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Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Rationality

  • Book
  • © 1980

Overview

Editors:
  1. Thomas Nickles

    1. University of Nevada, Reno, USA

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (BSPS, volume 56)

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Table of contents (16 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Introductory Essay: Scientific Discovery and the Future of Philosophy of Science

    • Thomas Nickles
    Pages 1-59

  3. The Character of Scientific Change

    • Dudley Shapere
    Pages 61-116

  4. Discovery and Rule-Books

    • Peter Achinstein
    Pages 117-137

  5. Analysis as a Method of Discovery During the Scientific Revolution

    • Noretta Koertge
    Pages 139-157

  6. The Method of Analysis in Mathematics

    • Peggy Marchi
    Pages 159-172

  7. Why was the Logic of Discovery Abandoned?

    • Larry Laudan
    Pages 173-183

  8. The Rationality of Discovery

    • Joseph Agassi
    Pages 185-199

  9. The Logic of Discovery: An Analysis of Three Approaches

    • Martin V. Curd
    Pages 201-219

  10. The Logic of Invention

    • Gary Gutting
    Pages 221-234

  11. Scientific Discoveries as Growth of Understanding: The Case of Newton’s Gravitation

    • Maurice A. Finocchiaro
    Pages 235-255

  12. The Vanishing Context of Discovery: Newton’s Discovery of Gravity

    • J. N. Hattiangadi
    Pages 257-265

  13. The Role of Models in Theory Construction

    • Jarrett Leplin
    Pages 267-283

  14. Can Scientific Constraints be Violated Rationally?

    • Thomas Nickles
    Pages 285-315

  15. Why Philosophers should not Despair of Understanding Scientific Discovery

    • Richard M. Burian
    Pages 317-336

  16. Productive Reasoning and the Structure of Scientific Research

    • Robert Monk
    Pages 337-354

  17. Structural Explanations in Social Science

    • Robert L. Causey
    Pages 355-373

  18. Back Matter

    Pages 375-388
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Keywords

About this book

It is fast becoming a cliche that scientific discovery is being rediscovered. For two philosophical generations (that of the Founders and that of the Followers of the logical positivist and logical empiricist movements), discovery had been consigned to the domain of the intractable, the ineffable, the inscrutable. The philosophy of science was focused on the so-called context of justification as its proper domain. More recently, as the exclusivity of the logical reconstruc­ tion program in philosophy of science came under question, and as the critique of justification developed within the framework of logical and epistemological analysis, the old question of scientific discovery, which had been put on the back burner, began to emerge once again. Emphasis on the relation of the history of science to the philosophy of science, and attention to the question of theory change and theory replacement, also served to legitimate a new concern with the origins of scientific change to be found within discovery and invention. How welcome then to see what a wide range of issues and what a broad representation of philosophers and historians of science have been brought together in the present two volumes of the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science! For what these volumes achieve, in effect, is the continuation of a tradition which had once been strong in the philosophy of science - namely, that tradition which addressed the question of scientific discovery as a central question in the understanding of science.

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of Nevada, Reno, USA

    Thomas Nickles

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