This volume is dedicated to the life and work of Ernest Nagel counted among the influential twentieth-century philosophers of science. Forgotten by the history of philosophy of science community in recent years, this volume introduces Nagel’s philosophy to a new generation of readers and highlights the merits and originality of his works. Best known in the history of philosophy as a major American representative of logical empiricism with some pragmatist and naturalist leanings, Nagel’s interests and activities went (...) beyond these limits. His career was marked with a strong and determined intention of harmonizing the European scientific worldview of logical empiricism and American naturalism/pragmatism. His most famous and systematic treatise on, The Structure of Science, appeared just one year before Thomas Kuhn’s even more renowned, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. As a reflection of Nagel’s interdisciplinary work, the contributing authors’ articles are connected both historically and systematically. The volume will appeal to students mainly at the graduate level and academic scholars. Since the volume treats historical, philosophical, physical, social and general scientific questions, it will be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, epistemologists, social scientists, and anyone interested in the history of analytic philosophy and twentieth-century intellectual history. (shrink)

(1979). William Whewell, natural theology and the philosophy of science in mid nineteenth century Britain. Annals of Science: Vol. 36, No. 5, pp. 493-516.

Taking a cue from remarks Thomas Kuhn makes in 1990 about the historical turn in philosophy of science, I examine the history of history and philosophy of science within parts of the British philosophical context in the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, ordinary language philosophy's influence was at its peak. I argue that the ordinary language philosophers' methodological recommendation to analyze actual linguistic practice influences several prominent criticisms of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation and (...) that these criticisms relate to the historical turn in philosophy of science. To show these connections, I primarily examine the work of Stephen Toulmin, who taught at Oxford from 1949 to 1954, and Michael Scriven, who completed a dissertation on explanation under Gilbert Ryle and R.B. Braithwaite in 1956. I also consider Mary Hesse's appeal to an ordinary language-influenced account of meaning in her account of the role of models and analogies in scientific reasoning, and W.H. Watson's Wittgensteinian philosophy of science, an early influence on Toulmin. I think there are two upshots to my historical sketch. First, it fills out details of the move away from logical positivism to more historical- and practice-focused philosophies of science. Second, questions about linguistic meaning and the proper targets and aims of philosophical analysis are part and parcel of the historical turn, as well as its reception. Looking at the philosophical background during which so-called linguistic philosophers also had a hand in bringing these questions to prominence helps us understand why. (shrink)

Racial disparities in health outcomes have recently become a flashpoint in the debate about the value of race as a biological concept. What role, if any, race has in the etiology of disease is a philosophically and scientifically contested topic. In this article, I expand on the insights of the new mechanistic philosophy of science to defend a mechanism discovery approach to investigating epidemiological racial disparities. The mechanism discovery approach has explanatory virtues lacking in the populational approach typically employed (...) in the study of race and biomedicine. The explanatory constraints that form an integral part of the new mechanistic approach enable mechanism discovery to avoid the epistemic and normative shortcomings of the populational approach. The methodology of mechanism discovery can fruitfully be extended to the treatment and reversal of epidemiological racial disparities. (shrink)

The Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 27 August to 2 September 1975. The Congress was held under the auspices of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and was sponsored by the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Western Ontario. As those associated closely with the work of the Division (...) over the years know weIl, the work undertaken by its members varies greatly and spans a number of fields not always obviously related. In addition, the volume of work done by first rate scholars and scientists in the various fields of the Division has risen enormously. For these and related reasons it seemed to the editors chosen by the Divisional officers that the usual format of publishing the proceedings of the Congress be abandoned in favour of a somewhat more flexible, and hopefully acceptable, method of pre sentation. Accordingly, the work of the invited participants to the Congress has been divided into four volumes appearing in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. The volumes are entitled, Logic, Foundations of Mathematics and Computability Theory, Foun dational Problems in the Special Sciences, Basic Problems in Methodol ogy and Linguistics, and Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

00 Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, ...

Most philosophers of science do philosophy ‘on’ science. By contrast, others do philosophy ‘in’ science (PinS), that is, they use philosophical tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific journals (‘intervention’), (...) cited in scientific journals (‘visibility’), and sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (‘contribution’). We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ‘specialized’ in this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy of science takes on sharp contour in terms of his interaction with the practicing life scientists of his day, particularly Johann Blumenbach and the latter’s student, Christoph Girtanner, who in 1796 attempted to synthesize the ideas of Kant and Blumenbach. Indeed, Kant’s engagement with the life sciences played a far more substantial role in his transcendental philosophy than has been recognized hitherto. The theory of epigenesis, especially in light of Kant’s famous analogy in the first Critique, (...) posed crucial questions regarding the ‘looseness of fit’ between the constitutive and the regulative in Kant’s theory of empirical law. A detailed examination of Kant’s struggle with epigenesis between 1784 and 1790 demonstrates his grave reservations about its hylozoist implications, leading to his even stronger insistence on the discrimination of constitutive from regulative uses of reason. The continuing relevance of these issues for Kant’s philosophy of science is clear from the work of Buchdahl and its contemporary reception. (shrink)

The project of integrated HPS has occupied philosophers of science in one form or another since at least the 1960s. Yet, despite this substantial interest in bringing together philosophical and historical reflections on the nature of science, history of science and formal philosophy of science remain as divided as ever. In this paper, I will argue that the continuing separation between historical and formal philosophy of science is ill-founded. I will argue for this in both abstract and concrete (...) terms. At the abstract level, I reconstruct two possible arguments for the incompatibility of historical and formal philosophy of science and argue that they are both wanting. At the concrete level, I discuss how historical and formal philosophy of science have been brought together in practice, namely: in the form of a largely forgotten research tradition that I will refer to here as the study of formalized macro-units. After a brief exposition, I argue that this research tradition has been unduly overlooked by historically minded philosophers of science. Bringing together these observations, I argue that the divide between historical and formal philosophy of science is not grounded in any substantive arguments, but can be primarily attributed to disciplinary happenstance. (shrink)

Constructive empiricism is not just a view regarding the aim of science; it is also a view regarding the epistemological framework in which one should debate the aim of science. This is the focus of this book -- not with scientific truth, but with how one should argue about scientific truth.

This anthology contains selected papers from the 'Science as Culture' conference held at Lake Como, and Pavia University Italy, 15-19 September 1999. The conference, attended by about 220 individuals from thirty countries, was a joint venture of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (its fifth conference) and the History of Physics and Physics Teaching Division of the European Physical Society (its eighth conference). The magnificient Villa Olmo, on the lakeshore, provided a memorable location for the presentors of (...) the 160 papers and the audience that discussed them. The conference was part of local celebrations of the bicentenary of Alessandro Volta's creation of the battery in 1799. Volta was born in Como in 1745, and for forty years from 1778 he was professor of experimental physics at Pavia University. The conference was fortunate to have had the generous financial support of the Italian government's Volta Bicentenary Fund, Lombardy region, Pavia University, Italian Research Council, and Kluwer Academic Publishers. The papers included here, have or will be, published in the journal Science & Education, the inaugural volume (1992) of which was a landmark in the history of science education publication, because it was the first journal in the field devoted to contributions from historical, philosophical and sociological scholarship. Clearly these 'foundational' disciplines inform numerous theoretical, curricular and pedagogical debates in science education. Contemporary Concerns The reseach promoted by the International and European Groups, and by the journal, is central to science education programmes in most areas of the world. (shrink)

-/- For all that digital methods—including network visualization, text analysis, and others—have begun to show extensive promise in philosophical contexts, a tension remains between two uses of those tools that have often been taken to be incompatible, or at least to engage in a kind of trade-off: the discovery of new hypotheses and the testing of already-formulated positions. This paper presents this basic distinction, then explores ways to resolve this tension with the help of two interdisciplinary case studies, taken from (...) preregistration in contemporary science and the debate over whig history in the history of science. These case studies, the paper argues, refocus our attention from a mutually exclusive testing/discovery binary to the relationship between our background data or philosophical views and the empirical generalizations that we might draw from the data. Finally, it develops a set of three challenges for philosophers and corresponding avenues for future work that will, it is hoped, allow us to better justify our use of these methods. (shrink)

We give an overview of Lakatos’ life, his philosophy of mathematics and science, as well as of this issue. Firstly, we briefly delineate Lakatos’ key contributions to philosophy: his anti-formalist philosophy of mathematics, and his methodology of scientific research programmes in the philosophy of science. Secondly, we outline the themes and structure of the masterclass Lakatos’ Undone Work – The Practical Turn and the Division of Philosophy of Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, which gave (...) rise to this special issue. Lastly, we provide a summary of the contributions to this issue. (shrink)

This paper sketches one possible form that a pragmatist philosophy of science might take. It defends general philosophy of science, although not in the form it has traditionally taken, and along with this, a focus on methodology as a legitimate concern for philosophers of science. Connections are made between some classical pragmatist themes and issues in contemporary philosophy of science. My intention is to be provocative.

Introduction : towards philosophy of scientific practice -- The origin of the concept of practice -- Scientific practice: significance, types and scopes -- The nature of scientific practice -- The nature of knowledge : the local knowledge -- Knowledge and power -- The contextual normativity of scientific practice -- Philosophy of scientific practice and naturalism (I) -- Philosophy of scientific practices and naturalism (II) -- Philosophy of scientific practice and relativism -- Partner of philosophy of (...) scientific practice : philosophy of scientific experimentation -- New empiricism : close relative of philosophy of scientific practice -- The starting point of scientific research: opportunity, question, or observation? -- New solution for the old problem : the relationship among observation, experiment and theory -- New studies on replicability of scientific experiment -- Local knowledge (I) : traditional chinese medicine (TCM) -- Local knowledge (II) : chinese theory of fengshui -- Local knowledge (III) : ethnobotany -- Conclusion : scientific practice in ongoing and unlimited process. (shrink)

Naturalism is still facing a strong opposition in the philosophy of social science from influential scholars who argue that philosophical analysis must be autonomous from scientific investigation. The opposition exploits philosophers’ traditional diffidence toward social science and fuels the ambition to provide new foundations for social research. A classic anti-naturalist strategy is to identify a feature of social reality that prevents scientific explanation and prediction. An all-time favorite is the dependence of social phenomena on human representation. This article examines (...) two prominent versions of the dependence thesis and concludes that they both fail. Contemporary social science is capable of accounting for the causal dependence of social reality on representation, and there is no reason to believe that social entities are ontologically dependent on the collective acceptance of a constitutive rule. (shrink)

Philosophy of science studies science and the production of scientific knowledge. Usually, philosophical investigations of this field focus mainly on metaphysical, epistemological, and methodological aspects of science. Despite being divided into the general philosophy of science and philosophy of special sciences, philosophy of science, in a general way, is still distant from scientific practice per se. In order to fill this gap, a third subfield has emerged, philosophy of science in practice. This article provides a (...) brief introduction to the philosophy of science in practice and to the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice. It discusses its goals, methods, its social and empirical engagement. It is expected that this article will shed light on the diversity and possibility of investigations for a philosophy of science beyond meta-analysis, in other words, that is empirically engaged and socially informed. - A filosofia da ciência estuda a ciência, o modus operandi da ciência e o conhecimento científico. Convencionalmente, as investigações filosóficas desse campo se debruçam principalmente sobre aspectos metafísicos, epistemológicos e metodológicos da produção de conhecimento nas ciências. Muito embora seja tradicionalmente subdividida em filosofia geral das ciências e filosofia das ciências especiais, a filosofia da ciência de uma forma geral ainda se mantém distante das práticas científicas propriamente ditas. Para suprir tal demanda surge uma terceira subdivisão, ainda embrionária, a filosofia da ciência em prática. Este artigo apresenta uma breve introdução à filosofia da ciência em prática e à Sociedade de Filosofia da Ciência em Prática, discute seus objetivos e estratégias metodológicas, bem como seu engajamento social e empírico. Espero que, com esse artigo, seja possível trazer uma breve noção sobre a diversidade de investigações e as possibilidades de uma filosofia da ciência que pode ir para além do escopo meta-analítico, que pode ser empiricamente engajada e socialmente informada. (shrink)

I argue against the assumption that the influence of non-cognitive values must lead to bad science and against the methodological norm that seems to some philosophers to follow from it, viz. that a good philosophy of science should analyze the morally and politically neutral production of good science. Against these, I argue for the assumption that non-cognitive values are compatible with good science and for the metaphilosophical norm that a good philosophy of science should allow us to see (...) whether and how non-cognitive values influence good science. In pursuit of one of its scandalous goals, viz. determining whether and when gender politics influence good scientific work, feminist philosophy of science is well served by this methodological norm. (shrink)

One of Ian C. Jarvie’s most interesting contributions is his discussion of the thinking of Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi on the nature and workings of the scientific community and their relation to politics : 545–564, 2001). The self-image these thinkers contributed to still lingers, but their accounts capture a historical moment that has passed and was idealized even when they were written. In this chapter, I examine this tradition and identify the central themes which dominated this literature and ask (...) the question of how this history is relevant today. The answer will perhaps be surprising: despite the fact that the Left of the past held positions that are the opposites of the positions of the present participatory Left, the considerations that motivated the older Left remain. (shrink)

Who are the major figures that have shaped philosophy of science in Britain? What impact has the subject had in Britain outside academic philosophy? How have two of the major centers of the subject - in Pittsburgh and in London - interacted over the years? I begin by looking briefly at the recent history of philosophy of science in Britain and its general impact (tying this in with its interaction with the Pittsburgh Center and Pittsburgh people. It (...) seems to me, though, that the best way to celebrate an anniversary like that of the Pittsburgh Center is by predominantly looking forward rather than back. And I concentrate in this lecture on showing how philosophy of science can have an impact on issues of current concern, in Britain and more generally. (shrink)

This chapter offers a narrative of the basic twists and turns of the realism debate after the realist turn. It starts with what preceded and initiated the turn, viz., instrumentalist construals of scientific theories. It then moves on to discuss the basic lines of development of the realist stance to science, focusing on one of its main challenges: the historical challenge.

Admirers of Whitehead who know him best have suggested that Wordsworth had possibly a greater influence upon him than anyone except Plato. Nowhere apparently has Whitehead admitted such an influence, as he has that of Plato and Locke and that of William James, Bergson, and Alexander among traditional and contemporary philosophers But he had a predilection for poetry, and attributes to the great poets philosophical importance. They capture uniquely, he says, “a fragrance of experience”; and “… express deep intuitions of (...) mankind penetrating into what is universal in concrete fact.” As observers of nature both Wordsworth and Whitehead ascribed to animate and inanimate life a degree of feeling or satisfaction in the course of being and becoming. Like the poet, Whitehead must have found “joy in widest commonalty spread.” The multiplication table, he noted at one time, “… is no good to the realist. It shuts him up with Plato's ideas out of space and out of time” when “… like Wordsworth and the rest of us he wants to hear the throstle sing.”. (shrink)

Over the last three decades the role of social values in science has been the topic issue in the disputes of the philosophers of science against the representatives of science studies. Due to the key status of sciences in developed countries and societies it is necessary, so the author, not only to acknowledge, that cognitive and epistemic practices have their social dimensions, but also to make the practices of the research communities themselves open for critical examination from different perspectives. In (...) the paper the author presents her own theory of the critical contextual empiricism, comparing it with the approach of the American philosopher Philip Kitcher. (shrink)

The dissertation involves an examination of recent work in Social Epistemology. In particular, I am concerned with the question of how one's social position could affect judgments regarding evidence and confirmation. To answer this question I undertake an investigation of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. Feminist epistemologists have raised criticisms of the traditional analysis of knowledge by arguing against the primacy of the individual and for a more thorough-going analysis of the community in accounts of knowledge. This shift, (...) in my view, is an important contribution toward a more complete theory of knowledge. Yet feminist epistemology is a controversial contributor to the area of social epistemology generally construed. Thus, in the first chapter I offer a defense of the contributions of feminist epistemology to analytic philosophy, against its various critics. ;In Chapters Two and Three I examine feminists' reliance on Naturalistic models of theory-choice such as Quinean Holism or the later Wittgenstein's Social Constructivism. I argue that the reliance on these models is a tactical mistake for feminists since these models are based on problematic accounts of meaning and truth. Alternatively, I advocate the adoption of a realist meaning theory along the lines proposed by Katz, as well as a rationalized epistemology in the service of explaining deductive and inductive inference. My argument involves showing how realism and rationalism entail the kind of strong program of justification and rational censure which is required if feminists want to successfully condemn existing biased practices. ;Consequently, I propose a reformulation of the distinction between a context of discovery and context of justification. My reformulation differs from the past positivist distinction in that "discovery" rather than being wholly random and subjective, is instead reflective of patterns of social experience. "Justification" is conceived of as more sensitive to the epistemic privilege of varying social standpoints. However, a separation is still maintained between how one comes to arrive at a belief and the methods for justifying that belief. My conclusion is that a partnership between rationalized epistemology and feminist theory can provide rich possibilities for both disciplines. (shrink)

This book is a result from a collective study on philosophy of scientific practice, which began around 2002 and still ongoing. There is an apparently increasing interest in scientific practice, influenced by the historicistic philosophy of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge. Prof. WU Tong and his research group believe that it is necessary for PSP to turn from the theory-dominant position to the practice dominance. PSP has also put forward the possibility of reinterpreting the epistemic status (...) of local knowledge in Chinese tradition, which provides the most significant motivation to participate this study. In this book, we have selected three main cases - namely, Chinese medicine, Fengshui, and Ethnobotany - to examine the effect of PSP. The aim of our collective study is not merely on theoretical construction of PSP, but also to consider the various applications of PSP, especially for re-interpreting and demonstrating the variety of local knowledge from traditional China, which seems to be a genuine contribution to the international enterprise of philosophy of science, particularly made by Chinese scholars. nterpreting and demonstrating the variety of local knowledge from traditional China, which seems to be a genuine contribution to the international enterprise of philosophy of science, particularly made by Chinese scholars. (shrink)

Philosophers have started to use the history of science to address some of their philosophical concerns. In this paper I point out some aspects of contemporary practice that require further consideration in order to achieve a more fruitful integration of history and philosophy: one, the limitations of using case studies; two, the need to articulate how we should use history as evidence. Specifically, I argue that to make progress in the debate about realism we will have to pay more (...) attention to the role of historical evidence. (shrink)

이 논문의 목표는 정밀과학에 대한 카시러의 철학을 해명하고 평가하려는 것이다. 나는 먼저 『실체와 기능』에 드러난 카시러의 철학적 문제의식을 검토하고, 그의 다양한 ‘기능’개념을 논한다. 그런 뒤 수학에 대한 카시러의 철학을 크게 기능 관점과 역사적 발전주의라는 두 가지 견해로 나누어 분석하고 평가한다. 나는 두 견해 모두 현대수학에 대한 타당한 해석이라고 주장한다. 자연과학에 대한 카시러의 견해는 거의 전적으로 수학적 인식을 모범으로 형성되었다. 따라서 나는 자연과학에 대한 카시러의 견해도 마찬가지로 기능 관점과 역사적 발전주의로 나누어 분석하고 평가한다. 나는 카시러의 기능 관점은 자연과학에 대해서도 타당하지만, 그의 (...) 역사적 발전주의는 양자역학의 발전에 비추어 타당하지 않다고 주장한다. 마지막으로 나는 카시러의 선험 개념에 대한 최근의 학술적 논쟁을 비판적으로 검토한다. (shrink)

This collection is the first proceedings volume of the lectures delivered within the framework of the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, in its year of inauguration 1981-82. It thus marks the beginning of a new venture. Rather than attempting to express an ideology of the l}nity of science, this collection in fact aims at presenting a kaleidoscopic picture of the variety of views about science and within science. Three main disciplines come together in this (...) volume. The first of scientists, the second of historians and sociologists of science, the third of philosophers interested in science. The scientists try to present the scientific body of knowledge in areas where the scientific adventure kindles the imagination of the culture of our time. At the same of course, they register their own reflections on the nature of this body time, of knowledge and on its likely course of future development. For the historians and sociologists, in contrast, science is there to be studied diachronically, as a process, on the one hand, and synchronically, as a social institution, on the other. As for the phil9sophers, finally, their contribution to this series is not meant to remain within the confines of what is usually seen as the philosophy of science proper, or to be limited to the analysis of the scientific mode of reasoning and thinking: it is allowed, indeed encouraged, to encompass alter native, and on occasion even competing, modes of thought. (shrink)

Definition and Meaning of the Islamic Philosophy of Religion Difference between Islamic Philosophy and Muslim Philosophy There is a difference between ...

In _Debating Cognitive Existentialism_ the authors offer philosophical, cultural-theoretical, and sociological perspectives on the value of extending hermeneutic philosophy to the natural sciences. At stake is the universality of post-metaphysical hermeneutics.

In the first part of this paper we investigate how scientific theories can be represented by frames. Different kinds of scientific theories can be distinguished in terms of the systematic power of their frames. In the second part we outline the central questions and goals of our research project. In the third and final part of this paper we show that frame-representation is a useful tool in the comparison of the theories of phlogiston and oxygen, despite those theories being traditionally (...) conceived as incommensurable. The frame-theoretic representation reveals common attributes, values and ultimately structural correspondence relations between the two theories. In our view this outcome lends credence to a structural realist view of science. (shrink)

SPANISH: La filosofía se resiste a extender al hombre estilos de explicación que funcionan bien en la investigación de la naturaleza sin tener en cuenta que también somos parte de ella. Al tenerlo en cuenta, sin embargo, hacemos posible la revitalización de la filosofía y quizá hasta la solución, de sus problemas más importantes. Las ciencias neuronales en un contexto evolutivo transforman, por ejemplo, los problemas del realismo y de la racionalidad científica. Al considerar que nuestras estructuras cerebrales –y por (...) consiguiente nuestros modos de pensar– son el resultado de una larga serie de adaptaciones a una larga sucesión de entornos, vemos que la selección natural habría podido desarrollar diferentes modos de pensar no menos válidos que los nuestros. El resultado de tales consideraciones es lo que he llamado «relativismo evolutivo». Este tipo de relativismo no es susceptible a las objeciones tradicionales y nos proporciona, además, las bases. ENGLISH: Philosophy resists the extensión to man of modes of explanation that function well in the investigation of nature, without taking into account that we too are part of it. When we take that into account, however, we make possible the revitalizing of philosophy and perhaps even the solution of its most significant problems. Neuroscience in an evolutionary context, for example, transforms the problems of realism and scientific rationality. Upon considering that our brain structures – and consequently our modes of thought – are the result of a long series of adaptations to a large succession of environments, we see that natural selection could have brought about different modes of thought no less valid than ours. The result of such considerations is what I have called “evolutionary relativism”. This type of relativism is not susceptible to the traditional objections; and it provides us, in addition, the basis of a theory of relative truth. (shrink)

On the basis of a new reading of Gérard Simon’s Kepler astronome astrologue, and by comparing the author’s position with that of Michel Foucault, this article attempts to clarify the relationship between history of science and history of knowledge. -/- .

Examines some of the potential and some of the problems inherent in using computerized simulations in science and science studies classes by applying lessons from the epistemology of science. While computer simulations are useful pedagogical tools, they are not experiments and thus are of only limited utility as substitutes for actual laboratories. Contains 20 references. (Author/PVD).

Popper’s (1983, 2002) philosophy of science has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the wake of the replication crisis, offering a philosophical basis for the ensuing science reform movement. However, adherence to Popper’s approach may also be at least partly responsible for the sense of “crisis” that has developed following multiple unexpected replication failures. In this article, I contrast Popper’s approach with that of Lakatos (1978) as well as with a related but problematic approach called naïve methodological falsificationism (NMF; (...) Lakatos, 1978). The Popperian approach is powerful because it is based on logical refutations, but its theories are noncausal and, therefore, potentially lacking in scientific value. In contrast, the Lakatosian approach considers causal theories, but it concedes that these theories are not logically refutable. Finally, NMF represents a hybrid approach that subjects Lakatosian causal theories to Popperian logical refutations. However, its tactic of temporarily accepting a ceteris paribus clause during theory testing may be viewed as scientifically inappropriate, epistemically inconsistent, and “completely redundant” (Lakatos, 1978, p. 40). I conclude that the replication “crisis” makes the most sense in the context of the Popperian and NMF approaches because it is only in these two approaches that the failure to replicate a previously corroborated theory represents a logical refutation of that theory. In contrast, such replication failures are less problematic in the Lakatosian approach because they do not logically refute theories. Indeed, in the Lakatosian approach, replication failures can be temporarily ignored or used to motivate theory development. (shrink)

This is the editors' introduction to a new anthology of commissioned articles covering the various branches of philosophy of physics. We introduce the articles in terms of the three pillars of modern physics: relativity theory, quantum theory and thermal physics. We end by discussing the present state, and future prospects, of fundamental physics.