Philosophy of science

Philosophers of science

Early Philosophers

• Plato (428 - 347 B.C.)– Rationalist

• Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.)– Empiricist

Bacon, Francis (1561-1626)

• English philosopher, essayist, and statesman• 1620 Novum Organum (New Tools) • Theory of Induction• Redefined the role of science in society from

being a hobby for intellectuals, to a tool for bettering the life conditions of mankind

• “Printing, the compass and gunpowder have changed the world, science will lead to many such inventions in the future”

• Empiricist

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

• 1637 Discourse on Method

• Theory of Deduction

• Mechanistic worldview

• Mathematics is the primary form for reality and thinking

• Mathematics is the key to knowledge

• Rationalist

Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642)

• Astronomer/Mathematician, one of the greats of modern science

• Galileo's achievements include: – demonstrating that the velocities of falling bodies are not

proportional to their weights; – showing that the path of a projectile is a parabola; – building the first astronomical telescope; – coming up with the ideas behind Newton's laws of motion; – confirming the Copernican theory of the solar system.– He was denounced for heretical views by the church in Rome,

tried by the Inquisition, and forced to renounce his belief that the planets revolved around the sun.

• Designed “the scientific experiment”• http://www.mcm.edu/academic/galileo/ars/arshtml/mathofmotion1.html

David Hume (1711-1776)

Scottish enlightenment• “Neither reason nor experience reveals to

us the truth about the things that traditional metaphysics discusses-things such as God, the soul or the material substances that supposedly cause our sense-perceptions”

• Experience has only something to say about the past, nothing about the future

Hume continued

• What is reason? Can we justify a belief about the future by reasoning from the past to the future?

• Inductive reasoning is only a habit or custom• There is no rational bases that correlations in the

past will continue in the future• Most of our knowledge has a non-rational

foundation• Critical empiricism is the way (the spirit of

Bacon)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)• “Things in themselves” according to Kant

– Reaction on Hume– The world as it appears to us is not reality as it is

in itself.– The world in itself is the source of our experience.– The things in themselves are not objects for

experience.– Our experience provides the ‘content’ of our

sense-perceptions, which our mind renders intelligible through the imposition of form.

– Mind does not create the world but it does shape it at a very deep level...

The conflict

• Empiricism - Rationalism • Aristotle - Plato• Bacon - Descartes• Newton?• Hume - Kant• Anglo-Saxon - Continental European• Assignment

– Try to describe some experiment you have done in some subject by using the concepts: theory, hypothesis, empirical, rational, induction, deduction

Assignment

• Try to describe some experiment you have done in some subject by using the concepts: theory, hypothesis, empirical, rational, induction, deduction