Course-related history: timelines and detailed notes on the history of philosophy/science in the West from Thales through Bell's Theorem and the Aspect experiments (proving nonlocality as predicted in Quantum Mechanics, vs. "common sense" and Newtonian assumptions of locality, as defended by Einstein in the EPR Paradox).
Notes on Robert Klee, Introduction to Philosophy of Science: Cutting Nature at its Seams (Fall, 1997) - instructor's notes and student summaries. (An excellent historical overview of the rise of positivism, significant challenges to the positivist/realist program, and contemporary perspectives - including Jaegwon Kim's effort to save the positivist/realist standpoint through his notion of weak supervenience.)
NEW
student materials from Spring, 2000:The Realism / Anti-Realism debate
Erica Samuelson's Referat on Arthur Fine's "Natural Ontological Attitude," plus two critiques (from Spring, 1999).
Fine seeks to show that a "Natural Ontological Attitude" is associated with "letting science speak for itself," i.e., without what he sees as the philosophical "add-on's" of either realism or anti-realism.
While NOA serves as a reference point in recent debates (see Kourany's comment on Keller and Hacking, below), it is also harshly criticized - here by James Robert Brown and Paul Klee.
Kate Brubacher's Referat on Grover Maxwell's "The Ontological Status of Theoretical Entities."
Maxwell attempts to defend realism with regard to scientific theory by attacking a central distinction that underlies some instrumentalist claims, i.e., the distinction between theory and observation.
That is:
if there is a strong distinction between theory and observation - then the positivist/empiricist insistence that theory is true if and only if it fully corresponds to what is given in observation (in other terms, the correspondance theory of truth).
But this means that theory (as conceptual, involving mathematical description, language, etc.) is by definition distinct from observation - and hence susceptible to the sorts of influences documented from Kuhn through feminists, Social Constructivists, and postmodernists. As susceptible to these sorts of influences to at least some degree (the degree depends on one's specific position) - theory is thus apparently pushed in the direction of instrumentalism. That is, insofar as our theory is interwoven with historically and culturally variable linguistic and conceptual elements, it seems difficult to prove that theory at the same time gives us only a purely objective, correspondentially true account of the material world.
Maxwell, however, seeks to pull the rug out from all of these arguments wholesale - again, by attacking what he sees as their shared core, namely the notion of a strong distinction between theory and observation.
If he is successful in arguing - as he seeks to do - that this distinction is more or less arbitrary and has no ontological significance, then he believes he has defended scientific realism against these well-known criticisms.)
In contrast with Maxwell's defense of realism, one can productively compare Evelyn Fox Keller's feminist approach and Ian Hacking's "revised realism" (my term) - both examples, according to Kourany, of Fine's "Natural Ontological Attitude" (see Kourany, 344).
Kristen Buck's Referat on Evelyn Fox Keller's "Critical Silences in Scientific Discourse: Problems of Form and Re-Form."
compare with
Michal Kyle's Referat on Evelyn Fox Keller's "Critical Silences in Scientific Discourse: Problems of Form and Re-Form."
Kristen finds that Keller stakes out a middle ground of instrumentalism between the strict realism of earlier positivisms and the reduction of science to culture and subjectivity in radical feminist and social constructivist critiques that follow on Kuhn's work.
A fine companion to this article is the next one by Ian Hacking, who argues that scientists need not be realists concerning at least some elements of theory - but experimentalists become realists once they learn to manipulate and use entities (e.g., electrons), especially if these are used to learn something about other entities (e.g., the weak neutral current).
Daniel Hoyt's Referat on Ian Hacking's "Experimentation and Scientific Realism."
Hacking distinguishes between realism at the level of theory - the debate about which, he suggests, in the face of now familiar feminist and social constructivist critiques, is inconclusive - and realism at the level of experiment. Realism concerning entities such as electrons and neutrinos, he argues, is plausible insofar as we can manipulate these entities in experiments designed to help us learn more about other entities (in his example, parity and the weak neutral current). This seems to place Hacking as a realist with regard to entities manipulated in experiment - and as an instrumentalist (not a social constructivist or radical feminist) with regard to theory more generally.)
Also: Dr. Ess's notes on Andy Pickering, " Against Putting the Phenomena First: The Discovery of the Weak Neutral Current." Pickering analyzes in close detail the experimental set-up, arguments, and social contexts of the discovery of the weak neutral current in the early 1970's. Over against the realist/positivist view of science (that theoretical prediction is followed by straightforward experimental verification), Pickering finds instead that "the reality of the weak neutral current was the upshot of particle physicists' practices, and not the reverse."
Student work on history of science:
Katy Stokes' "A Brief History of Women in Science (c. 500 BCE - 2000 CE)" incorporating both class materials and resources from "4000 Years of Women in Science".
Websites of current interest:
Logical Positivism - reference document located at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, providing important historical background on the emergence of positivism as the predominant model of science ("the standard model," according to Ian Hacking) in the first part of the 20th ct.
Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us." Joy is no Luddite, as his credentials suggest, and he converses with a number of eminent folk in the areas of robotics, genetic engineering, even philosophy (John Searle, one of the foremost critics of AI). His concerns about the future directions of technology - and his recognition of his/our responsibility for those directions - are a refreshing and sobering break from the usual gushing enthusiasm characteristic of American discourse on technology.
From earlier classes:
On Myth, Mathematics, and Fundamental Assumptions of Science (notes from Alioto, ch. 1, including contrasts between Egyptian and Mesopotamian myth and correlative mathematical interests, coupled with contemporary comment from Heisenberg and Bohr on quantum mechanics)
From the PreSocratics (I) to the Middle Ages (II) (Oldroyd, Singer, Alioto, Lindberg)
III. The Origins of Modern Science: Cultural and Philosophical Contexts (M. Jacob on Galileo and Bacon and the larger historical/material context)
IV. The Scientific Revolution: Copernicus - Newton
V. The Philosophical Turn: from Descartes to Hume and Kant
VI. Science Validates the Philosophers: Relativity Theory, Quantum Mechanics, and the End of Modern Science/Positivism
Contemporary Issues in Philosophy of Science: Robert Klee, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science: Cutting Nature at its Seams (Fall, 1997)
From the PreSocratics to the Middle Ages - based primarily on Oldroyd's The Arch of Knowledge and Peter Singer, these documents provide an initial overview of the basic methodological assumptions of what becomes modern science, and shows how the epistemological and metaphysical beliefs underlying these methodologies emerge in the historical development of Western philosophy.
Plato
[http://www.rivertext.com/platoscave.html provides an image and text of the Allegory of the Cave, along with commentary from the French philosopher/mystic/poet/socialist Simone Weil
Contemporary issues in the philosophy of science:
Robert Klee, Introduction to Philosophy of Science:
Cutting Nature at its Seams
(Fall, 1997)