It started with Copernicus : vital questions about science /
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Amherst, New York :
Prometheus Books,
2014.
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Table of Contents:
- Copernican questions, 2006 ; It started with Copernicus, 2014
- Copernican questions. What was Copernicus's revolution? ; What happens when your world changes? ; Copernican questions : rationality and realism ; The plan of the book
- Is science really rational? : the problem of incommensurability. Incommensurability of standards ; Incommensurability of values ; Incommensurability of meaning ; Evaluating meaning incommensurability ; Conversion : a concluding case study
- A walk on the wild side : social constructivism, postmodernism, feminism, and that old-time religion. The constructivist challenge ; Postmodernism attacks! ; Is "objectivity" what a man calls his subjectivity? ; Is science godless?
- Ascending the slippery slope : scientific progress and truth. The evils of Whig history ; Social-constructivist history ; Does science converge toward truth? ; Assessing Laudan's Critique of Convergent Realism ; Scientists' own realism ; Could we be wrong about everything?
- Truth of consequences? Electrons : real particles or convenient fictions? ; Van Fraassen's constrictive empiricism ; Do we observe through microscopes? ; But what about things that are really unobservable? ; So what really is the goal of science?
- Mysteries of methods. Induction and deduction ; Aristotle : the first methodologist ; Bacon : scientific method renovated? ; The hypothetico-deductive method ; Hume on induction ; Popper and the rejection of induction ; Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) to the rescue?
- If you have science, who needs philosophy? The limits of science? ; The breakdown of philosophy ; Naturalizing epistemology ; Naturalizing ethics ; Philosophy in an age of science
- Science, scientism, and being human. Mind : physical or spiritual? ; Science and the human image ; Ape, angel, or neither?