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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Okay, I started writing this in Steve's thread and decided it's more suitable in it's own thread. Anyway, I fully expect a full flogging in…
In his famous work The Mechanization of the World Picture, E.J. Dijksterhuis described in great detail the development of the so-called mechanical philosophy from its…This is a brief, and necessarily extremely simplified, survey of the two-slit experiment. Much more information about it is available in books and on the…At the Edge, Paul Davies’ recent NY Times essay, Taking Science on Faith, has been posted, followed by a string of responses. The respondents are…This is, in a way, a response to the Monton interview thread but I thought I should avoid derailing that thread.
But rather than calling…A new interview is now available - Bradley Monton: Debating the Philosophy of Science. Some excerpts:
QuoteWe’d be much better off as a society if…The Age of HPS
Greetings again GL! Could people on this list please help me out with a brief history of HPS? Who were the…For quite some time I’ve enjoyed the works of the contemporary philosopher Bradley Monton. After the decision in the Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area…One of the reasons I originally became interested in the history and philosophy of science was what I perceived to be its application to many…From this site:
QuoteIndeed, it can happen that a theory is incorrect in an important way but there is no experimental way of knowing this.… 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…My Very Reverend Father,
I have gladly read the letter in Italian and the treatise which Your Reverence sent me, and I thank you for…To the Most Serene Grand Duchess Mother:
Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had…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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