Science and Reason

Introduction

I. General Nature of Philosophy of Science

Phil. of sci. asks general questions about the nature, methodology, and role of science. It’s worth distinguishing it from some other disciplines that study science, such as (a) the history of science and (b) the sociology of science. Those ask questions about, respectively, (a) when various events in the history of science occurred and why they occurred when they did, or (b) why certain scientific ideas gain support while others don’t.

The questions phil. of sci. addresses are more about “the logic of science,” about how scientific reasoning works. Again, a distinction is in order. There is a straight-forward empirical question about how scientists reason. That’s psychology. Scientists may in fact be influenced by all sorts of things. The phil. questions are more about what constitutes good reasoning about scientific matters. But it’s not just that. There are other questions about the nature of science.

To get the flavor of this, consider: the UR curriculum requires some courses in natural science, social science, and humanities. We could ask about the distinction between the first two categories, but they are both “science,” so group them together. What’s the difference between science and humanities? Is it a difference of subject matter, methodology, or something else altogether? Is it just historical accident? You might think about this by considering what the CCC should do if a new field comes along and it has to classify it? How would it decide? Maybe we just have exemplars - physics and literature. If it’s more like the former, it’s science. But like it in what ways? Maybe it’s all just a mess. (This isn’t a question we will focus on, though something close will come up.) Another example - people say that intelligent is not science. But what does that mean?

No serious knowledge of particular sciences is required to take, or teach, this course.

II. Our Questions

A) One thing science attempts to do is to explain why things happen. What counts as a good scientific explanation? When does it succeed in this attempt? We will examine an answer to this question that seems extremely sensible, and then look at problems and alternatives. In connection with this, sciences sometimes seek to identify what are called the laws of nature. What does this mean? Is it true that there are any? Is it true that science tries to find them?

B) It’s clear that theories and observations play a crucial role in science. But there are real controversies over exactly what makes something count as a theory. (Note the pejorative use of the term, as in “Evolution is just a theory.”) So we’ll ask what theories are and what the status of the entities that they invoke is. And there are related questions about observations - what’s really observed and what’s inferred from what’s observed? Is there a clear distinction between theory and observation? Some people say that all observations are “theory laden.”

C) The epistemology of science. There are also questions about how we go about justifying (showing to be reasonable) a particular theory. A simplistic view says that we derive theories from observations. But it will become clear that this isn’t quite right. We’ll look at what might be right. It looks like things are more complicated than we might like.

These are traditional questions in phil. of sci. They could be treated in very technical ways, though we will not. Roughly the first half of the semester will be on this sort of stuff. We’ll then shift to different sorts of questions.

D) The Objectivity of Science. Some people like to think that science is an “objectively rational” pursuit, proceeding by clear-cut principles of reasoning in a steady march of progress. Others think that nothing like this is right. We’ll look at some of this discussion.

E) Science and pseudoscience. Some people dismiss things like astrology as pseudoscience. They think that there is a reasonably clear distinction between genuine science and the things dismissed as pseudoscience. Astrology and the like are often dismissed in this way. We’ll look at way of drawing a principle of “demarcation.” And a thing to think about in this connection is where the humanities figure in.

F) Science and religion. There are a variety of hard questions about the relations. Some see a real conflict, somehow a scientific outlook is incompatible with a religious outlook. But this seems to be refuted in practice. And some say that science and religion address different domains. We will read several influential argument along these lines. It’s clear that this issue plays a role in the recent debates about intelligent design. We will look at some of this, though we will not examine the legal issues concerning who gets to decide what is taught, nor will we address the educational issues about what school boards should do. Related question: are there limits to science?

G) Science and values. One may have the picture of a scientist as a purely objective agent, with no particular values. But some have argued that this picture is mistaken. Some see science as in fact, or necessarily, a value-laden activity, infested with politics and the like. We’ll try to think about the connection between science and moral issues.

III. Syllabus

Go over syllabus.

For next time: Read Ch. 1 and Ch. 2, sections 1-2 (up through p. 33). Every time you get to a point that you don’t fully understand, note it. I will ask for such points in class. (This will happen generally.)

We are going to proceed slowly all semester. In the beginning, lots of attention to key points about methodology and terminology.