Value-free paradise is lost. Economists could learn from artists

The Vienna Circle as part of the intellectual movement of Central European philosophy of science is certainly one of the most important currents for the emergence of modern philosophy of science. Independent from this uncontested historical fact there remains the question of the direct and indirect influence, reception and topicality of this scientific community in contemporary general philosophy of science as well as in the philosophy of the individual sciences, including the social sciences and humanities.

A prominent phenomenon in contemporary philosophy of science has been the unexpected rise of alternative philosophers of science. This article analyses in depth such alternative philosophers of science as Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault, summarizing the similarities and differences between alternative philosophies of science and traditional philosophy of science so as to unveil the trends in contemporary philosophy of science. With its different principles and foundation, alternative philosophy of science has made breakthroughs in terms of its field of vision, scope, and methodology, and its relationship with science has become more humanistic and pluralistic. Attention should be given to alternative perspectives in the contemporary philosophy of science, and research should be expanded into the fields of the epistemology of science and cognitive science, the sociology of scientific knowledge and scientific anthropology, the scientific cultural philosophy, and scientific ethics.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

The aim of this paper is to present the character and reason of the drastic change in the understanding of science that happened in the twentieth century. To do this, author describes the main points of the traditional philosophy of science: then, he argues that reason of the revolution in the philosophy of science used to be the careful philosophical analysis of the great scientific revolutions from 1905. Finally, he concludes that the consequence of mentioned analysis was a number of antagonistic views being the contemporary philosophy of science. To give a monolitic and integral presentment of this philosophy, author enumerated and explained the points shared by the majority of contemporary philosophers of science. In brief, he describes the traditional philosophy of science, the reasons of its fall, and the main tenets of the contemporary philosophy of science.

In contrast to Thomas Kuhn, the work of Ludwik Fleck, a Polish-born physician, microbiologist, and epistemologist, is conspicuously absent from the science education literature. His originally obscure monograph first published in German in 1935, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, anticipates a number of views explicated by contemporary philosophers of science, cognitive psychologists, and learning theorists, and Fleck’s main thesis is, is many respects, strikingly similar to the oft-cited thesis developed later by Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Fleck’s work is perhaps the best example of the social influence on scientific commitment and thinking and is one of the first works to suggest different scales or varieties of change in science. At the same time as Fleck’s work gains recognition, momentum, and force in philosophical circles, some educators are calling for a critical appraisal of Kuhn’s impact on science education. This climate provides an ideal opportunity to assess (or perhaps in some cases reassess) the value of Fleck’s work in a science education context. The primary aim of this article, therefore, is to introduce educators in general, and science educators in particular, to the main ideas developed by Fleck in his Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Throughout this article, Fleck’s ideas are compared and contrasted to those of Thomas Kuhn—arguably one of the most popular referents in nature of science studies over the past decade. As will be discussed, many of the ideas developed by Fleck anticipate central issues and perspectives in philosophy, epistemology, sociology, education, and cognitive psychology.

Psychologism and the psychology of scientists: A response to Gibson

This article focuses on an analysis of Paul Feyerabend’s incommensurability theory. Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn are the proponents of incommensurability theory in contemporary philosophy of science, though their views on incommensurability thesis are not exactly the same. Incommensurability theory is one of the major contributions of Paul Feyerabend in philosophy of science. The fundamental questions are: What actually does Feyerabend mean by incommensurability of fundamental scientific theories? Do the meanings of scientific concepts change when scientific theories change? Do scientific theories affect the meanings of scientific concepts? How does Feyerabend’s incommensurability theory differ from that of Thomas Kuhn? Has Feyerabend’s incommensurability theory any implication for scientific development? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Feyerabend’s incommensurability theory? These and other related issues are the central focus of this article. Employing basically analytical method, this article examines Feyerabend’s incommensurability theory. This study discovers that Feyerabend’s incommensurability theory has both relationship of similarity and dissimilarity with that of Kuhn, and at the same time has implications for scientific development. It also argues that Feyerabend’s idea leads to relativism and subjectivism. The researcher concludes that though Feyerabend’s incommensurability theory has some shortcomings, Feyerabend is a force to reckon with in contemporary philosophy of science as a result of his innovations and revolutionary ideas in the discipline.

The paper analyses the development of some themes in the contemporary philosophy of science in Italy. Section 1 reviews the dabate on the legacy of neopositivism. The spread of the philosophy of Popper is outlined in Section 2, with particular regard to the problem of the vindication of induction. Section 3 deals with the debate on the incommensurability thesis, while Section 4 examines its consequences on the possible relationships between historical and epistemological studies of science. The last section is devoted to one of the most recent trends in the Italian philosophy of science: the resumption of Aristotelian dialectics.

This article applies general ideas from contemporary philosophy of science--chief among them that much good science proceeds without theories and laws--to the science of medicine. I claim that traditional philosophical debates over the nature of disease make demands on medicine that are mistaken. I demonstrate this philosophical error by applying the perspective of the philosophy of science to understanding the nature of disease in two concrete cases, cancer and depression. I first argue that cancer research produces various kinds of piecemeal causal explanation and does so without any well-developed theory of normal and malignant functioning, despite the rhetoric of some leading cancer researchers. I then defuse doubts about the scientific status of psychiatry, by demonstrating that it is not necessary to have a theory of normal functioning in order to understand and treat depression.

The relationship between economics and the philosophy of natural science has changed substantially during the last few years. What was once exclusively a one-way relationship from philosophy to economics now seems to be much closer to bilateral exchange. The purpose of this paper is to examine this new relationship. First, I document the change. Second, I examine the situation within contemporary philosophy of science in order to explain why economics might have its current appeal. Third, I consider some of the issues that might jeopardize the success of this philosophical project.

The study of contemporary philosophy of science based on cognitive neuroscience has strongly promoted the philosophy study of brain cognitive problems. It has pointed out the research direction for human to explore the relationship between the traditional mind and brain while systematically reflecting and investigating the theoretical basis and research method of cognitive neuroscience. Therefore, this study explores the influence and the significance of cognitive neuroscience on contemporary philosophy of science.

The scientific realism/antirealism debate in contemporary philosophy of science is about theoretical knowledge, that is, knowledge that is supposed to be about so-called “unobservables.” This includes theoretical entities, such as neutrinos and genes, as well as theoretical processes, such as natural selection and continental drift. Is theoretical knowledge in science possible? In general, scientific realists tend to think that science can (and does) yield theoretical knowledge, whereas antirealists tend to think that science cannot (and does not) yield theoretical knowledge (that is, knowledge about unobservables). To put it another way, scientific realists tend to argue that we have good reasons to believe that our best scientific theories are approximately true because, if they were not even approximately true, they would not be able to explain and predict natural phenomena with such impressive accuracy. On the other hand, antirealists tend to argue that the impressive success of our best scientific theories does not warrant belief in the approximate truth of our best scientific theories. This is because the history of science is a graveyard of theories that were once successful but were later discarded.

i believe that the long-neglected ideas on science and scientific method of Charles Sanders Peirce and Josiah Royce can illuminate some of the current attacks on science that have surfaced: misconduct and fraud in science and anti-scientism or the “new cynicism.” In addition, Royce and Peirce offer insights relevant to the ferment in contemporary philosophy of science around the various forms of pluralism advocated by a number of philosophers (see Kellert, Longino, and Waters). “Pluralism” is the view that “plurality in science possibly represents an ineliminable character of scientific inquiry and knowledge (about at least some phenomena) . . . and that analysis of metascientific concepts (like theory, explanation, evidence) should reflect the possibility that the explanatory and investigative aims of science can best be achieved by sciences that are pluralistic, even in the long run” (Kellert, Logino, and Waters, ix–x). The topic of misconduct and deviance in science has been much discussed in the literature since the mid 1980s (Bechtel and Pearson). The issues are political, economic, social, ethical, and distinctly philosophical. The most fundamental question concerns the “nature of science” and the consequent query whether the scientific community has lost its way, betraying the foundations of its validity as an intellectual enterprise. As we shall see, this question clearly connects the issue of scientific fraud with discussions of pluralism in contemporary philosophy of science, which also concern epistemic validity. Thus, Horace Freeland Judson, in his book, The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science, asserts that “the scrutiny of the nature of fraud and other misconduct will reach to the heartbeat and pulse of what the sciences are and what scientists can do at this, the start of the millennium” (Judson 4). In addition to the questioning of science because of scientific fraud, science is under attack in a second way. Susan Haack, in her book, Defending Science—within Reason, discusses extensively

1 - Integration in Ecology

In this field guide, I distinguish five separate senses with which the term ‘mechanism’ is used in contemporary philosophy of science. Many of these senses have overlapping areas of application but involve distinct philosophical claims and characterize the target mechanisms in relevantly different ways. This field guide will clarify the key features of each sense and introduce some main debates, distinguishing those that transpire within a given sense from those that are best understood as concerning two distinct senses. The ‘new mechanisms’ sense is the primary sense from which other senses will be distinguished. In part II of this field guide, I consider three further senses of the term that are ontologically ‘flat’ or at least not explicitly hierarchical in character: equations in structural equation models of causation, causal‐physical processes, and information‐theoretic constraints on states available to systems. After characterizing each sense, I clarify its ontological commitments, its methodological implications, how it figures in explanations, its implications for reduction, and the key manners in which it differs from other senses of mechanism. I conclude that there is no substantive core meaning shared by all senses, and that debates in contemporary philosophy of science can benefit from clarification regarding precisely which sense of mechanism is at stake.