Gorham - Philosophy of science : a beginner’s guide

Philosophy of Science

A Beginners Guide

ONEWORLD BEGINNERS GUIDES combine an original, inventive, and engaging approach with expert analysis on subjects ranging from art and history to religion and politics, and everything in between. Innovative and affordable, books in the series are perfect for anyone curious about the way the world works and the big ideas of our time.

aesthetics

africa

anarchism

aquinas

art

artificial intelligence

the bahai faith

the beat generation

biodiversity

bioterror & biowarfare

the brain

british politics

the buddha

cancer

censorship

christianity

civil liberties

classical music

climate change

cloning

cold war

conservation

crimes against humanity

criminal psychology

critical thinking

daoism

democracy

descartes

dyslexia

energy

engineering

the enlightenment

epistemology

evolution

evolutionary psychology

existentialism

fair trade

feminism

forensic science

french revolution

genetics

global terrorism

hinduism

history of science

humanism

islamic philosophy

journalism

judaism

lacan

life in the universe

literary theory

machiavelli

mafia & organized crime

magic

marx

medieval philosophy

middle east

NATO

nietzsche

the northern ireland conflict

oil

opera

the palestineisraeli conflict

paul

philosophy of mind

philosophy of religion

philosophy of science

planet earth

postmodernism

psychology

quantum physics

the quran

racism

renaissance art

shakespeare

the small arms trade

the torah

sufism

volcanoes

A Oneworld Paperback Original

Published by Oneworld Publications 2009
This ebook edition published by Oneworld Publications 2012

Copyright Geoffrey Gorham 2009

The moral right of Geoffrey Gorham to be identified as the
Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available
from the British Library

ISBN 9781851686841
ebook ISBN 9781780741758

Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India
Cover design by www.fatfacedesign.com

Oneworld Publications
10 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3SR

Stay up to date with the latest books, special offers, and exclusive content from Oneworld with our monthly newsletter

Sign up on our website
www.oneworld-publications.com

Illustrations

Introduction: What is philosophy of science?

While science is a relatively recent product of human culture, the drive to understand our natural surroundings seems to be a deep and distinctive feature of human nature. As Aristotle perhaps the first great scientist (and philosopher of science) observed All men by nature desire to know. This same curiosity that encourages science gives rise to philosophical reflection about science. Thus it has always seemed remarkable to scientists that humans have not only the desire but also the capacity to understand nature and that nature has the capacity to be understood. In this vein, Albert Einstein declared paradoxically that the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. Solving this mystery is one of the fundamental and abiding problems of philosophy of science. Perhaps, as philosophers even before Aristotle speculated, nature has an inherent language or logos that somehow suits it for human comprehension. Or perhaps scientific theories merely project human categories onto an otherwise indifferent and inscrutable world. Is the world discovered or constructed by science? As we will see in chapters four and five below, this ancient question is still hotly debated in philosophy of science today.

But a word about philosophy. Since the label is derived from the Greek words for love (philia) and knowledge or wisdom (sophia) a philosopher is literally just a lover of knowledge. But this doesnt capture the precise nature of philosophical inquiry. Presumably, non-philosophers such as doctors and lawyers (maybe even some politicians) love knowledge too. But whereas these fields are directed at knowledge or expertise in specific subjects, philosophy ranges very broadly over every area of human concern. With the possible exception of logic, philosophy doesnt really possess an established body of knowledge like math or history. Indeed, philosophers rarely agree among themselves about even the most basic issues in their field. What distinguishes philosophy from the other disciplines is its concern with fundamental problems and concepts at the core of any human activity or interest: the nature of knowledge, the structure of reality, the meaning and value of life, and so on. To be sure, philosophy puts forth its share of definite theories and claims (some possibly true; many quite outlandish). But these are properly philosophical theories and claims because they answer to the hope of understanding and clarifying the really basic issues. Put briefly, philosophy is the attempt to get to the bottom of things.

Accordingly, philosophy of science is the attempt to answer fundamental questions about science. Is scientific knowledge different from other sorts of knowledge? Is science getting closer to the absolute truth? Is science influenced by politics and gender? How are the various sciences related to one another? In addition, there are philosophical questions that arise within particular sciences, like psychology (could a machine think?), physics (is the world deterministic?) and biology (does evolution have a built-in tendency to complexity?). And in this book we will frequently have occasion to touch on these field-specific questions. But our main concern will be the big questions about the nature of science itself.

Although the philosophy of science only emerged as a professional sub-discipline of academic philosophy with its own journals, courses, associations, etc. in the twentieth century, it is really as old as philosophy itself (i.e. very old indeed). This is because philosophers, as lovers of knowledge, have always been impressed with the power and depth of scientific knowledge. Many of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition were (at least part-time) philosophers of science: Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Russell, to name a few. In fact, the very distinction between philosophy and science is relatively new. Before the nineteenth century, there was simply philosophy or natural philosophy. Isaac Newtons masterwork in mechanics is titled The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. And although philosophy may not come up routinely in the daily practice of science, problems at the cutting edge of science will often turn on deep philosophical issues about time and space, causality, and experience. So its not surprising that some of the greatest scientists have been profoundly philosophical in their orientation. Along with Newton, this can also be said of Galileo, Darwin, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Stephen Jay Gould, and Stephen Hawking. And as we shall see in a moment the very earliest scientists were simply philosophers who took a special interest in the natural world.