scholarly journals Czy teza o niedookreśleniu teorii przez dane doświadczenia czyni sukcesy nauki cudem?

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-74
Author(s):  
Mateusz Kotowski
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Quantum Revolution

In his book Struktura rewolucji relatywistycznej i kwantowej w fizyce [The Structure of Relativistic and Quantum Revolution in Physics] Wojciech Sady presents a view on the thesis of underdetermination, according to which it should be regarded as a pseudoproblem of contemporary philosophy of science. I reject this view and suggest that Sady’s argumentation against the thesis of underdetermination is tantamount to attacking a straw man. This is because he argues against its correctness by pointing to the incorrectness of the conclusions he unjustifiably draws from it.

scholarly journals Struktura rewolucji relatywistycznej i kwantowej w fizyce, czyli o systematyczności badań naukowych i roli kantyzmu we współczesnej filozofii nauki

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Marek Sikora
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Quantum Revolution

The article is a voice in the discussion on Wojciech Sady’s book Struktura rewolucji relatywistycznej i kwantowej w fizyce [The Structure of Relativistic and Quantum Revolution in Physics]. The author points out that the central idea of this book directly refers to the works of Thomas Kuhn, who emphasized the role of revolutions in the process of scientific development. Sady criticizes this position, claiming that the development of science is primarily determined by systematic research. The author also argues with Sady’s thesis that an important consequence of the relativistic and quantum revolution in physics is the fundamental questioning of the value of Kant’s philosophy. The text tries to show that Kantism is still present in contemporary philosophy of science.

The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Hoinski ◽  
Ronald Polansky
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Michael Polanyi ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Theoretical Science

David Hoinski and Ronald Polansky’s “The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism” shows how the general tendencies of contemporary philosophy of science disclose a return to the Aristotelian emphasis on both the formation of dispositions to know and the role of the mind in theoretical science. Focusing on a comparison of Michael Polanyi and Aristotle, Hoinski and Polansky investigate to what degree Aristotelian thought retains its purchase on reality in the face of the changes wrought by modern science. Polanyi’s approach relies on several Aristotelian assumptions, including the naturalness of the human desire to know, the institutional and personal basis for the accumulation of knowledge, and the endorsement of realism against objectivism. Hoinski and Polansky emphasize the promise of Polanyi’s neo-Aristotelian framework, which argues that science is won through reflection on reality.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Reutlinger ◽  
Juha Saatsi
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Covering Law

What is a scientific explanation? This has been a central question in philosophy of science at least since Hempel and Oppenheim’s pivotal attempt at an answer in 1948 (also known as the covering-law model of explanation; Hempel 1965: chapter 10). It is no surprise that this question has retained its place at the heart of contemporary philosophy of science, given that it is one of the sciences’ key aims to provide ...

Explanation Beyond Causation

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Causal Information ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Wide Range

Explanations are very important to us in many contexts: in science, mathematics, philosophy, and also in everyday and juridical contexts. But what is an explanation? In the philosophical study of explanation, there is long-standing, influential tradition that links explanation intimately to causation: we often explain by providing accurate information about the causes of the phenomenon to be explained. Such causal accounts have been the received view of the nature of explanation, particularly in philosophy of science, since the 1980s. However, philosophers have recently begun to break with this causal tradition by shifting their focus to kinds of explanation that do not turn on causal information. The increasing recognition of the importance of such non-causal explanations in the sciences and elsewhere raises pressing questions for philosophers of explanation. What is the nature of non-causal explanations—and which theory best captures it? How do non-causal explanations relate to causal ones? How are non-causal explanations in the sciences related to those in mathematics and metaphysics? This volume of new essays explores answers to these and other questions at the heart of contemporary philosophy of explanation. The essays address these questions from a variety of perspectives, including general accounts of non-causal and causal explanations, as well as a wide range of detailed case studies of non-causal explanations from the sciences, mathematics and metaphysics.

Adaptive Design, Contingency, and Ontological Principles for Limited Beings

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 871-881
Author(s):  
Daniel S. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Adaptive Design ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Transcendental Arguments ◽  
Productive Role

Transcendental arguments are not popular in contemporary philosophy of science. They are typically seen as antinaturalistic and incapable of providing explanatory force in accounting for natural phenomena. However, when viewed as providing (certain types of) intelligibility to complicated concepts used in scientific reasoning, a concrete and productive role is recoverable for transcendental reasoning in philosophy of science. In this article I argue that the resources, and possibly the need, for such a role are available within a thoroughly naturalistic framework garnered from the work of Hasok Chang and William Wimsatt.

UNFOLDING PARALLEL REASONING IN ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahid Rahman ◽  
Muhammad Iqbal
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence ◽  
Parallel Reasoning

AbstractOne of the epistemological results emerging from this initial study is that the different forms of co-relational inference, known in the Islamic jurisprudence as qiyās, represent an innovative and sophisticated form of reasoning that not only provides new epistemological insights into legal reasoning in general but also furnishes a fine-grained pattern for parallel reasoning which can be deployed in a wide range of problem-solving contexts and does not seem to reduce to the standard forms of analogical argumentation studied in contemporary philosophy of science. However, in the present paper we will only discuss the case of so-called co-relational inferences of the occasioning factor and only in the context of Islamic jurisprudence.

Missing Elements: What Philosophers of Science Might Discover in Chemistry

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Woody ◽  
Clark Glymour
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Top Quark ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Ideal Gas ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Special Value

In the late middle ages, chemistry was the science and technology closest to philosophy, the material realization of the method of analysis and synthesis. No longer. Contemporary philosophy is concerned with many sciences—physics, psychology, biology, linguistics, economics—but chemistry is not among them. Why not? Every discipline has particular problems with some philosophical coloring. Those in quantum theory are famous; those in psychology seem endless; those in biology and economics seem more sparse and esoteric. If, for whatever reason, one’s concern is the conceptual or theoretical problems of a particular science, there is no substitute for that science, and chemistry is just one among others. Certain sciences naturally touch on substantive areas of traditional philosophical concern: quantum theory on metaphysics, for example, psychology on the philosophy of mind, and economics and statistics on theories of rationality. In these cases, there is a special interest in particular sciences because they may reform prior philosophical theories or recast philosophical issues or, conversely, because philosophy may inform these subjects in fundamental ways. That is not true, in any obvious way, of chemistry. So what good, then, what special value, does chemistry offer contemporary philosophy of science? Typically philosophical problems, even problems in philosophy of science, are not confined to a particular science. For general problems—problems about representation, inference, discovery, explanation, realism, intertheoretic and interdisciplinary relations, and so on—what is needed are scientific illustrations that go to the heart of the matter without requiring specialized technical knowledge of the reader. The science needed for most philosophy is familiar, not esoteric, right in the middle of things, mature and diverse enough to illustrate a variety of fundamental issues. Almost uniquely, chemistry fits the description. In philosophy of science, too often an effort gains in weight and seriousness merely because it requires mastery of an intricate and arcane subject, regardless of the philosophical interest of what it says. Yet, surely, there is something contrived, even phony, in illustrating a philosophical point with a discussion of the top quark if the point could be shown as well with a discussion of the ideal gas law.

Biological Teleology in Contemporary Science

1998 ◽  
pp. 309-316
Author(s):  
Spas Spassov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Scientific Mind

Continuous controversies about how Aristotle's teleological biology relates to modern biological science address some widely debated questions in contemporary philosophy of science. Three main groups of objections made by contemporary science against Aristotle's biology can be identified: 1) Aristotle's biological teleology is too anthropomorphic; 2) the idea is tied too substance based; 3) Aristotle's final ends contradict the mechanistic spirit of modern science, which is looking for physical causes. There are two ways of dealing with these objections. The first consists in showing misinterpretations of Aristotle's thought that underlie these arguments. A second line of defense explores the idea that teleological concepts are not only incorporated and widely used in contemporary science, but that in fact biology does not have to renounce teleology in order to reconcile with the modern scientific mind. I suggests that a complete understanding of complex biological phenomena can only be achieved by combining different approaches to this issue.

Contemporary Philosophy and Philosophy of Science

1951 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-222
Author(s):  
John Stokes Adams,
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy

scholarly journals Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 1833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Yaman Abdin ◽  
Claus Jacob ◽  
Lena Kästner
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Diagrams ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
In Vivo Effects ◽  
Shed Light

Talk of mechanisms is ubiquitous in the natural sciences. Interdisciplinary fields such as biochemistry and pharmacy frequently discuss mechanisms with the assistance of diagrams. Such diagrams usually depict entities as structures or boxes and activities or interactions as arrows. While some of these arrows may indicate causal or componential relations, others may represent temporal or operational orders. Importantly, what kind of relation an arrow represents may not only vary with context but also be underdetermined by empirical data. In this manuscript, we investigate how an analysis of pharmacological mechanisms in terms of producing and underlying mechanisms—as discussed in the contemporary philosophy of science—may shed light on these issues. Specifically, we shall argue that while pharmacokinetic mechanisms usually describe causal chains of production, pharmacodynamics tends to focus on mechanisms of action underlying the in vivo effects of a drug. Considering the action of thyroid gland hormones in the human body as a case study, we further demonstrate that pharmacodynamic schemes tend to incorporate entities and interactions on multiple levels. Yet, traditional pharmacodynamic schemes are sketched “flat”, i.e., non-hierarchically. We suggest that transforming flat pharmacodynamic schemes into mechanistic multi-level representations may assist in disentangling the different kinds of mechanisms and relations depicted by arrows in flat schemes. The resulting Baumkuchen model provides a powerful and practical alternative to traditional flat schemes, as it explicates the relevant mechanisms and relations more clearly. On a more general note, our discussion demonstrates how pharmacology and related disciplines may benefit from applying concepts from the new mechanist philosophy to guide the interpretation of scientific diagrams.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document