Logic Of Scientific Discovery Research Articles

Interrogative Reasoning and Discovery: a New Perspective on Kepler’s Inquiry.

In recent years, serious study of scientific discovery has begun to flourish again. Although the discussion has cleared up some issues, the field still is in need of a new kind of systematic approach. Such an approach should locate and justify the epistemic role of discovery within a larger theory of scientific practice, and its basic claims should receive support from historical and contemporary reports of actual scientific practice. Few proposals have even tried to realize these desiderata. Historical case studies do not usually address the systematic goals, while systematic studies are too abstract and idealized to accommodate the details of historical studies. Thus, models which attempt to mediate between these poles are needed. In this paper, I shall introduce a model which accords fairly well with the desiderata. Its conceptual core is the interrogative model of inquiry (I-Model, for short) which laakko Hintikka and his associates have been developing in recent years. I shall argue that the 1model offers a promising theory of scientific inquiry, and, in particular, that it can bring light to the structure of reasoning employed by working scientists. The main argument for this goes as follows. The model is founded on a precise logical theory. As a logical model of knowledge acquisition it can offer us something that the historical case studies of scientific discoveries have not offered: a logic of scientific discovery. On the other hand, I-model's account of the discovery process is less idealized than in previous systematic models of discovery. It thus captures more details of historical episodes. Consequently, the I-model forms a kind of synthesis between historical case studies and previous accounts of

The nature of science: A perspective from the philosophy of science

The nature of science: A perspective from the philosophy of science

From Epistemology to Rational Science Policy: Popper Versus Kuhn

FROM EPISTEMOLOGY TO RATIONAL SCIENCE POLICY: POPPER VERSUS KUHN G. G. PINTER and VERA PINTER* Socrates suggests . . . that, while one judgement cannot be truer than another, it can be better, in the sense of having better consequences. —Bertrand Russell [1] Introduction The great discoveries in physics in the early part of the 20th century demonstrated that scientific theories do not provide certainty. Philosophers of science who theretofore had felt secure in the edifice built on the seemingly solid foundations of Newtonian cosmology found themselves without shelter. One of the practical consequences of this upheaval was a collapse of the customary view that science progresses through gradual accumulation of proven and permanent truth. Among those who attempted to construct new frameworks for understanding the power and limitations of science after the second world war, Karl R. Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn exerted primary influence. Although Popper's first and seminal work, Logik der Forschung, was published in Vienna at the end of 1934 (inscribed with the year of publication of 1935), his influence on Western thought was felt only after 1959, when the much revised English translation of his book, Logic of Scientific Discovery was published [2, 3] . In his early years, he was associated with but was not a member ofthe Vienna Circle ( WienerKreis) ofphilosophers, whose logical positivism he criticized. He spent the war years in New Zealand and then taught at the London School of Economics. Thomas Kuhn, 20 years Popper'sjunior, taught at Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, and later at Princeton, where he was associated with the Institute for Advanced Studies. Correspondence: 9321 Dunloggin Road, Ellicott City, MD 21042. *Both authors are retired. Last affilations: for G.G.P., Physiology Group, Kings College, London (Strand), for V.P., Whipps Cross Hospital, London, UK.© 1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/98/4102-1046$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 41, 2 ¦ Winter 1998 291 His well-known book, The Structure of the Scientific Revolution, was published in 1962, and its second enlarged edition in 1970 [4]. In this paper we give a brief description of the views of both of these philosophers on science. By necessity, this description is restricted to their epistemologies and omits many details of the complex systems of thought which these philosophers contributed to epistemology. Next, we point out similarities and differences in their approaches and express our views on their philosophies. Finally, we note the potential consequences of their different views as they might apply to practical science policy. The Epistemological Theses ofPopper and Kuhn Falsification is the word that calls Popper's views into the mind of many scientists. Indeed, this is one of the essential points that separates his view from that of most other philosophers. Another distinguishing feature of his thoughts is that he does not accept induction as a means of arriving at scientific conclusions. According to Popper, scientific theories and hypotheses cannot be justified : no logic or experiment can establish that a scientific statement is true. On the other hand, a logical conclusion or rigorous experimental or other observation—if incompatible with the scientific statement—can demonstrate its falsity. Thus, scientific theories can be shown to be false, and science progresses not by a gradual increase of established true statements or theories, but by the elimination of false ones. Every false theory, in turn, is replaced by a new one which, in addition to explaining everything that the old theory explained, avoids the errors in the old theory and—most importantly—adds new aspects to it and opens new vistas on the problem in question. With the new vistas, new tests suggest themselves, so that the new theory can again be subjected to new tests. Theories which have successfully survived many such tests are considered to have been corroborated , but their truth has not been established, as they will be subjected to many more tests in the future which they may or may not survive. In this endless process, eventually all theories will fail and be replaced by better theories that give ever better description of how things work in nature. In Popper's view, the source of a new...

Karl Popper und das Wien seiner Zeit

Born in 1902, Karl R. Popper spent the first 33 years of his life in the city of Vienna, at that time the hot-house of Central- European culture and thought. He died in England. September 17, 1994. Unlike the empirical inductionists of the Vienna Circle, he preferred deductivist theorizing and the metaphysical realism (or objectivism) of the Boltzmann-Einstein School. Though he pleaded explicidy for a special method of ‘Verstehen’ in sociology, the reception of his methodology still takes place mainly with reference to the growth of knowledge in the natural sciences as reconstructed in The Logic of Scientific Discovery' (1959), neglecting his idea of ‘situational analysis’. Unlike the empirical inductionists of the Vienna Circle, he preferred deductivist theorizing and the metaphysical realism (or objectivism) of the Boltzmann- Einstein School.

Rethinking the Role and Status of Observation in Science Education

The publication of the first English translation of Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959 marked the end of a long period of stability in the philosophy of science and the beginning of a period of rapid development and change, marked by the work of Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Laudan, Putnam, and others. The late 1950s also marked the end of a long period of stability in the school science curriculum and the onset of the rapid curriculum developments of the 1960s and 1970s (the Nuffield and Schools Council courses in the U.K., PSSC Physics, Harvard Project Physics, BSCS, CBA, CHEM Study and others in the United States, and ASEP in Australia). Unfortunately, developments in the philosophy of science did not inform and guide developments in the science curriculum. Despite the growing number of books and articles dealing with the curricular implications of issues in the philosophy of science, science teachers and science curriculum developers remain surprisingly ill-informed about fundamental...

Marginalizing Discovery: Karl Popper's Intellectual roots in Psychology; Or, How the Study of Discovery Was Banned From Science Studies

Karl Popper's intellectual roots in psychology are shown to be decisive for his later dismissal of psychology in science studies. In 1928, Popper completed his doctorate under the supervision of the psychologist and psycholinguist Karl Buhler. Popper's dissertation addressed the question of methodology in the psychology of thinking. With his dissertation topic, Popper took up an issue that was central to the research tradition with which Buhler was affiliated—a tradition leading back to the work of the psychologist and initiator of the Wurzburg school, Oswald Kulpe. The work of Kulpe and Buhler is discussed, and the line of intellectual descent from Kulpe to Buhler to Popper is elaborated. Popper's first important philosophical manuscript was only partially published as his famous The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935/1959); the remaining parts, published only much later (1979), show Popper's transition from a psychologist with a strong inclination toward philosophy to a philosopher of science with a ba...

Creative Rationality: towards an Abductive Model of Scientific Change.

I argue for an abductive model of inference that embraces personal, cognitive processes and the social processes in which new conceptual schemes are negotiated and established, by showing that an abductive schema can be applied to patterns of inference ranging from perceptual inferences involved in the creation of new interpretative concepts to the construc­ tion of inclusive conceptual schemes. The advantages of the abductive scheme is that it shows where a novel insight or interpretation fits into a larger framework of mental, physical and social activity. It allows us to provide a rationale that links discovery to inductive and deductive patterns of inference without restricting our accounts to a particular logical fann. 1. Is there a logic of scientific discovery? Discovery implies the disclosure or the introduction of something new: a new molecular structure, say, or a new planet. It can also imply a substantial change in point of view: a gestalt-switch or a paradigln shift. To say that a process is scientific usually connotes some systematic if not logical prQcedure. But logics are incompatible with innovation. Years of research in artificial intelligence seem to confirm the paradox that Meno set Socrates in Plato's Meno. Plato defends Socrates' thesis that all knowledge is recollection by means of a thought experiment in which Socrates responds to a dilemma about inquiry. Someone posing a question either knows the answer (so would have no need to ask) or has no knowl­ edge of the answer (so would not be able to recognize the answer). The questioning is therefore pointless. Meno's uneducated slave boy is asked to construct a square double the size of a given square. In response to

Popper's Contribution to the Philosophy of Probability

Popper's writings cover a remarkably wide range of subjects. The spectrum runs from Plato's theory of politics to the foundations of quantum mechanics. Yet even amidst this variety the philosophy of probability occupies a prominent place. David Miller once pointed out to me that more than half of Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery is taken up with discussions of probability. I checked this claim using the 1972 6th revised impression of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and found that of the approximately 450 pages of text, approximately 250 are to do with probability. Thus Miller's claim is amply justified. It seems indeed that the philosophy of probability was one of Popper's favourite subjects, and, as we shall see, Popper certainly enriched the field with several striking innovations. In this area, as in others, Popper held very definite views, and criticized his opponents in no uncertain terms. Popper was an objectivist and anti-Bayesian, and his criticisms were directed against subjectivism and Bayesianism.

Social Epistemology Meets the Invisible Hand: Kitcher on the Advancement of Science

Philip Kitcher's new book is very ambitious in scope, more ambitious, certainly, than any of his previous books. Unlike Kitcher's Abusing Science: The Case against Creationism (1982), this is not a book that focusses on just one single issue in contemporary science or educational policy; nor is it, like his The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge (1983) and Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature (1985), a book that emphasizes just one relatively narrow philosophical topic. The Advancement of Science presents a complete, and quite general, position within the philosophy of natural science. Its purpose is much closer to Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) or even to Nagel's The Structure of Science (1961) than it is to any of Kitcher's earlier books. Kitcher starts off with an explicit epistemology, moves to a “goal” for science based on that epistemology, and then uses this epistemic goal as the target for the various methodological and social or institutional strategies that he offers.

Karl Popper’s Theory of Science and Econometrics: The Rise and Decline of Social Engineering

Karl Popper is, in general, best known for his Logik der Forschung, translated into English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1972b], an antipositivist work that, ironically, first appeared in 1934 as one of the Vienna Circle Schriften. It is there that he first developed his falsification thesis-that component of Popper's theory of science that has held sway over economists and social scientists in the second half of the twentieth century. Although Terence Hutchison first introduced economists to Karl Popper's ideas in 1938 in his Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory, Popper seems to have been far more influential in econometrics than in any other field in economics. Popper gave the new field its animus; but, unlike developments in other fields, his ideas were integrated into economic theory without reference to him or his works. Consequently, Popper's influence on econometrics has gone virtually unnoticed. A similiar fate has befallen the early econometricians' dreams (inspired by Popper's philosophy of science) of developing a tool of social engineering for the betterment of society.

Methodology, Epistemology and Conventions: Popper's Bad Start

Popper's philosophy is founded on his early conceptions of the problem of demarcation, of its solution, and of the roles of epistemology and methodology. I shall give an account of these, and of his idea of the alternative, ‘naturalistic’ conceptions. I then hope to show that Popper's conceptions are confused. At the beginning of The Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper tells us that “the task of the logic of scientific discovery, or the logic of knowledge, [is]… to analyse the method of the empirical sciences” (Popper 1959, 27), and that its first job is “to put forward a concept of empirical science, in order to make linguistic usage, now somewhat uncertain, as definite as possible, and in order to draw a clear line of demarcation between science and metaphysical ideas” (1959, 38-39).

Popper's views on natural and social science

This book offers a straightforward account of Sir Karl Popper's views on scientific methodology ranging from Logik der Forschung in 1934 to A World of Propensities in 1990. Part I covers his treatment of the interrelations between metaphysics and science, the fallacies of induction, the method of conjectures and refutations, evolutionary epistemology, the propensity theory of probability, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Part II considers the problems of the social sciences, his critiques of historicism and holistic planning, his defence of piecemeal planning on both scientific and humanist grounds, his method of situational logic based on models that use a 'rationality principle', and the roles of institutions, traditions and history. The book is addressed to those who are interested in general problems of scientific method but find it difficult to get a clear or connected view of Popper's important contributions because these have been published over long intervals and have been subject to misinterpretations.

Discussion: Getting The Constraints on Popper's Probability Functions Right

Shown here is that a constraint used by Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) for calculating the absolute probability of a universal quantification, and one introduced by Stalnaker in “Probability and Conditionals” (1970, 70) for calculating the relative probability of a negation, are too weak for the job. The constraint wanted in the first case is in Bendali (1979) and that wanted in the second case is in Popper (1959).

Conventionalism, scientific discovery and the sociology of knowledge*

Abstract In this paper the basic aim of the so‐called ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of knowledge is examined. The ‘strong programme’ is considered (and rightly so) as an extreme version of the anti‐realist view of science. While the problem of scientific realism has normally been dealt with from the point of view of the ‘context of justification’ of theories, the paper focuses on the issues raised by law‐discovery. In this context Herbert Simon's views about the existence of a ‘logic of scientific discovery’ are discussed and criticized. The main thesis of the paper is that if the structure of both discovery and prediction is properly understood, then the basic anti‐realist claims become untenable. A fortiori, the ‘strong programme’ appears to be unable to explain some basic features of the structure of science.

ON CORROBORATION: A REPLY TO CARPENTER.

CladisticsVolume 8, Issue 3 p. 265-273 Free Access ON CORROBORATION: A REPLY TO CARPENTER Daniel P. Faith, Daniel P. Faith Division of Wildlife and Ecology, CSIRO, P.O. Box 84, Lyneham, ACT 2602, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author Daniel P. Faith, Daniel P. Faith Division of Wildlife and Ecology, CSIRO, P.O. Box 84, Lyneham, ACT 2602, AustraliaSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1992 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-0031.1992.tb00070.xCitations: 19AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL REFERENCES Arghie J.W.. 1989a. A randomization test for phylogenetic information in systematic data. Syst. Zool. 38: 219– 252. Arghie J.W.. 1989b. Phylogenies of plant families: a demonstration of phylogenetic randomness in DNA sequence data derived from proteins. Evolution 43: 1796– 1800. Bryant H.N.. 1989. An evaluation of cladistic and character analyses as hypotheticodeductive procedures, and the consequences for character weighting. Syst. Zool. 38: 214– 227. Bryant H.N.. 1992. The role of permutational probability tests in phylogenetic systematics. Syst. Biol. 41: 258– 263. Carpenter J.M.. 1992. Random cladistics. Cladistics 8: 147– 153. Faith D.P.. 1990. Chance marsupial relationships. Nature 345: 393– 394. Faith D.P.. 1991. Cladistic permutation tests for monophyly and nonmonophyly. Syst. Zool. 40: 366– 375. Faith D.P. and P.S. Cranston. 1991. Could a cladogram this short have arisen by chance alone?: on permutation tests for cladistic structure. Cladistics 7: 1– 28. Faith D.P. and P.S. Cranston. 1992. Probability, parsimony and Popper. Syst. Biol. 41: 252– 257. Farris J.S.. 1983. The logical basis of phylogenetic analysis. In : N.I. Platnick and V.A. Funk, (eds.). Advances in Cladistics, Vol. 2. Columbia , New York . 7– 36. Gilinsky N.L.. 1991. Cross sections through evolutionary trees: theory and applications. Syst. Zool. 40: 1932. Harper C.W.. 1979. A Bayesian probability view of phylogenetic systematics. Syst. Zool. 28: 547– 553. Huelsenbeck J.P.. 1991. Tree-length distribution skewness: an indicator of phylogenetic information. Syst. Zool. 40: 257– 270. Oakes M., 1986. Statistical Inference: a Commentary for the Social and Behavioural Sciences. Wiley, New York . Popper K., 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson, London . Popper K., 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Harper & Row, New York . Sanderson M.J.. 1989. Confidence limits on phylogenies: the bootstrap revisited. Cladistics 5: 113– 129. West J.G. and D.P. Faith. 1990. Data, methods and assumptions in phylogenetic inference. Aust. Syst. Bot. 3: 9– 20. Citing Literature Volume8, Issue3September 1992Pages 265-273 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Progreso científico y verdad

The aim of this paper is to make a plea for a new philosophical approach, or a new meta-theoretic account altemative to the ones represented by realism and instrumentalism, in the Philosophy of Science, and that will enable us to be more successful both in dealing with a rational explanation of the process of scientific development as well as with the notion of truth that is implied by the former. This new approach is consistent with the epistemology of Logik der Forschung, goes along with T. Kuhn's contribution, and gets its most explicit formulation in the "internal realism" of the last Putnam. The argument takes the following steps: 1) 1 begin with a very brief mention of the neopositivist approach to scientific development, concluding at his point that if anything has survived in that account of scientific development it can only be the idea of "convergence", linked to the notion of "reduction". 2) The notion of convergence in K. Popper's work is then analysed, showing that this notion can be understood in two quite different senses, depending on whether what we mean is Popper in its Logik der Forschung or the tarskian Popper, i.e., the Popper of verisimilitude. 3) 1 show then that the only notion of convergence that necessarily follows from the Logik der Forschung is consistent with T. Kuhn's approach and will only be slightly qualified by him, in such a way that Kuhn's qualified notion of convergence fits perfectly well within the framework of a falsationist epistemology. The strong controversy historically held between Popper' s and Kuhn' s followers that originated from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn, can only be understood when we mean by Popper the tarskian Popper, and hold a misleading interpretation of Kuhn's work. 4) A new meta-theoric approach is reached both in connection with the analysis and explanation of scientific progress and with the not less troublesome concept of truth. This new approach is very akin to the "internal realism" held by Putnam from 1976 onwards. Within the framework of this new approach an epistemic notion of truth is contended for, while the goal of scientific development is now not the search for an "absolute", "objetive" truth, but the concrete achievement of the ideal coherence of the whole of our beliefs between themselves, the coherence of the whole of our beliefs with the whole of our experiences, taking our experiencesin the way they are represented in our system of beliefs.

Self-Destruction in the Promised Land: A Psychocultural Biology of American Suicide.

a growing interdisciplinary suicidology developed its own journals and national association. From the earliest scientific studies of suicide, we have been confronted with the fact that a skein of threads are woven together to produce the final dramatic outcome. It has long been observed that environmental factors, cultural ormentality features, and specific personality or intrapsychic factors are all to be observed as significant and interacting in the outcome. Within the past decade, an additional facet of the individual committing has been elucidated in the form of biological factors manifested in biochemical changes in the central nervous system and genetic patterns. In the present volume Kushner, a historian, has attempted, as his subtitle indicates, a synthesis of these disparate influences to produce a unified theory of the occurrence of in the United States. To dramatize his theory and give it an innovative spin, Kushner has repeatedly argued that a specialization has been at work in the study of suicide, driving apart sociological, psychoana¬ lytic, and biological views and findings in relation to suicide. The atomization of American experts' views on was influenced more profoundly by the requirements of professionalization and specialization than ... by the logic of scientific discovery (p 10). UsingDurkheim, Freud, and Kraepelin as the fig¬ ureheads for his proposition, he argues that they and their followers pursued their insights in a single-minded man¬ (p 93) and rejected eclectic ap¬ proaches to behaviors like suicide (p 53). Presenting few data to support this contention, he offers the opinions of fel¬ low historians David J. Rothman (p 53) and Gerald N. Grob (p 51) in evidence. Kushner argues that since the late 19th century, three fundamentally dif¬ fering explanations of have been advanced: Sociologists have claimed that is a social disease; psychoanalysts have assumed it results from intrapsychic conflicts; while neuropsychiatrists have insisted that is an organic disorder (p 90). Kushner's view is an exaggeration and a distortion of a field that has been fundamentally interdisciplinary since its inception and has wrestledmightily with the problem of integrating the obvious contributing elements of society, historical events, and the individual. Nevertheless, Kush¬ ner makes important contributions in attempting his synthesis. He points out thatmigrants in the United States have been particularly prone to suicide, both foreigners coming to the United States and new settlers arriving in the West.

In Defense of Popperian Falsification

McGuire, W. J. (1989). A perspective approach to the strategic planning of programmatic scientific research. In B. Gholson, W. R. Shadish, R. A. Neimeyer, & A. C. Houts (Eds.), Psychology of science (pp. 214245). New York: Cambridge University Press. Meehl, P. E. (1967). Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox. Philosophy of Science, 34, 103-115. Meehl, P. E. (1986). What social scientists don't understand. In D. W. Fiske & R. A. Shweder (Eds.), Metatheory in social science: Plualisms and subjectivi ies (pp. 315-338). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. New York: Basic. (Original work published 1934-1935) Quine, W. V. (1951). Two dogmas of empiricism. Philosophical Review, 60, 20-43. Stegmueller, W. (1976). The structure and dynamics of theories. New York: Springer-Verlag.

A Unified Three-Dimensional Framework of Theory Construction and Development in Sociology

Popper's logic of scientific discovery and Kuhn 's paradigm switches in science have been considered competing schools of thought in the philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge. In the present paper the author establishes a unified three-dimensional framework that synthesizes the quintessential ideas of these schools. Theories are tested for confirmation or falsification in the first dimension; their scope conditions are defined and redefined in the second dimension; and they replace their predecessors to become a dominant theory or possibly even a new paradigm in the third dimension. The development of fertility theory is examined in the three-dimensional framework. This framework helps us understand important aspects of theory construction, and thereby shed light on how to build viable sociological theory. Also discussed are majorproblems in formulating sociological theory. The overcoming of these problems is a necessary condition for a theory to be examined in the three-dimensionalframework, and thereby to become a candidate of a new theoretical paradigm.

Losing Patients: Culture, Consumption and Popular Ideas about Science and Medicine

Traditionally, historians of science maintained that science is fundamentally distinct from other social enterprises and that unlike other fields it followed distinct laws. There was a logic of scientific discovery, based on experimental method, theory and verification, that determined path of science.l Especially in the decades following the explosion of the atomic bomb, as the physical and biological sciences emerged as major forces in shaping American culture and politics, such views were widely accepted. Over the course of the past three decades, however, a prolonged discourse has evolved among historians of science about the relationship between social and scientific knowledge. In contrast to earlier formulations, some have argued that science is fundamentally a social enterprise, intimately intertwined with the values, social assumptions, and intellectual traditions of a particular historical moment. In its most extreme, science is no more than a reflection of social and economic relationships rooted in place and time. Among medical historians, the general argument over the social and scientific dimensions of knowledge has a special resonance: so much of the field is necessarily attentive to social relationships among patients, physicians, institutional actors, and state and private funding agencies. Especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s there was no shortage of heated debate in the pages of the two American medical history journals about the relationship of the history of medicine to society.2 Yet, interestingly, the field of medical history seems to have put aside this debate between internalists and externalists. In 1985, John Harley Warner