Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-13T12:01:03.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Hunt for Scientific Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Mary Hesse
Mary Hesse*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Duhem-Quine concept of the underdetermination of theory by evidence has perhaps been the most crucial influence on philosophy of science during recent decades. It is a concept that has brought together metaphysical and epistemological issues that had been sundered into a mass of non-communicating specialisms in the decline of positivism. It has given birth to a new spectrum of comprehensive theories about the nature of science, ranging from scepticism and historicism, to a near-Aristotelian revival of realism, essentialism and necessitarianism. By way of its implications for the indeterminacy of truth-values, it has revived discussion of theories of truth, meaning and realism in relation to science, and philosophers of science have gone back to the pre-positivist authors - Frege, Peirce, Mach, Poincare, Duhem – for their pioneering arguments on sense and reference, correspondence and consensus, realism, instrumentalism and conventionalism.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 2 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by 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.)

References

Asquith, P.D. and Kyburg, H.E. (eds.). (1979). Current Research in Philosophy of Science. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Boyd, R.M. (1973). “Realism, Underde termination, and a Causal Theory of Evidence.” Nous 7: 1-12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R.M. (1976). “Approximate Truth and Katural Necessity.“ Journal of Philosophy 73: 633-635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R.M. (forthcoming). Realism and Scientific Eolatemology. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brooke, J.H. (forthcoming). “Avagadro's Hypothesis and Its Fate: A Case-study in the Failure of Case-studies.” History of Science.Google Scholar
Enfield, P.A. (1980). “Mackle, McGinn and Modality.” Unpublished M.Phil. Dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. (1975). “Explanation and Scientific Understanding.” Journal of Philosophy 71: 5-19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, M. (forthcoming). Foundations of Space-Time Theories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, M.R. (1976). “The Unintelligibility of ‘Observational Equivalence».” In PSA 1976 Vol I. Edited by Suppe, F. and Asquith, P.D. . East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 104-116.Google Scholar
Glymour, C. (1975). “Relevant Evidence.” Journal of Philosophy 72: 403-426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, C. (1977). “The Epistemology of Geometry.” Nous 11: 227-251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, C. (1980a). Theory and Evidence. Princeton:Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Glymour, C.. (1980b). “Bootstraps and Probabilities.” Journal of Philosophy 77: 691-699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hesse, M. (1974). The Structure of Scientific Inference. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, P. (1978). “An Appraisal of Glymour's Confirmation Theory.” Journal of Philosophy 75: 98-113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, P . (1980). “The Dispensibility of Bootstrap Conditions.” Journal of Philosophy 77: 699-7O2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jardine, N. (unpublished). “The Prevalent Indeterminacy of Translation.“Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1976). “Explanation, Conjunction and Unification.” Journal of Philosophy 73: 207-212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, T.S. (1979). “History of Science.” In Current Research in Philosophy of Science. Edited by Asquith, P.D. and H.E., Kyburg. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 121-128.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T.S.. (1980). “The Halt and the Blind.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 31: 181-192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1981). “The Philosophy of Progress.” In PSA 1978 Vol 2. Edited by Asquith, P.D. and I., Hacking. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 530-547.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, E. (1979). “Scientific Realism: The New Debates.” Philosophy of Science 46: 501-532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellor, D.H. (1981). “Some Problems about Solving Problems.” In PSA 1978 Vol 2. Edited by Asquith, P.D. and Hacking, I .. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 522-529.Google Scholar
Newton-Smith, W. (1978). “The Underdeterminatlon of Theory by Data.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 52: 71-91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. (1976). “What i s ‘Realism'?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76: 177-194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. (1978). Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Quine, W.V.O. (1969). Ontological Relativity. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radnitzky, G. and Andersson, G. (ed.). (1978). Progress and Rationality in Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suppe, F. (ed.). (1977). The Structure of Scientific Theories. 2nd edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1976). “To Save the Phenomena.” Journal of Philosophy 73: 623-632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1980). The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whewell, W. (1847). The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences. 2 vols. 2nd edition. London: John W. Parker.Google Scholar