Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Introduction: science, philosophy of science, and a brief history of philosophy of science

Christian Wthrich
http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/wuthrich/ 145 Philosophy of Science

Christian Wthrich

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Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

What is philosophy of science?

Christian Wthrich

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Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

What is science and what distinguishes it from pseudoscience? What is the scientic method, if there is any, and on what basis can it claim to ensure the objectivity of scientic results? How does science explain our observations and experiences? Does scientic knowledge progressively grow in a linear fashion or is its evolution dominated by radical revolutions? Are the scientists grounds for rejecting an old idea and for replacing it with a novel theory completely rational and logically reconstructible or are they substantially inuenced by irrational factors? Do scientic theories give literally true accounts of the world as it is, or should we regard even the most elaborate and well-conrmed theory merely as a useful tool to systematize our experience?
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Philosophy of Science

Metaphysics

Epistemology

Christian Wthrich

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Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Relevance of philosophy of science

How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology?... Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as necessities of thought, a priori givens, etc. The path of scientic advance is often made impassable for a long time through such errors. For that reason, it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing the long-commonplace concepts and revealing those circumstances upon which their justication and usefulness depend, how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. By this means, their all-too-great authority will be broken. Albert Einstein, Obituary for Ernst Mach (1916).
Phys. Z. 17: 101f

Christian Wthrich

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Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Einstein to Robert A. Thornton, 7 December 1944, EA 61-574

I fully agree with you about the signicance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people todayand even professional scientistsseem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight isin my opinionthe mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

A brief (and grossly incomplete) history of philosophy of science

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Ancient Greece and Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

rst elements of inductive scientic methodology in Greek Antiquity Aristotle believed that to know a things nature is to know the reason why it is and that we possess scientic knowledge of a thing only when we know its cause idea of generalization from particular observation to universal law of nature, and back from universal law to particular prediction continuity of philosophical and scientic work

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln

the real founder of the tradition of scientic thought in medival Oxford (A C Crombie) rst to fully grasp Aristotelian methodology in West explained generalization from observation to law and back to prediction via notions of resolution and composition principles governing both paths must be veried by observation and experimentation

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1294), Doctor mirabilis

delivered philosophical justication for experimentation and observation (rather than reliance on authority) as the source of true knowledge in scientic and theological matters premises of experimental sciences require verication by sciences more perfect than themselves, i.e. by mathematics If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics. (Opus majus, I, Part IV On Mathematical Science, 1268)
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

There are two ways of acquiring knowledge, one through reason, the other by experiment. Argument reaches a conclusion and compels us to admit it, but it neither makes us certain nor so annihilates doubt that the mind rests calm in the intuition of truth, unless it nds this certitude by way of experience. Thus many have arguments toward attainable facts, but because they have not experienced them, they overlook them and neither avoid a harmful nor follow a benecial course. Even if a man that has never seen re, proves by good reasoning that re burns, and devours and destroys things, nevertheless the mind of one hearing his arguments would never be convinced, nor would he avoid re until he puts his hand or some combustible thing into it in order to prove by experiment what the argument taught. But after the fact of combustion is experienced, the mind is satised and lies calm in the certainty of truth. Hence argument is not enough, but experience is. (Opus majus, II, Part VI On Experimental Science, 1268)
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), 1st Viscount St Alban

systematic establishment and popularization of inductive methodology Novum Organum, 1620 argued that reasoning from fact to axiom to law must be inductive, rather than deductive (as was the case in the Aristotelian tradition) induction alone is insufcient, negative instances must be carefully examined (early principle of falsication) reproducibility of scientic ndings natural laws, not mysterious substances or nal causes, have explanatory power human (and therefore scientic) knowledge is cumulative; as contrasted by given a priori (in Scripture or Aristotelian texts)
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

concerned with the quantication of experimental results introduced time as a physical parameter to measure motion quantitatively insisted on the mathematical nature of laws of nature

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Philosophy is written in this grand bookI mean the universewhich stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one rst learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric gures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. (Il Saggiatore (The Assayer), 1623)

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Ren Descartes (1596-1650)

Discours de la mthode (1637): method of philosophical thinking is exhausted by four precepts (II.7-10):
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never accept anything for true which cannot be recognized clearly and distinctly so as to exclude all grounds of doubt divide each of the difculties under examination into as many parts as necessary begin with objects the easiest to know, ascend by little and little to the more complex always examine whether completeness and full generality has been achieved

Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641): systematic doubts concerning reliability of senses, certainty in cogito, ergo sum
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

issue of the proper role of hypotheses in systematic enquiries into nature (also in Descartes and Leibniz) hypotheses non ngo (I feign no hypotheses, Principia, 1687) impropriety of introduction of metaphysical hypothesis in science (against Descartes and Leibniz) but: needs hypotheses himself...

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. (Letter to Robert Hooke, 1676, and almost verbatim in Principia)

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

David Hume (1711-1776)

one of most outspoken and sublest defender of empiricism (combined with scepticism and naturalism) problem of induction: the reliability of an inductive inference from past experience to prediction concerning future must be underwritten by a principle of induction but such a principle cannot claim logical necessity; nor can it be based on the past success of induction on pain of circularity nevertheless: induction is necessary tool for empirical sciences
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Custom... is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the inuence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation. (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding V, Part I, 1748)

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

rational human agent at center of cognitive activity synthesis of rationalist and empiricist positions rational order of world cannot simply be accounted for by sense perceptions conceptual unication and integration by active mind using precepts (space, time) and following categories of understanding (cause, substance) operating on manifold of sense perceptions consequently, objective causal structure of world depend upon mind mind makes ineliminable constitutive contribution to knowledge
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. (B 1)... Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. (B 75) [Sometimes paraphrased as Concepts without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind.]... Thus all human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas. (B 730) (Critique of Pure Reason, 1781/87)

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848)

Theory of Science (1837) attempted to provide logical foundations of science, building on abstractions like part-relation, abstract objects, attributes, sentence-shapes, ideas-as-such, propositions, sums and sets, and sentence-occurrences these abstractions exist independently of our minds logical consequence is not identical with explanation

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Auguste Comte (1798-1857), positivism

Cours de philosophie positive (1830-1842) only scientic knowledge is authentic knowledge strict application of scientic method, completely barring any metaphysics (and any theology) circular dependence of theory and observation knowledge possible of facts, rather than of causes founder of sociology: applied scientic methods to social world
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

William Whewell (1794-1866)

The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History (1840/47) knowledge involves both ideal and empirical elements, fundamental ideas (space, time, cause) necessary i.e. observation is idea-laden, involves unconscious inference renovated F. Bacons notion of induction induction more than enumeration and extending to unobserved instances generalization in induction requires element of colligation, i.e. the mental act of bringing together empirical facts in way that renders them capable of being expressed by a general law (pearls and string)
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Whewell: Novum Organon Renovatum (1858)

Conrmation of hypothesis discovered via induction occurs by:

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prediction: our hypotheses ought to fortel [sic] phenomena which have not yet been observed (p. 86) consilience: explain and determine cases of a kind different from those which were contemplated in the formation of those hypotheses (p. 88) coherence: hypotheses must become more coherent over time (p. 91)

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

A System of Logic (1843) Mills notion of induction does not involve mental acts such as colligation ve principles of induction: the method of agreement, the method of difference, the joint or double method of agreement and difference, the method of residues, and the method of concomitant variations to explain a fact is to locate a law under which it can be subsumed: covering-law model of explanation

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Mill: A System of Logic (1843)

Method of difference: If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring only in the former: the circumstance in which alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or cause, or a necessary part of the cause, of the phenomenon. (A System of Logic III, Ch. viii, 2)

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Ernst Mach (1838-1916)

methodological economy of thought: scientic laws are mere summaries of experimental events, constructed for the purpose of human comprehension thus, laws are essentially mental constructions empiricism: knowledge of the natural world must be grounded in experience (directly via sense impressions or via measurement results) uncompromising reductionism discussions on the reality of scientic theories are completely superuous, only their utility counts
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Positivism according to Mach

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The source of human knowledge is the given. Only a manifold of sense impressions is given. Whatever constitutes the world over and above the contents of sense preceptions is not given. The distinction between the I and the world is untenable. There is no metaphysical knowledge about an extra-perceptual reality.

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Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Charles Peirce (1839-1914)

sign-theoretic or semiotic theory of inference examined three fundmental modes of inference: abduction, deduction and induction abduction ( inference to the best explanation), is used to generate a likely hypothesis in response to phenomenon under scrutiny pragmatic considerations, i.e. considerations on the practical consequences, signicantly enter the abductive work

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Henri Poincar (1854-1912), conventionalism

La science et lhypothse (1902), Science et mthode (1908) conventionalism: laws and theorems relevantly rest upon conventions geometry of physical space is conventional: either one stipulates properties of measuring devices and determines the geometry of space, or one stipulates a geometry of space and infers geometrical properties of physical bodies such as measuring devices but conventions are not arbitrary, they are constrained e.g. by rules which must be followed in negotiating them
Christian Wthrich Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), holism

La thorie physique son objet et sa structure (1906) we can never test an individual scientic hypothesis, but always and by necessity must test an entire theoretical group reason for this: cannot dispense with auxiliary hypothesis (concerning e.g. measuring apparatus) in deducing an observation sentence

Christian Wthrich

Topic 1

Introduction to course A brief history of philosophy of science

Ancient and Medival Scientic Revolution Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Turn of the century until the 1930s

Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961)

Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (1935) scientist are enclosed in their and their communitys preconceptions, and styles of thinking these styles have grown historically and are ineliminably social, i.e. a cultural product of a community at a certain place at a certain time development of science is not unidirectional, but its dynamics is determined by the cultural dynamics in the scientic communities progress is not cumulative truth is unattainable in scientic enquiry
Christian Wthrich Topic 1