Five Minutes on PoS for Mapping Workshop

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Five Minutes on PoS for Mapping Workshop

• By Noretta Koertge

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Introductory Remarks

• Ill give a quick overview of some of the
  differing ways philosophers have characterized
  scientific reasoning, using visual prompts as
  much as possible.
• John Losee has two books that provide an
  historical introduction to PoS

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Inductive Accounts

• What we might call naïve inductivism says science
  begins with observations. These are clustered
  into generalizations of ever increasing scope
  that eventually contain theoretical terms.
  Sometimes called the layer-cake model.
• Example observe behavior of gases, generalize to
  Boyle-Mariotte Law and Charles Law. Then explain
  low-level laws with the Kinetic Theory of Gases.
• The emphasis is on accumulation. If any revision
  occurs it is because the scientist behaved
  irresponsibly.

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Not-so-Naïve Inductivism

• No one (?) thought that was the whole story. For
  example, Francis Bacon privileged shining
  instances, observations that were especially
  useful for revealing the hidden nature of the
  phenomena under study.
• William Whewell, a contemporary of Kant, stressed
  the importance of finding the right concepts with
  which to describe phenomena.
• His visual metaphor for what he calls the
  consilience of inductions seems to be tributaries
  converging into a river that is both broader and
  deeper.
• There follows a fragment of Whewells Inductive
  Table for Astronomy, taken from his Novum Organon
  Renovatum. Brackets show consilience italics
  highlight conceptual innovation.

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Hypothetic-Deductive Accounts

• Although inductivist approaches are still often
  found in scientific practice (cf. data mining or
  so-called shotgun empiricism), what one often
  finds in scientific textbooks today is an H-D
  model.
• Scientists are guided by hypotheses that they
  then test through experiments, collections of
  data, and comparison with other well-tested
  scientific claims. Initial hypotheses are often
  wrong and must often be either refined or totally
  discarded.
• Poppers Conjectures and Refutations provides a
  critique of inductivism and an account of what
  makes hypotheses bold and tests severe.

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Paradigms and Research Programmes

• On a naïve Popperian CR account, the hypothesis
  space would be unconstrained and science would be
  the site of revolution in permanence. (Popper
  himself included metaphysical frameworks and
  background knowledge.)
• Kuhns major challenge to inductivists was his
  emphasis on scientific revolutions. But
  especially troubling to Popperians, was his
  account of normal science, which made science
  seem too conservative and too dogmatic.
• Lakatos Methodology of Scientific Research
  Programmes tried to Popperize Kuhn. His
  students generated a couple dozen of case studies
  that showed the historical usefulness of the RP
  approach.

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A Problem-Centered Approach

• In Objective Knowledge Popper introduced a little
  diagram that made explicit the importance of
  problems in understanding scientific inquiry. The
  next slide combines excerpts of that discussion.
• There then follows a slide that I often use in
  intro lectures. (Ive probably published it
  somewhere but cant remember where.)
• See also the ms. about the nature of scientific
  problems on my webpage.

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Towards an Ecosystem Model?

• The previous accounts of the scientific process
  are discipline-centered, although they recognize
  that techniques and concepts can be imported from
  outside and that inconsistencies between
  disciplinary claims pose important problems to be
  resolved.
• Steven Johnson in The Invention of Air makes
  preliminary moves towards an ecosystem approach
  to scientific knowledge.
• He is inspired by the following Bretherton
  Diagram, an attempt to show the structure of
  Earth System Science.

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