The texts available here are all on the subject of the History and Philosophy of Science. They include essays on Galileo and his work, on concepts used throughout the philosophy of science and on famous problems such as the demarcation between science and non-science. We also include several e-texts of important works in the discipline.
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I thought it would be kind of fun and also an opportunity for some lovely history lessons to start this thread.
The gaps in our…
Those who have followed the on and off discussion here about intelligent design, and the discussions about the philosopher Bradley Monton’s take on the Dover…In calculus we've been looking at the mean value theorem, which states that, on a continuous interval, the slope of the secant line between a…Local realism is a two-pronged thesis: “Local” means that objects can only be influenced by their immediate surroundings; this idea is well supported by relativity…For two thousands years, proof was synthetic proof. When algebra symbols invented in 16 and 17 centuries, synthetic proofs replaced by algebraic proofs. After non-Euclidian…Traditionally, historians date the birth of science to 1660, when the Royal Society was founded in London by the followers of Francis Bacon. They proposed…The philosopher Bradley Monton has a new paper at The Philosophy of Science Archive, McTaggart and Modern Physics.
I haven't had a chance to read…Because physicists haven't been able to specificy where, in the relativity of simultaneity, Einstein uses "practical geometry"--which is his brand of constructivist mathematics--they haven't been…(A short introduction I wrote a few years ago...)
The debate over adaptation is an interesting one. The standard story due to Darwin is that…A key issue for philosophers of biology is the notion of evolutionary progress: can we say that progress has taken place as a result of… The Manuscripts
The trial and resulting abjuration of Galileo before the Holy Congregation of the Catholic Church at the convent of Minerva on the 22nd of June,…Non-Intellectual Contexts
From his time as a student (Drake, 2001: 17), Galileo had been known as someone who willingly opposed orthodoxy. Even so, the social…Intellectual Contexts
Galileo's work and the criticism it faced were not just rhetoric, politics and patronage. In this second section we shall look at Galileo's…The Trial and its Development
Urban VIII and Politics
The reception of the Dialogue among Galileo's friends was enthusiastic (XIV, 357), as could have been…Consequences
So it was that the trial and its inevitable result established what had already been determined in 1616 by Bellarmine's blinkered approach, wherein he…As explained in the extended essay, the Galileo Affair is well known for giving rise to mythical interpretations. Although the reading that portrays Galileo…The so-called Galileo Affair occurred within a variety of contexts, some – like the invention of the telescope – recent and some with an…Ockham’s Razor, otherwise called the principle of the economy of thought, is invoked often in debate, usually to discount one or more theories on the…In this short essay I discuss the various forms of falsificationism, particularly insofar as it functions as a proposed answer to the demarcation problem;…According to one understanding of the so-called Galileo Affair, the old system of geocentrism was challenged by the new observations made possible by Galileo’s…Suppose we have an idea about world and put it to the test. Our discussion of falsificationism looked at what we can conclude from…A familiar sight in the philosophy of science is reference to the underdetermination of theories by the available evidence. In this short paper we will…Arguments for proliferation as a methodological principle are often associated with the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend (1999) but they date back at least to…Perhaps one of the least understood arguments in the philosophy of science, Paul Feyerabend's reductio ad absurdum of specific rationalist conceptions of scientific method is…According to lore, Imre Lakatos was an excellent speaker and a highly amusing one. (He would often listen in on Paul Feyerabend's talks from…Practitioners of a strange trade, friends, enemies, ladies and gentlemen: Before starting with my talk, let me explain to you how it came into existence.…The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it…While the existence of presuppositions in cannot be denied - indeed, some of their aspects have been central preoccupations of philosophers for more than three…
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