EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
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C O U R S E
Philosophy and the Sciences
Duncan Pritchard, University of Edinburgh
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E Duhem and Kuhn Notes taken on November 21, 2014 by Edward Tanguay |
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before Karl Popper developed falsification as a possible method of science
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Pierre Duhem (1861-1916)
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"No scientific hypothesis can ever be tested in isolation, but only in conjunction with other main hypotheses and auxiliary hypotheses"
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we don't test Newton's law of gravity by itself
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main
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three laws of motion
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auxiliary
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number of planets
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whether attraction between planets is weaker than the sun and the planets
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we deduce a piece of evidence from these hypotheses
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but often we can't find it
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how should we then interpret this negative result?
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clearly something has gone wrong with one or more of the hypotheses
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but we don't know which hypothesis it is
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this is the underdetermination of theory by evidence
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Thomas Kuhn
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1962 book: "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"
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changed our way of thinking about science
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began career as a physicists, then went to history of science
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science doesn't have a distinctive method whether inductive or deductive
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we need to rethink the notion of progress in science
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changed image of science
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we used to see science as building on and improving on predecessor
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each on delivering a more accurate image of nature
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Kuhn argued science goes through three phases
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1. normal science
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scientists work within a scientific paradigm
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scientists work on a specific text book, e.g. Newton's Principa
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all scientific activity arises from this textbook tradition
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in spite of what Popper said, in periods of normal science there is no attempt to falsify or refute scientific theory
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crisis
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occurs when a sufficient number of anomalies accumulate
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paradigm shift
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scientific community shifts to new paradigm
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new paradigm should be able to solve the anomalies that the old paradigm could not
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paradigms are not truer than another but are better than others in their capacity of solving problems
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scientific revolutions
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there was a shift from Popper falsification to Kuhn problem solving
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had implications in the debate on the rationality of theory choice
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Kuhn argued that scientific paradigms are incommensurable, they lack a common measure for rational choice
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but we can compare paradigms