What is science? part 1

Tripartite philosophy of science. An attempt to demarcate science from pseudoscience/metaphysics. Offers a proposal of how to characterise philosophy. He rejects induction and inductive reasoning as irrational. He also rejects foundationalism. He suggests instead, science should not be a process of confirmation but of falsification. Falsification allows science to be rational and induction free. This is a descriptive and normative claim. Scientific theories make predictions, the failure of which would falsify the theory. His views are in part a reaction against logical empiricism/logical positivism/verificationism of the Vienna circle. Unfalsifiable theories are not meaningless. He says observations are theory laden so there is nothing absolute about the empirical basis of objective science. He thinks putting trust in highly corroborated theories is rational.

First suggested the problem of induction. We can’t make inductive inference deductively valid. We have no reason or evidence at all to believe that what has happened in the past will happen in the future.

A group of Philosophers centred in Vienna e.g.: - Schlick - Neurath - Carnap Their basic idea is the meaning of a statement is associated with its method of confirmation, the meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification. A statement for which there is no method of verification is meaningless. Logical empiricism, logical positivism and verificationism.

Scientific hypothesis rarely yield observation statements alone. We must add auxiliary hypothesis to generate observable and measurable claims. When our observations don’t align with our assumption, it does not show whether the problem lies with the original theory or with our measurement assumptions.

The structure of scientific revolutions. He denies science is progressive in the sense that it articulates increasingly accurate representations of a world independent of the mind. He asserts that scientific change has characteristic stages: - Pre-paradigm science - Normal science - Crisis - Revolution A metaphor for normal science is puzzle solving. He asserts that pre and post revolutionary science are incommensurable so they have no common measure, no independent, neutral way of comparing one research tradition with another: - Different standards of comparison - Different data - Different worlds - Different meanings He also says paradigms are: The disciplinary matrix - a collection of shared hypothesis, shared definitions of terms, shared values. The exemplar - a concrete achievement then used as a model. He does not deny the notion of progress but believe we should replace it as progress toward the truth with an evolutionary metaphor.

Threefold case against the idea of scientific method: - There is no notion of scientific method that is rich enough to guide action. - The term scientific method is dangerous as what we establish as methods may not be the best method for specific questions. - The products of science are not restricted to knowledge but a focus on the scientific method obscures this.

His initial stance was in strong support of Popper’s broad project of ‘critical rationalism’ but he criticised Popper’s scientific approach to falsificationism. He came to support Kuhn and defend a strong version of incommensurability. In 1967 he abandoned the Popper school when he published ‘Against Method: Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge’. There are circumstances when it is advisable to introduce, elaborate and defend ad hoc hypotheses or hypotheses which contradict well established and generally accepted experimental results or hypotheses whose content is smaller than the content of existing and empirically adequate alternatives or self inconsistent hypotheses and so on. He accused Galileo of using propaganda and psychological trick as well as intellectual reason to convince people of his theories on how the earth moves. He claims a pluralistic methodology is necessary both for advancement of knowledge and for the development of individuality.

Attempted a more sophisticated account of method that retains the broad spirit of Popper whilst accommodating the apparently contrasting views of Kuhn. He has a stress on theories competing against each other rather than theories competing against the world. A more sophisticated effort to acknowledge the productive modification of theories via a shift of evaluation from single theories to scientific research programmes: - The hard core - The negative heuristic (when you get a problematic inference, we know something has gone wrong so we need to change something but preserve the hard core) - The positive heuristic A research programme is progressing if its theoretical growth anticipates its empirical growth, that is, as long as it keeps predicting novel facts with some success. It is stagnating when it gives only post hoc explanations either of chance discoveries or of facts anticipated by and discovered in a rival programme. Degenerating problem shift occurs when one programme is stagnating and is eliminated in favour of a rival.