Virtues in Scientific Practice

In Emanuele Ratti & Tom Stapleford, Science, Technology, and Virtues: Contemporary Perspectives. Oxford University Press (2021)
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Abstract

This chapter relocates the debate about the theoretical virtues to the empirical level and argues that the question of whether the virtues (and what virtues, if any) have epistemic import is best answered empirically, through an examination of actual scientific theories and hypotheses in the history of science. As a concrete example of this approach, the chapter discusses a case study from the mid-nineteenth-century debate about the transmissibility of puerperal fever. It argues that this case shows that the virtues are at least sometimes epistemic, but also that neither scientific realists nor anti-realists get it quite right: the virtues, even if epistemic, are not necessarily truth-conducive, but neither are they merely pragmatic. It also argues that the discussion of puerperal fever shows that the virtue question, as it is currently featured in the scientific realism debate, ought to be reformulated. We should examine not just whether a given scientific theory has virtues or not, but rather how debates among competing theories, all of which have some virtues, get resolved.

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Dana Tulodziecki
Purdue University

Citations of this work

Scientific experiments beyond surprise and beauty.Anatolii Kozlov - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (3):1-22.

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References found in this work

The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos & Bas C. van Fraassen - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.
Philosophy of Natural Science.Carl G. Hempel - 1967 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 18 (1):70-72.

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