the more familiar ways in which scientific instruments have expanded our access to the (...) empirical world. This expansion forms the basis for a new kind of empiricism, better suited to the needs of science than the older anthropocentric forms of empiricism. Human abilities are no longer the ultimate standard of epistemological correctness.Humphreys also includes arguments for the primacy of properties rather than objects, the need to consider technological constraints when appraising scientific methods, and a detailed account of how the path from computational template to scientific application is constructed. This last feature allows us to hold a form of selective realism in which anti-realist arguments based on formal reconstructions of theories can be avoided. One important consequence of the rise of computational methods is that the traditional organization of the sciences is being replaced by an organization founded on computational templates.Extending Ourselves will be of interest to philosophers of science, epistemologists, and to anyone interested in the role played by computers in modern science. (shrink)

David Herman; Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds by Lubomír Dolezel, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 57, Issue 3, 1 June 1999, Pages.

In this powerful work of conceptual and analytical originality, the author argues for the primacy of the material arrangements of the laboratory in the dynamics of modern molecular biology. In a post-Kuhnian move away from the hegemony of theory, he develops a new epistemology of experimentation in which research is treated as a process for producing epistemic things. A central concern of the book is the basic question of how novelty is generated in the empirical sciences. In addressing this question, (...) the author brings French poststructuralist thinking—notably Jacques Derrida’s concepts of “différance” and “historiality”—to bear on the construction of epistemic things. Historiographical perspective shifts from the actors’ minds to their objects of manipulation. These epistemological and historical issues are illuminated in a detailed case study of a particular laboratory, that of the oncologist and biochemist Paul C. Zamecnik and his colleagues, located in a specific setting—the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital of Harvard University at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston. The author traces how, between 1945 and 1965, this group developed an experimental system for synthesizing proteins in the test tube that put Zamecnik’s research team at the forefront of those who led biochemistry into the era of molecular biology. (shrink)

Science depends on judgments of the bearing of evidence on theory. Scientists must judge whether an observation or the result of an experiment supports, disconfirms, or is simply irrelevant to a given hypothesis. Similarly, scientists may judge that, given all the available evidence, a hypothesis ought to be accepted as correct or nearly so, rejected as false, or neither. Occasionally, these evidential judgments can be made on deductive grounds. If an experimental result strictly contradicts a hypothesis, then the truth of (...) the data deductively entails the falsity of the hypothesis. In the great majority of cases, however, the connection between evidence and hypothesis is non-demonstrative, or inductive. In particular, this is so whenever a general hypothesis is inferred to be correct on the basis of the available data, since the truth of the data will not deductively entail the truth of the hypothesis. It always remains possible that the hypothesis is false even though the data are correct. (shrink)

White's dense article on narrative discusses the ways that different groups of 20th century historians, particularly historical theorists (see pp.8-9), have constructed and deconstructed narrative as a means of communicating history. White himself acknowledges that narrativity challenges the scientific of history, but suggests that narrativity is not only unavoidable, but also offers a form of literary or allegorical truth.\n\nWhite first discusses the critiques of narrative as a means of communication--it focuses too heavily on political players, it is "unscientific," it is (...) inherently limited because narrative itself cannot be objective (although it's authors sometimes claim it to be).\n\nHe then moves on to discuss other, heavily theoretical, takes on why narrative is still useful as a means of historical communication: that narrative works because it performs as a trope which readers can easily recognize from myth and fiction, or, that narrative works because it allows us to transform events from the present to a synthesized past.\n\nWhite's article is difficult to read, but important background for anyone who wants to see what people have said about narrative in the past 100 years--and why it is still important. (shrink)

This book presents the concept of “complementary science” which contributes to scientific knowledge through historical and philosophical investigations. It emphasizes the fact that many simple items of knowledge that we take for granted were actually spectacular achievements obtained only after a great deal of innovative thinking, painstaking experiments, bold conjectures, and serious controversies. Each chapter in the book consists of two parts: a narrative part that states the philosophical puzzle and gives a problem-centred narrative on the historical attempts to solve (...) the puzzle; and the analysis part which provides in-depth analyses of certain scientific, historical, and philosophical aspects of the story. (shrink)

Vaihinger... shows that thought is primarily a biological function turned into a conscious art. It is an art of adjustment, whose chief instrument is the construction of fictions by which men may manage to live. Thought is to be tested not by correspondence to an objective reality (that fiction is neatly disposed of) nor by its mirroring in consciousness an objective external world. Thought is to be tested by its fruits. The constructions of thought are not copies of or transcripts (...) of reality; they are programs, guess-work plans; possible programs for operation. Their validity is to be measured not by verisimilitude but by value. The fruits of thought are not "true," but especially where they are false, it may be important to act as if they were true... Vaihinger's chief originality consists in his defining of fictions and his distinction of fictions from hypotheses on the one hand, and from dogmatisms on the other. An hypothesis is a tentative discovery about the universe; a fiction is a deliberate, often clearly false and internally contradictory invention of thought... Evolution is the hypothesis that man is descended from the lower animals. We assume that we can indirectly turn to the remote facts which would justify that hypothesis. But the concept of infinity in the calculus, the atom and the ether in physics, the economic man in Adam Smith, are deliberate self-contradictory fictions, and fictions at variance with all experience. But though they are not only imaginary, false to the reality they allegedly represent and logically incoherent, they nevertheless facilitate thought and proper action. They are vital lies, human conveniences. They are the faiths, the palpably false faiths, the clearly useful falsities by which we live... The discovery that fictions were fictions has led, in the past, says Vaihinger, to an abandonment of them, and a turning to other fictions believed to be truer. Pathetic and foolish adventure! What the race needs is more faith in its own effective imaginations. The myths that it has told itself, the world pictures that it has made, are not to be dismissed because they are found to be creations of the imagination. They tally with no world and they carry the canker of logical inconsistency within them. The important thing is their utility; their human scope and mortal relevance. If we ceased making fictions, we should cease altogether to be. Let us beware to plunge from fruitful fictions to less fruitful ones that masquerade as truths and are really dogmatisms. (Review of As If by Irwin Edman, Saturday Review of Literature, 10 January, 1925) This is a well-formatted version of C.K. Ogden's translation of Philosophie des Als Ob, originally published in 1925 by Kegan Paul. (shrink)

This essay argues that in linguistic communication, nothing corresponds to a linguistic competence as summarized by the three principles of first meaning in language: that first meaning is systematic, first meanings are shared, and first meanings are governed by learned conventions or regularities. There is no such a thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language users (...) acquire and then apply to cases, as well as the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions. (shrink)

This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.

This classic work in the philosophy of physical science is an incisive and readable account of the scientific method. Pierre Duhem was one of the great figures in French science, a devoted teacher, and a distinguished scholar of the history and philosophy of science. This book represents his most mature thought on a wide range of topics.

. . . Unlike Dewey, he has provided detailed incisive argumentation, and has shown just where the dogmas and dualisms break down." -- Richard Rorty, The Yale Review.

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust (...) argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

The sociological dimension of science is studied using the discovery of the Wasserman reaction and its accidental application as a test for syphilis as a basis, ...

Many people assume that the claims of scientists are objective truths. But historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science have long argued that scientific claims reflect the particular historical, cultural, and social context in which those claims were made. The nature of scientific knowledge is not absolute because it is influenced by the practice and perspective of human agents. Scientific Perspectivism argues that the acts of observing and theorizing are both perspectival, and this nature makes scientific knowledge contingent, as Thomas Kuhn (...) theorized forty years ago. Using the example of color vision in humans to illustrate how his theory of “perspectivism” works, Ronald N. Giere argues that colors do not actually exist in objects; rather, color is the result of an interaction between aspects of the world and the human visual system. Giere extends this argument into a general interpretation of human perception and, more controversially, to scientific observation, conjecturing that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. Furthermore, complex scientific principles—such as Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields—make no claims about the world, but models based on those principles can be used to make claims about specific aspects of the world. Offering a solution to the most contentious debate in the philosophy of science over the past thirty years, Scientific Perspectivism will be of interest to anyone involved in the study of science. (shrink)

The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record (...) of scientific inquiry, Stanford suggests, is characterized by what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives. Past scientists have routinely failed even to conceive of alternatives to their own theories and lines of theoretical investigation, alternatives that were both well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and sufficiently serious as to be ultimately accepted by later scientific communities. Stanford supports this claim with a detailed investigation of the mid-to-late 19th century theories of inheritance and generation proposed in turn by Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and August Weismann. He goes on to argue that this historical pattern strongly suggests that there are equally well-confirmed and scientifically serious alternatives to our own best theories that remain currently unconceived. Moreover, this challenge is more serious than those rooted in either the so-called pessimistic induction or the underdetermination of theories by evidence, in part because existing realist responses to these latter challenges offer no relief from the problem of unconceived alternatives itself. Stanford concludes by investigating what positive account of the spectacularly successful edifice of modern theoretical science remains open to us if we accept that our best scientific theories are powerful conceptual tools for accomplishing our practical goals, but abandon the view that the descriptions of the world around us that they offer are therefore even probably or approximately true. (shrink)

Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.

Debate over the nature of science has recently moved from the halls of academia into the public sphere, where it has taken shape as the "science wars." At issue is the question of whether scientific knowledge is objective and universal or socially mediated, whether scientific truths are independent of human values and beliefs. Ronald Giere is a philosopher of science who has been at the forefront of this debate from its inception, and Science without Laws offers a much-needed mediating perspective (...) on an increasingly volatile line of inquiry. Giere does not question the major findings of modern science: for example, that the universe is expanding or that inheritance is carried by DNA molecules with a double helical structure. But like many critics of modern science, he rejects the widespread notion of science--deriving ultimately from the Enlightenment--as a uniquely rational activity leading to the discovery of universal truths underlying all natural phenomena. In these highly readable essays, Giere argues that it is better to understand scientists as merely constructing more or less abstract models of limited aspects of the world. Such an understanding makes possible a resolution of the issues at stake in the science wars. The critics of science are seen to be correct in rejecting the Enlightenment idea of science, and its defenders are seen to be correct in insisting that science does produce genuine knowledge of the natural world. Giere is utterly persuasive in arguing that to criticize the Enlightenment ideal is not to criticize science itself, and that to defend science one need not defend the Enlightenment ideal. Science without Laws thus stakes out a middle ground in these debates by showing us how science can be better conceived in other ways. (shrink)

Especially troublesome in this dispute is the status of the natural sciences, and this is where Hacking finds some of his most telling cases, from the conflict ...

Why do speakers of all languages use different grammatical structures under different communicative circumstances to express the same idea? In this comprehensive study, Professor Lambrecht explores the relationship between the structure of sentences and the linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts in which they are used. His analysis is based on the observation that the structure of a sentence reflects a speaker's assumptions about the hearer's state of knowledge and consciousness at the time of the utterance. This relationship between speaker assumptions and (...) formal sentence structure is governed by rules and conventions of grammar, in a component called 'information structure'. Four independent but interrelated categories are analysed: presupposition and assertion, identifiability and activation, topic, and focus. (shrink)

During the last three decades, reflections on the growth of scientific knowledge have inspired historians, sociologists, and some philosophers to contend that scientific objectivity is a myth. In this book, Kitcher attempts to resurrect the notions of objectivity and progress in science by identifying both the limitations of idealized treatments of growth of knowledge and the overreactions to philosophical idealizations. Recognizing that science is done not by logically omniscient subjects working in isolation, but by people with a variety of personal (...) and social interests, who cooperate and compete with one another, he argues that, nonetheless, we may conceive the growth of science as a process in which both our vision of nature and our ways of learning more about nature improve. Offering a detailed picture of the advancement of science, he sets a new agenda for the philosophy of science and for other "science studies" disciplines. (shrink)

This innovative book focuses on the development of the gene theory as a case study in scientific creativity.

Mimesis as Make-Believe is important reading for everyone interested in the workings of representational art.

Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists, in terms of symmetry and invariance. In this book van Fraassen argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed. He analyzes and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe there are, and argues that we should disregard the idea of law as an adequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the author develops the empiricist (...) view of science as a construction of models to represent the phenomena. (shrink)

Introduction: Play, Power, and the Western Mentality Whereas play has always had an important, if sometimes unthemat- ized, role in Western literary ...

This lucidly written book examines the social and political significance of the natural sciences through a detailed and original account of science as an interpretive social practice.

Ever since David Hume, empiricists have barred powers and capacities from nature. In this book Cartwright argues that capacities are essential in our scientific world, and, contrary to empiricist orthodoxy, that they can meet sufficiently strict demands for testability. Econometrics is one discipline where probabilities are used to measure causal capacities, and the technology of modern physics provides several examples of testing capacities (such as lasers). Cartwright concludes by applying the lessons of the book about capacities and probabilities to the (...) explanation of the role of causality in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Models are of central importance in many scientific contexts. The centrality of models such as inflationary models in cosmology, general-circulation models of the global climate, the double-helix model of DNA, evolutionary models in biology, agent-based models in the social sciences, and general-equilibrium models of markets in their respective domains is a case in point (the Other Internet Resources section at the end of this entry contains links to online resources that discuss these models). Scientists spend significant amounts of time building, (...) testing, comparing, and revising models, and much journal space is dedicated to interpreting and discussing the implications of models. In short, models are one of the principal instruments of modern science. (shrink)

Representation has been one of the main themes in the recent discussion of models. Several authors have argued for a pragmatic approach to representation that takes users and their interpretations into account. It appears to me, however, that this emphasis on representation places excessive limitations on our view of models and their epistemic value. Models should rather be thought of as epistemic artifacts through which we gain knowledge in diverse ways. Approaching models this way stresses their materiality and media-specificity. Focusing (...) on models as multi-functional artifacts loosens them from any pre-established and fixed representational relationships and leads me to argue for a two-fold approach to representation. (shrink)