Carl G. Hempel was of the most influential proponents of what is now regarded as the classic view of explanation in science. In his work, Philosophy of Natural Science, he created the deductive-nomological model which is the following account of scientific explanation, where an explanation is set out as a formalized argument. This is the principle format for works such as Aristotle’s Physica, Ptolemy’s Almagest, Newton’s Principia and Opticks, Franklin’s Electricity, Lavoisie’s Chemistry, and Lyell’s Geology. Thomas Kuhn calls these achievements Paradigms. Through these paradigms normal science developed. In Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argues that normal science in a way hinders the development of new phenomenon. He says that there must be a change in a paradigm to create a scientific revolution. Throughout this essay I will explain what Hempel’s model consists of and how it relates to Kuhn’s view.
Hepel explains the process of explaining atmospheric pressure by starting from the beginning with Galileo’s interest in the limitations of a simple suction pump. Galileo’s observation was that a simple suction pump, which draws water form a well by means of a piston that can be raised in the pump barrel, will lift water no higher than about 34 feet above the surface of the well. After Galileo’s death, his pupil Torricelli pursued this dilemma. Torricelli argued that the earth is surrounded by a sea of air that exerts pressure on the surface below, and that this pressure upon the surface of the well forces water up the pump barrel when the piston is raised. The maximum length of 34 feet for the water column in the barrel thus reflects simply the total pressure of the atmosphere upon the surface o...
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...black four of hearts. When these cards were first exposed briefly they were almost always identified as normal. So the cards were immediately fitted into one of the conceptual categories based on prior experience. However, when the subjects were exposed to the anomalous cards more often however, they began to hesitate. After having become aware of the anomaly it was not uncommon for the subjects to get irritated and distressed. Further increase of exposure resulted in sill more hesitation and confusion until finally most subjects produced the correct identification without hesitation.
There is really no possible way I could contradict Kuhn’s view. I think his ideas are true and could dramatically increase the possibilities of scientists’ ability to create new advances in science. I believe that all scientists should view their work in kuhn’s perspective.
Since the mid-20th century, a central debate in the philosophy of science is the role of epistemic values when evaluating its bearing in scientific reasoning and method. In 1953, Richard Rudner published an influential article whose principal argument and title were “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments” (Rudner 1-6). Rudner proposed that non-epistemic values are characteristically required when making inductive assertions on the rationalization of scientific hypotheses. This paper aims to explore Rudner’s arguments and Isaac Levi’s critique on his claims. Through objections to Levi’s dispute for value free ideal and highlighting the importance of non-epistemic values within the tenets and model development and in science and engineering,
At the turning of our century the science of the inert world, i.e. physics and chemistry, discovered phenomena that compelled the scientists to revise old deterministic patterns of explanation wich became controversial, and to look for new ones. During our century concepts like natural law, order, certainty became a matter of doubt for both theoretical and experimental scientists. Almost concomitantly biologists discovered that life phenomena had to be approached as chains of changes, so that the concept of creation was to be redefined together with the concept of order. Similar changes were recorded in the social sciences wich are dealing with animal and human collectivities. Finally, the uncontroversial model of exactness, mathematics, had refine its tools in order to tackle the problems issued from empirical sciences and to use efficiently the amazing facilities provided by electronic computational devices.
Directions: Read the essay entitled The Scientific Revolution: The Disenchanting of the Universe and respond to each of the following questions as thoroughly as possible. Your answers can be either hand-written (in ink) or word-processed. However, you must paraphrase—answer in your own words. If you quote directly from the essay, you should then interpret the quote.
Kuhn characterizes most of ‘normal science’ as something he likes to refer to as ‘mop-up work’. To him, ‘normal science’ means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice. (Kuhn, Page 10) In other words, he’s talking about theories, which act as building blocks for future research. These theories are recounted by scientific textbooks in elementary and university that explain in depth the body of the accepted theory, describe many or all of its successful applications along with any observations or experiments performed. These achievements must share two very special characteristics, one being that it must be sufficiently unique to attract a group of scientists away from competing modes of scientific activity and that it is also open ended to leave all different kinds of problems for future groups of scientists and their students to research and resolve. These achievements that fulfill the two requirements are called paradigms. Students study these paradigms in order to become members of a particular scientific community that they wish to eventually practice in. There is very seldom disagreement over the fundamentals of specific paradigms as students learn from researchers who have themselves learned from the bases of their field. Therefore, all students and researchers whose research is based on the same paradigm must be committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. How are paradigms born though? First scientific inquiry begins with a random collection of facts, then different researchers confronting the same phenomena describe and interpret them in differ...
Revolutionary science, however, does not occur all the time. Before a revolution can occur, scientists conduct routine tests and experiments within the commonly held paradigm. This state of puzzle-solving is known as “normal science.” When the scientist carries out...
Before Kuhn’s book was written, the commonly held position by scientists and philosophers of science, such as Mach and Otswald , about the structure of science; was that it involved linear progression as a result of an incremental accumulation of knowledge from the activities undertaken by members of the scientific community. They thought that as generations of scientists observed more and more, their understanding of a particular scientific fact would become better refined through an ever growing stockpile of facts, theories and methods. The aim of the historian of science would be to pin point the man and the moment in time a further discovery was made; whilst also describing the obstacles that inhibited scientific progression.
A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn. "Science and Non science: Defining the Boundary." Part 1. Pages 6-19. [...]
...tful and thought provoking opinions on scientific realism. Each perspective explains science in its own unique way. As a result, I was drawn to know how entity realism defines success in science. According to Steven French, success for entity realism depends on more than just the “supposed truth of theories”. Entity realist defines success as the ability for us to “intervene in the world”. This intervention enables us to create new technologies and observe new phenomena. Our new technologies allow us to believe in unobservable entities like electrons. I found this to be important because this is essentially a description of scientist’s day-to-day task. It is their job to identify phenomena, research it and come up with an explanation of why the phenomena occurs. Scientist spend their entire careers intervening in hopes to grasp a better understanding of the world.
In “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice,” Thomas Kuhn responds to critics who claim that his view of science is relativist. They claim that according to his view, theory choice is solely a matter of subjective opinion rather than one that should be based on objective reasons and facts. In response, Kuhn argues that objective criteria alone are not sufficient to choose a good scientific theory. Rather, theory choice consists of both objective criteria and subjective factors. In this paper, I aim to argue that Kuhn’s view of theory choice does reflect how scientists choose theories and that it is not a relativist view. However, his view of how science works is ultimately still relativist because of his notion of incommensurability.
In this paper, I will explain three theories on how to solve the demarcation problem, or the problem of distinguishing between science and non-science, and how all three of them need to be combined in order to truly solve this problem. First, I will explain each of the three different theories proposed by A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, and Paul Thagard, these philosopher’s arguments for each of these theories, and an example of using each theory. Then, I will explain why all three of these theories need to be combined by showing examples of how each individual theory incorrectly categorizes something as scientific. Next, I will show how these three theories together can correctly distinguish science from non-science. Finally, I will explain various refutations to this argument and defend against them. Demarcation is important, because only science can be proven or disproven by facts of nature. All non-science are just theories created by man – hypotheses that cannot be supported by reality.
This essay aims to discuss the problems of the common view of science which was presented by Alan Chalmers by Popperian's view and my personal opinions. Chalmers gives his opinion about what science is and the judgment will be made in this essay through the Popperian hypothetico-deductive and my arguments will be presented in this essay. Popperian is an important philosopher of science who developed hypothetico-deductive method, which is also known as falsificationism. In my opinion, I disagree Chlamer points of view of science and this will be present in essay later. I will restrict my arguments into three parts due to the word limitation. Three aspects will be discussed in this essay: justifying the view through the Popper's view, my agreement about the Popper's objections and additional personal opinions.
Kuhn’s book was focused on the scientific world. He said that normal science “means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievments, achievments thatsome particular scientific community aacknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice” (Kuhn 10). These achievments needed to be unprecedented and open-ended so as to attract a group away from competing ideas and to leave all sorts of problems for this group to resolve. these achievments are called paradigms. a paradigm is defined by Kuhn as “an accepted canon of scientific practice, including laws, theory, applications, and instrumentation, that provides a model for a particular coherent tradition of scientific research” (Trigger 5).
The two fundamental components of Kuhn’s proposition of scientific revolutions are the concepts of paradigms and paradigm shifts. He defines paradigms as “sufficiently unprecedented [theories] to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity” (Kuhn, 10). Through this interpretation, Kuhn constructs the argument that possessing the ability to convince other scientists to agree with a novel proposal serves as the most crucial aspect for establishing scientific advancement. Kuhn reasons that the task of discovering “one full, objective, true account of nature” remains to be highly improbable (Kuhn...
... been the underlying factor in many scientific advancements. Morris believes that, "It is an empiricism which, because of this orientation and the use of powerful tools of logical analysis, has become positive in temper and co-operative in attitude and is no longer condemned to the negative skeptical task of showing defects in the methods and results of its opponents(Neurath68)." The great accomplishments of Brahe, Kepler, Newton and the many others are due to the advancement of scientific empiricism.
This essay will discuss differences in motives which have driven ancient and modern science, arguing that 17th century alterations of power structures led to the ultimate division between modern and ancient science and the eruption of modern science as it is today. Comparisons will be drawn regarding knowledge accessibility, prevailing philosophies and ideologies, and the relationship between science and the church.