The Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthology

Abstract

List of Figures Notes on Editors Personal Acknowledgments Text Acknowledgments Part I Introduction Unit 1 The Ancient and Medieval Periods 1.1 Atoms and Empty Space: Diogenes Laertius 1.2 Letter to Herodotus: Epicurus 1.3 The Paradoxes of Motion: Zeno 1.4 Plato's Cosmology: Plato 1.5 The Structure and Motion of the Heavenly Spheres: Aristotle 1.6 Change, Natures, and Causes: Aristotle 1.7 Scientific Inference and the Knowledge of Essential Natures: Aristotle 1.8 The Cosmos and the Shape and Size of the Earth: Aristotle 1.9 The Divisions of Nature and the Divisions of Knowledge: Aristotle 1.10 On Methods of Inference: Philodemus 1.11 The Explanatory Power of Atomism: Lucretius 1.12 The Earth: Its Size, Shape, and Immobility: Claudius Ptolemy 1.13 The Weaknesses of Hypotheses: Proclus 1.14 Projectile Motion: John Philoponus 1.15 Free Fall: John Philoponus 1.16 Against the Reality of Epicycles and Eccentrics: Moses Maimonides 1.17 Impetus and its Applications: Jean Buridan 1.18 The Possibility of a Rotating Earth: Nicole Oresme Unit 2 The Scientific Revolution 2.1 The Nature and Grounds of the Copernican System: Georg Joachim Rheticus 2.2 The Unsigned Letter: Andreas Osiander 2.3 The Motion of the Earth: Nicholas Copernicus 2.4 The New Star: Tycho Brahe 2.5 A Man Ahead of His Time: Johannes Kepler 2.6 On Arguments about a Moving Earth: Johannes Kepler 2.7 Eight Minutes of Arc: Johannes Kepler 2.8 Tradition and Experience: Galileo Galilei 2.9 A Moving Earth Is More Probable Than the Alternative: Galileo Galilei 2.10 The Ship and the Tower: Galileo Galilei 2.11 The Copernican View Vindicated: Galileo Galilei 2.12 The Corpuscular Philosophy: Robert Boyle 2.13 Successful Hypotheses and High Probability: Christiaan Huygens 2.14 Inductive Methodology: Isaac Newton 2.15 Space, Time, and the Elements of Physics: Isaac Newton 2.16 Four Rules of Reasoning: Isaac Newton 2.17 General Scholium: Isaac Newton 2.18 The System of the World: Isaac Newton Unit 3 The Modern Period 3.1 The Inductive Method: Francis Bacon 3.2 Rules for the Discovery of Scientific Truth: Rene Descartes 3.3 Rationalism and Scientific Method: Rene Descartes 3.4 Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits: John Locke 3.5 The Principle of Least Action: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 3.6 Space, Time, and Symmetry: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 3.7 The Problem of Induction: David Hume 3.8 The Nature of Cause and Effect: David Hume 3.9 The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science: Immanuel Kant Unit 4 Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century 4.1 The Nature of Scientific Explanation: Antoine Lavoisier 4.2 Determinism, Ignorance, and Probability: Pierre-Simon Laplace 4.3 Hypotheses, Data, and Crucial Experiments: John Herschel 4.4 An Empiricist Account of Scientific Discovery: John Stuart Mill 4.5 Against Pure Empiricism: William Whewell 4.6 The Causes Behind the Phenomena: William Whewell 4.7 Catastrophist Geology: Georges Cuvier 4.8 Uniformitarian Geology: Charles Lyell 4.9 The Explanatory Scope of the Evolutionary Hypothesis: Charles Darwin 4.10 Induction as a Self-Correcting Process: Charles Sanders Peirce 4.11 The Nature of Abduction: Charles Sanders Peirce 4.12 The Role of Hypotheses in Physical Theory: Henri Poincare 4.13 Against Crucial Experiments: Pierre Duhem 4.14 On the Method of Theoretical Physics: Albert Einstein Part II Introduction Unit 5 Positivism and the Received View 5.1 Theory and Observation: Rudolf Carnap 5.2 Scientific Explanation: Carl Hempel 5.3 Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology: Rudolf Carnap 5.4 The Pragmatic Vindication of Induction: Hans Reichenbach 5.5 Dissolving the Problem of Induction: Peter Strawson Unit 6 After the Received View: Confirmation and Observation 6.1 Empiricist Criteria of Cognitive Significance: Problems and Changes: Carl Hempel 6.2 The Raven Paradox: Carl Hempel 6.3 Two Dogmas of Empiricism: W. V. O. Quine 6.4 The New Riddle of Induction: Nelson Goodman 6.5 What Theories Are Not: Hilary Putnam 6.6 On Observation: N. R. Hanson 6.7 The Ontological Status of Theoretical Entities: Grover Maxwell Unit 7 After the Received View: Methodology 7.1 Science: Conjectures and Refutations: Karl Popper 7.2 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Thomas Kuhn 7.3 Science and Pseudoscience: Imre Lakatos Unit 8 After the Received View: Explanation 8.1 Counterexamples to the D-N and I-S Models of Explanation: Wesley Salmon 8.2 The Statistical Relevance Model of Explanation: Wesley Salmon 8.3 Why Ask, Why?: Wesley Salmon 8.4 Explanatory Unification: Philip Kitcher Unit 9 After the Received View: The Realism Debate 9.1 The Current Status of Scientific Realism: Richard N. Boyd 9.2 A Confutation of Convergent Realism: Larry Laudan 9.3 Constructive Empiricism: Bas van Fraassen 9.4 The Natural Ontological Attitude: Arthur Fine

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