0748622144.Edinburgh.University.Press.Philosophy.of.Science.A-Z.Mar.2007

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Philosophy of Science A–Z
Stathis Psillos
Edinburgh University Press
To my students
Stathis Psillos, 2007
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon
by TechBooks India, and printed and
bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts
A CIP record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2214 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 2033 3 (paperback)
The right of Stathis Psillos
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published with the support of the Edinburgh University Scholarly
Publishing Initiatives Fund.
C
Contents
Series Editor’s Preface
vii
Introduction and Acknowledgements
ix
Note on Notation
xiii
Philosophy of Science A–Z
1
Bibliography
266
Series Editor’s Preface
Science is often seen as consisting of facts and theories, but
precisely how the facts relate to the theories, and what is a
fact and what is a theory have long been the subject matter of
philosophy. Throughout its history scientists have raised the-
oretical questions that fall broadly within the purview of the
philosopher, and indeed from quite early on it was not always
easy to distinguish between philosophers and scientists. There
has been a huge expansion of science in modern times, and
the rapid development of new theories and methodologies has
led to an equally rapid expansion of theoretical and especially
philosophical techniques for making sense of what is taking
place. One notable feature of this is the increasingly techni-
cal and specialized nature of philosophy of science in recent
years. As one might expect, philosophers have been obliged to
replicate to a degree the complexity of science in order to de-
scribe it from a conceptual point of view. It is the aim of Stathis
Psillos in this book to explain the key terms of the vocabulary
of contemporary philosophy of science. Readers should be
able to use the book as with others in the series, to help them
orient themselves through the subject, and every effort has
been made to represent clearly and concisely its main features.
Oliver Leaman
Introduction and
Acknowledgements
Philosophy of science emerged as a distinctive part of philos-
ophy in the twentieth century. Its birthplace was continental
Europe, where the neat Kantian scheme of synthetic a priori
principles that were supposed to be necessary for the very pos-
sibility of experience (and of science, in general) clashed with
the revolutionary changes within the sciences and mathemat-
ics at the turn of the twentieth century. The systematic study
of the metaphysical and epistemological foundations of sci-
ence acquired great urgency and found its formative moment
in the philosophical work of a group of radical and innovative
thinkers – the logical positivists – that gathered around Moritz
Schlick in Vienna in the 1920s.
The central target of philosophy of science is to under-
stand science as cognitive activity. Some of the central ques-
tions that have arisen and thoroughly been discussed are the
following. What is the aim and method of science? What
makes science a rational activity? What rules, if any, govern
theory-change in science? How does evidence relate to the-
ory? How do scientific theories relate to the world? How are
concepts formed and how are they related to observation?
What is the structure and content of major scientific concepts,
such as causation, explanation, laws of nature, confirma-
tion, theory, experiment, model, reduction and so on? These
kinds of questions were originally addressed within a formal
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