Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences: The Critical Background to Modern Science, 1800–1905

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511760013

First published in 1976, this is a volume of studies on the problems of theory-appraisal in the physical sciences - how and why important theories are developed, changed and are replaced, and by what criteria we judge one theory an advance on another. The volume is introduced by a classic paper of Imre Lakatos's, which sets out a theory for tackling these problems - the methodology of scientific research programmes. Five contributors then test this theory against particular and celebrated case-studies in the history of the physical sciences (particularly in the nineteenth century). The volume ends with a characteristically forceful and original critique of the whole enterprise by Paul Feyerabend. the book is a companion volume to Method and Appraisal in Economics. Both are natural sequels to Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge and attempt to work out in particular cases the implications of some of the theories presented in that book.

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Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences

The Critical Background to Modern Science, 1800–1905

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

Editorial preface
pp vii-viii

History of science and its rational reconstructions
pp 1-40

Atomism versus thermodynamics
pp 41-106

Thomas Young and the ‘refutation’ of Newtonian optics: a case-study in the interaction of philosophy of science and history of science
pp 107-180

Why did oxygen supplant phlogiston? Research programmes in the Chemical Revolution
pp 181-210

Why did Einstein's Programme supersede Lorentz's?
pp 211-276

The rejection of Avogadro's hypotheses
pp 277-308

On the critique of scientific reason
pp 309-339

Index of Names
pp 340-344

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Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences

The Critical Background to Modern Science, 1800–1905

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