Philosophy of the Sciences

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Philosophy of the Sciences

• Early-Modern Scientific Method(s)

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Modern Scientific Method

• What is it today? What do we call it?
• What is its purpose?
• Which fields of study employ it?
• Who are some important modern theoreticians of
  scientific method?

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Ancient scientific method

• Plato visible vs intelligible realms the
  sensible world is but a mere reflection of the
  real world of the Forms,
• Mathematics provided Plato with his primary
  examples geometry or the supposedly indivisible
  number one
• Platos idea of a real world known only to the
  intellect, standing behind our sensible world,
  has deeply influenced natural science (e.g
  particle wave theories of light).

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Ancient scientific method

• Aristotle (a student of Plato) developed the
  beginnings of method in his Posterior Analytics
• He retained the idea of Forms in his notion of
  essence, but his method focused on the sensible
  objects themselves
• For instance, an investigator might examine a
  variety of mammals, concluding that the essence
  of being a mammal is being gestated inside the
  mother and nursed on milk.

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Ancient scientific method

• -Few experiments, although Aristotles student
  Theophrastus did plant seeds sent to Athens by
  Alexander the Great
• -Little practical interest, except in the later
  Hellenistic and Roman periods (especially in
  medicine)
• -Most activity we would now deem scientific was
  observational in character, e.g. Aristotles
  treatises on animals
• -Astronomy, highly developed already by the
  Babylonians, originated in religion.

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Medieval Scientific Method

• Followed Aristotle, The Philosopher, treating
  his writings as the guide to method
• Most treatments highly theoretical, focused on
  discussions of resolution and composition
  (aka analysis and synthesis)
• Roger Bacon (14th cent.) suggested the outline of
  modern method checking new consequences deduced
  from first principles.

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Early-Modern Scientific Fields

• Natural History Botany, Zoology
• Medicine
• Anatomy
• Astronomy
• Mathematics
• Mechanics/Physics
• Mineralogy

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Theoreticians of Method

• Galileo
• Bacon
• Descartes
• Boyle
• Newton
• Locke

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Sir Francis Bacon

• Attacked Aristotle for premature theorizing from
  too few cases
• Claimed A., even when he performed experiments,
  allowed preconceived notions (idols) and logic
  too great a role in his conclusions
• Proclaimed induction to be the key to
  overcoming Aristotelian deficiencies in
  scientific method First we must compile a good,
  adequate natural and experimental history. That
  is the foundation of the matter (NO II, x).

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Bacon, cont.

• Inductiondefinition?
• Is it the only game in town? (Deduction?
  Retroduction?)
• No what else does Bacon suggest we must do?
• I have established forever a true and lawful
  marriage between the empirical and the rational
  faculty
• (GI, 15). Meaning?

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Bacon, cont.Inductivist?

• Directions for the interpretation of nature
  comprehend in general terms two parts the first
  for drawing axioms from experience the second on
  deducing or deriving new experiments from axioms
  (NO, II, x).
• What method(s) is Bacon using?

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René Descartes

• Reasoned largely in a deductive (vs inductive)
  way from self-evident first principles
• Took his examples from mathematics and physics
• Treated contradictory data in a cavalier way,
  e.g. in explaining his laws of impact to
  Mersenne
• Not a protagonist of the hypothetico-deductive
  method (McMullin 1990, 43).

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Robert Boyle

• Put the Baconian plan into practicemaintaining
  that accumulating facts was the first task
• Great experimentalist used quantification
• Reported the actual experiments, not general
  statements as Galileo had done
• Formulated a guide to good hypotheses
• Internally consistent
• Explicate the phenomena
• Contradict neither other phenomena or manifest
  physical truth, e.g. gravity.

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Boyle, continued

• An excellent hypothesis
• Simple (we would now say parsimonious)
• Not precarious or forced
• The best and/or only hypothesis that explicates
  the phenomena
• Boyle Joined induction and retroduction
  (hypothetico-deduction).