Criticism and the History of Science
Criticism and the History of Science

Author: Andersson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 9004450572

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Criticism and the History of Science deals with Thomas Kuhn's, Imre Lakatos's and Paul Feyerabend's criticism of Karl Popper's falsificationist conception of science. It argues that this criticism is based on two important methodological problems: the problem that observations and tests statements are fallible and impregnated with theory, and the problem of how to test complex theoretical systems. In order to solve these problems it shows how problematic test statements can be criticised and whole theoretical systems falsified. In this way the falsificationist conception of science is developed and defended in a way making a deeper understanding of science and its history possible.

Criticism and the History of Science
Criticism and the History of Science

Author: Gunnar Andersson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9789004100503

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Criticism and the History of Science deals with Thomas Kuhn's, Imre Lakatos's and Paul Feyerabend's criticism of Karl Popper's falsificationist conception of science. It argues that this criticism is based on two important methodological problems: the problem that observations and best statements are fallible and impregnated with theory, and the problem of how to test complex theoretical systems. In order to solve these problems it shows how problematic test statements can be criticised and whole theoretical systems falsified. In this way the falsificationist conception of science is developed and defended in a way making a deeper understanding of science and its history possible.

Marxism and the Philosophy of Science
Marxism and the Philosophy of Science

Author: Helena Sheehan

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1786634260

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A masterful survey of the history of Marxist philosophy of science Sheehan retraces the development of a Marxist philosophy of science through detailed and highly readable accounts of the debates that shaped it. Skilfully deploying a large cast of characters, Sheehan shows how Marx and Engel’s ideas on the development and structure of natural science had a crucial impact on the work of early twentieth-century natural philosophers, historians of science, and natural scientists. With a new afterword by the author.

Technology
Technology

Author: Eric Schatzberg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-11-12

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 022658397X

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In modern life, technology is everywhere. Yet as a concept, technology is a mess. In popular discourse, technology is little more than the latest digital innovations. Scholars do little better, offering up competing definitions that include everything from steelmaking to singing. In Technology: Critical History of a Concept, Eric Schatzberg explains why technology is so difficult to define by examining its three thousand year history, one shaped by persistent tensions between scholars and technical practitioners. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, scholars have tended to hold technicians in low esteem, defining technical practices as mere means toward ends defined by others. Technicians, in contrast, have repeatedly pushed back against this characterization, insisting on the dignity, creativity, and cultural worth of their work. ​The tension between scholars and technicians continued from Aristotle through Francis Bacon and into the nineteenth century. It was only in the twentieth century that modern meanings of technology arose: technology as the industrial arts, technology as applied science, and technology as technique. Schatzberg traces these three meanings to the present day, when discourse about technology has become pervasive, but confusion among the three principal meanings of technology remains common. He shows that only through a humanistic concept of technology can we understand the complex human choices embedded in our modern world.

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Volume 4
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Volume 4

Author: Imre Lakatos

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1970-09-02

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9780521078269

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Two books have been particularly influential in contemporary philosophy of science: Karl R. Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Both agree upon the importance of revolutions in science, but differ about the role of criticism in science's revolutionary growth. This volume arose out of a symposium on Kuhn's work, with Popper in the chair, at an international colloquium held in London in 1965. The book begins with Kuhn's statement of his position followed by seven essays offering criticism and analysis, and finally by Kuhn's reply. The book will interest senior undergraduates and graduate students of the philosophy and history of science, as well as professional philosophers, philosophically inclined scientists, and some psychologists and sociologists.

Creatively Undecided
Creatively Undecided

Author: Menachem Fisch

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-11-27

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 022651451X

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Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper are believed by many who study science to be the two key thinkers of the twentieth century. Each addressed the question of how scientific theories change, but they came to different conclusions. By turning our attention to ambiguity and indecision in science, Menachem Fisch, in Creatively Undecided, offers a new way to look at how scientific understandings change. Following Kuhn, Fisch argues that scientific practice depends on the framework in which it is conducted, but he also shows that those frameworks can be understood as the possible outcomes of the rational deliberation that Popper viewed as central to theory change. How can a scientist subject her standards to rational appraisal if that very act requires the use of those standards? The way out, Fisch argues, is by looking at the incentives scientists have to create alternative frameworks in the first place. Fisch argues that while science can only be transformed from within, by people who have standing in the field, criticism from the outside is essential. We may not be able to be sufficiently self-critical on our own, but trusted criticism from outside, even if resisted, can begin to change our perspective—at which point transformative self-criticism becomes a real option.

Science for All
Science for All

Author: Peter J. Bowler

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-10-15

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0226068668

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Recent scholarship has revealed that pioneering Victorian scientists endeavored through voluminous writing to raise public interest in science and its implications. But it has generally been assumed that once science became a profession around the turn of the century, this new generation of scientists turned its collective back on public outreach. Science for All debunks this apocryphal notion. Peter J. Bowler surveys the books, serial works, magazines, and newspapers published between 1900 and the outbreak of World War II to show that practicing scientists were very active in writing about their work for a general readership. Science for All argues that the social environment of early twentieth-century Britain created a substantial market for science books and magazines aimed at those who had benefited from better secondary education but could not access higher learning. Scientists found it easy and profitable to write for this audience, Bowler reveals, and because their work was seen as educational, they faced no hostility from their peers. But when admission to colleges and universities became more accessible in the 1960s, this market diminished and professional scientists began to lose interest in writing at the nonspecialist level. Eagerly anticipated by scholars of scientific engagement throughout the ages, Science for All sheds light on our own era and the continuing tension between science and public understanding.

The Critique of Scientific Reason
The Critique of Scientific Reason

Author: Kurt Hübner

Publisher:

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13:

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A systematic critique of the notion that natural science is the sovereign domain of truth, Critique of Scientific Reason uses an extensive and detailed investigation of physics—and in particular of Einstein's theory of relativity—to argue that the positivistic notion of rationality is not only wrongheaded but false. Kurt Hübner contends that positivism ignores both the historical dimension of science and the basic structures common to scientific theory, myth, and so-called subjective symbolic systems. Moreover, Hübner argues, positivism has led in our time to a widespread disillusionment with science and technology.

Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard

Author: Cristina Chimisso

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-16

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1136453814

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In this new study, Cristina Chimisso explores the work of the French Philosopher of Science, Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) by situating it within French cultural life of the first half of the century. The book is introduced by a study - based on an analysis of portraits and literary representations - of how Bachelard's admirers transformed him into the mythical image of the Philosopher, the Patriarch and the 'Teacher of Happiness'. Such a projected image is contrasted with Bachelard's own conception of philosophy and his personal pedagogical and moral ideas. This pedagogical orientation is a major feature of Bachelard's texts, and one which deepens our understanding of the main philosophical arguments. The primary thesis of the book is based on the examination of the French educational system of the time and of French philosophy taught in schools and conceived by contemporary philosophers. This approach also helps to explain Bachelard's reception of psychoanalysis and his mastery of modern literature. Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination thus allows for a new reading of Bachelard's body of work, whilst at the same time providing an insight into twentieth century French culture.