Part Ten X › Division III III › Section 10/31 10/31

History and Philosophy of Science

Subject Outline

AHistory of science
- 1Introduction: problems and difficulties of tracing the development of science
- 2Science in ancient and medieval Western civilization
  - aScience in Greek civilization
    - iProtoscience in Greece before the age of Pericles: empirical versus religious or mythological explanations of natural phenomena
    - iiDevelopment of scientific attitudes: the beginning of disciplined observation, inference, definition, and classification; the Platonic versus the Aristotelian view of nature
    - iiiScience during the Hellenistic Age: the emergence of Alexandria as the foremost centre of scientific research
  - bScience in Rome: the contrast between Roman success in law and technology and Roman failure in science
  - cMedieval science
- 3Science in other civilizations: Islamic science; science in India, China, and Japan
- 4European science in the early modem period
  - aThe rebirth of science in the Renaissance
    - iThe state of science in Europe in the early 15th century
    - iiThe influence of advances in printing, mining, metallurgy, and other areas of technology: the demands placed upon science by increases in trade and exploration
    - iiiThe coexistence of new scientific discoveries and old philosophical views
  - bThe revolution in natural philosophy
    - iThe radical reformulation of the objects, methods, and functions of natural knowledge: the work of Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo [see also 10/42.A.3.]
    - iiResults of the new philosophy: establishment of scientific societies, progress in particular fields of science
  - cCharacteristics of European science
- 5Science in the age of modem revolutions
  - aScience during the Industrial Revolution
  - bIntellectual origins of revolution: the spirit of the Enlightenment
  - cThe institutional organization of science under the French Revolution
  - dRomantic reaction and science: the proponents of Naturphilosophie
- 6Science in the 19th century: difference in styles of research; progress in physics, chemistry, and biology
- 7Science in the early 20th century: the social organization and style of science, the common pattern of advance in scientific research
- 8Contemporary problems and prospects: the moral, political, and environmental difficulties facing science
BPhilosophy of science [see also 10/52.B.2.]
- 1The nature and scope of the philosophy of science and its relation to other disciplines: the diverse concerns of and methods of approach to the philosophy of science
- 2Historical development of the philosophy of science
  - aClassical and medieval periods: the alternative viewpoints of the Stoics and Epicureans and of the Platonists and Aristotelians
  - bThe 17th century: the debate about scientific methodology, Bacon's inductive approach and Descartes's deductive approach
  - cThe 18th century: Empiricist, Rationalist, and Kantian interpretations of Newtonian physics
  - dFrom the beginning of the 19th century through World War I: the influence of Kant's belief in the unique rationality of the classical synthesis of Euclid and Newton
  - eThe 20th-century debate: responses to relativity, quantum mechanics, and other profound changes in the natural sciences; Logical Positivism versus Neo-Kantianism
- 3Elements of the scientific enterprise
  - aEmpirical, conceptual, and formal elements and their theoretical interpretation: diverse views of the relative importance of observation, theory, and mathematical formulation
  - bEmpirical procedures of science: measurement, design of experiments, classification
  - cThe formal structures of science: the problem of constructing a purely formal analysis of scientific inference, the distinction between scientific laws and empirical generalizations
  - dConceptual change and the development of science: historical problems concerning the changing theoretical organization of science
- 4Movements of scientific thought: the basic procedures of intellectual development in science
  - aScientific discovery: the extreme positions of formalism, which emphasizes the rational elements of scientific discovery, and of irrationalism, which emphasizes the role of intuition, guesswork, and chance
  - bValidation and justification of new concepts and theories: the view that prediction is the crucial test of scientific validity; the view that coherence, consistency, and comprehensiveness are the essential requirements of a scientific theory
  - cUnification of the theories and concepts of separate sciences: attempts to construct an axiomatic system for all of natural science, the reductionist problem of achieving a consistent conceptual basis for two or more sciences
- 5The philosophical status of scientific theory
  - aThe status of scientific propositions and concepts of entities: diverse views of the epistemological status of scientific propositions and of the ontological status of scientific concepts
  - bThe relationship between philosophical analysis and scientific practice: the application of different philosophical doctrines and approaches to different sciences
- 6The relevance of scientific knowledge to other spheres of human experience and concern: the social significance of science and of scientific attitudes, limitations on the scientific endeavour