Lawrence Sklar
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199251575
- eISBN:
- 9780191598449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199251576.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Although science often posits new entities and features of the world, scientific progress is also made by moves that eliminate previously posited features. Such eliminativist programme within science ...
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Although science often posits new entities and features of the world, scientific progress is also made by moves that eliminate previously posited features. Such eliminativist programme within science are always motivated by specific difficulties (mathematical, conceptual, and empirical) with existing theories. The eliminativist programme has many aspects in common with the philosophical positivist programme of eliminating unobservables from our theoretical posits, in principle. Looking closely at this may cast some doubt on ‘naturalist’ views about how science can do without ‘first philosophy’. But we may also come to a clearer understanding of the limits and legitimacy of philosophical global eliminationism by seeing how such programmes work locally within science.Less
Although science often posits new entities and features of the world, scientific progress is also made by moves that eliminate previously posited features. Such eliminativist programme within science are always motivated by specific difficulties (mathematical, conceptual, and empirical) with existing theories. The eliminativist programme has many aspects in common with the philosophical positivist programme of eliminating unobservables from our theoretical posits, in principle. Looking closely at this may cast some doubt on ‘naturalist’ views about how science can do without ‘first philosophy’. But we may also come to a clearer understanding of the limits and legitimacy of philosophical global eliminationism by seeing how such programmes work locally within science.
Larry Laudan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199738625
- eISBN:
- 9780199894642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738625.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The chapter argues: (1) that Achinstein's construal of theory testing requires both an enumeration, and a systematic refutation, of all possible alternatives to a hypothesis ostensibly under test. ...
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The chapter argues: (1) that Achinstein's construal of theory testing requires both an enumeration, and a systematic refutation, of all possible alternatives to a hypothesis ostensibly under test. Such a demand is generally unrealizable; (2) that his epistemic dismissal of the corroboratory power of confirmed, surprising predictions is at odds with the methods advocated and utilized by most of the principal actors in the wave-particle debates of the nineteenth century; and (3) that his postulate of a shared methodological (and Bayesian) consensus between corpuscularians and undulationists ignores the fact that the wave–particle debate was simultaneously an epistemic controversy about the virtues that an acceptable theory should exhibit.Less
The chapter argues: (1) that Achinstein's construal of theory testing requires both an enumeration, and a systematic refutation, of all possible alternatives to a hypothesis ostensibly under test. Such a demand is generally unrealizable; (2) that his epistemic dismissal of the corroboratory power of confirmed, surprising predictions is at odds with the methods advocated and utilized by most of the principal actors in the wave-particle debates of the nineteenth century; and (3) that his postulate of a shared methodological (and Bayesian) consensus between corpuscularians and undulationists ignores the fact that the wave–particle debate was simultaneously an epistemic controversy about the virtues that an acceptable theory should exhibit.
