Hostname: page-component-76c49bb84f-65mhm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-07T12:52:03.316Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A New Functional Approach to Scientific Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Yafeng Shan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article develops and defends a new functional approach to scientific progress. I begin with a review of the problems of the traditional functional approach. Then I propose a new functional account of scientific progress, in which scientific progress is defined in terms of usefulness of problem defining and problem solving. I illustrate and defend my account by applying it to the history of genetics. Finally, I highlight the advantages of my new functional approach over the epistemic and semantic approaches and dismiss some potential objections to my approach.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 739 - 758
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Jonathon Hricko and two anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments.

References

Bateson, William. 1902. Mendel’s Principles of Heredity: A Defence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bird, Alexander. 2007. “What Is Scientific Progress?” Noûs 41 (1): 64–89..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cevolani, Gustavo, and Tambolo, Luca. 2013. “Progress as Approximation to the Truth: A Defence of the Verisimilitudinarian Approach.” Erkenntnis 78 (4): 921–35..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Hasok. 2012. Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collingwood, Robin George. 1965. The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Correns, Carl. 1900. “G. Mendels Regel über das Verhalten der Nachkommenschaft der Rassenbastarde.” Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 18 (4): 158–68..Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species. London: Murray.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1868. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. London: Murray.Google Scholar
de Vries, Hugo. 1889. Intracellulare Pangenesis. Jean: Fischer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Vries, Hugo. 1900a. “Das Spaltungsgesetz der Bastarde (Vorlaufige Mittheilung).” Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 18 (3): 83–90..Google Scholar
de Vries, Hugo. 1900b. “Sur La Loi de Disjonction Des Hybrides.” Comptes Rendus de I’Academie Des Sciences (Paris) 130:845–47.Google Scholar
de Vries, Hugo. 1903. Die Mutationstheorie (II). Lepzig: von Veit.Google Scholar
Douglas, Heather. 2014. “Pure Science and the Problem of Progress.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 46:55–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gossage, A. M. 1908. “The Inheritance of Certain Human Abnormalities.” Quarterly Journal of Medicine 3 (1): 331–47..Google Scholar
Hart, D. Berry. 1909. “Mendelian Action on Differentiated Sex.” Transactions of the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society 34:303–57.Google ScholarPubMed
Holmes, S. J., and Loomis, H. M.. 1909. “The Heredity of Eye Color and Hair Color in Man.” Biological Bulletin 18:50–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleiner, Scott A. 1993. The Logic of Discovery: A Theory of the Rationality of Scientific Research. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas Samuel. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas Samuel. 1970a. “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?” In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas Samuel. 1970b. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lakatos, Imre. 1978. “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.” In The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, edited by John Worrall and Gregory Currie, 8–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, Larry. 1977. Progress and Its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Laudan, Larry. 1981. “A Problem-Solving Approach to Scientific Progress.” In Scientific Revolutions, ed. Hacking, Ian, 144–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lundorg, Herman Bernhard. 1912. “Ueber die Erblichkeitsverhältnisse der Konstitutionellen (Hereditären) Taubstummheit und Einige Worte über die Bedeutung der Erhlichkeitsforschung für die Krankheitslehre.” Archiv fuür Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie 9.Google Scholar
Lundorg, Herman Bernhard. 1920. “Hereditary Transmission of Genotypical Deaf-Mutism.” Hereditas 1 (1): 35–40..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massimi, Michela. 2018. “Four Kinds of Perspectival Truth.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (2): 342–59..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCracken, Isabel. 1905. “A Study of the Inheritance of Dichromatism in Lina Lapponica.” Journal of Experimental Zoology 2:117–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCracken, Isabel. 1906. “Inheritance of Dichromatism in Lina and Gastroidea.” Journal of Experimental Zoology 3:321–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCracken, Isabel. 1907. “Occurrence of a Sport in Melasoma (Lina) Scripta and Its Behavior in Heredity.” Journal of Experimental Zoology 4:221–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendel, Gregor. 1865. “Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden.” Verhandlungen des Naturforschenden Vereins Brünn 4:3–47.Google Scholar
Nettleship, Edward. 1909. The Bowman Lecture on Some Hereditary Diseases of the Eye. London: Adlard.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niiniluoto, Ilkka. 2014. “Scientific Progress as Increasing Verisimilitude.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 46:73–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prout, Louis B. 1907. “Xanthorhoe Ferrugata (Clark) and the Mendelian Hypothesis.” In Transactions of the Entomological Society of London for the Year 1906, 525–31.Google Scholar
Reid, George Archdall. 1905. The Principles of Heredity with Some Applications. New York: Dutton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rescher, Nicholas. 1984. The Limit of Science. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rowbottom, Darrell P. 2008. “N-Rays and the Semantic View of Scientific Progress.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 39 (2): 277–78..Google Scholar
Rowbottom, Darrell P.. 2010. “What Scientific Progress Is Not: Against Bird’s Epistemic View.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 24 (3): 241–55..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowbottom, Darrell P.. 2015. “Scientific Progress without Increasing Verisimilitude: In Response to Niiniluoto.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 51:100–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saunders, Charles E. 1907. “The Inheritance of Awns in Wheat.” In Report of the Third International Congress on Genetics, 1906, 370–72. London: Royal Horticultural Society.Google Scholar
Stanley, Jason, and Williamson, Timothy. 2001. “Knowing How.” Journal of Philosophy 98 (8): 411–44..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tschermak, Erich von. 1900a. “Über Künstliche Kreuzung bei Pisum Sativum.” Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 18 (6): 232–39..Google Scholar
Tschermak, Erich von. 1900b. “Über Künstliche Kreuzung bei Pisum Sativum.” Zeitschrift für das Landwirtschaftliche Versuchswesen in Oesterreich 3:465–555.Google Scholar
Waters, C. Kenneth. 2004. “What Was Classical Genetics?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 35 (4): 783–809..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weldon, Weldon Walter Frank. 1902a. “Mendel’s Laws of Alternative Inheritance in Peas.” Biometrika 1 (2): 228–54..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldon, Weldon Walter Frank. 1902b. “On the Ambiguity of Mendel’s Categories.” Biometrika 2 (1): 44–55..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitman, C. O. 1904. “Hybrids from Wild Species of Pigeons, Crossed Inter Se and with Domestic Races.” Biological Bulletin 6:315–16.Google Scholar
Worrall, John. 1989. “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?” Dialectica 43 (1–2): 99–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar