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Science Rules

A Historical Introduction to Scientific Methods

edited by Peter Achinstein

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Is there a universal set of rules for discovering and testing scientific hypotheses? Since the birth of modern science, philosophers, scientists, and other thinkers have wrestled with this fundamental question of scientific practice. Efforts to devise rigorous methods for obtaining scientific knowledge include the twenty-one rules Descartes proposed in his Rules for the Direction of the Mind and the four rules of reasoning that begin the third book of Newton's Principia, and continue today in debates over the very possibility of such rules. Bringing together key primary sources spanning almost...

Is there a universal set of rules for discovering and testing scientific hypotheses? Since the birth of modern science, philosophers, scientists, and other thinkers have wrestled with this fundamental question of scientific practice. Efforts to devise rigorous methods for obtaining scientific knowledge include the twenty-one rules Descartes proposed in his Rules for the Direction of the Mind and the four rules of reasoning that begin the third book of Newton's Principia, and continue today in debates over the very possibility of such rules. Bringing together key primary sources spanning almost four centuries, Science Rules introduces readers to scientific methods that have played a prominent role in the history of scientific practice.

Editor Peter Achinstein includes works by scientists and philosophers of science to offer a new perspective on the nature of scientific reasoning. For each of the methods discussed, he presents the original formulation of the method; selections written by a proponent of the method together with an application to a particular scientific example; and a critical analysis of the method that draws on historical and contemporary sources.

The methods included in this volume are Cartesian rationalism with an application to Descartes' laws of motion; Newton's inductivism and the law of gravity; two versions of hypothetico-deductivism—those of William Whewell and Karl Popper—and the nineteenth-century wave theory of light; Paul Feyerabend's principle of proliferation and Thomas Kuhn's views on scientific values, both of which deny that there are universal rules of method, with an application to Galileo's tower argument. Included also is a famous nineteenth-century debate about scientific reasoning between the hypothetico-deductivist William Whewell and the inductivist John Stuart Mill; and an account of the realism-antirealism dispute about unobservables in science, with a consideration of Perrin's argument for the existence of molecules in the early twentieth century.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6.125
x
9.25
Pages
440
ISBN
9780801879449
Illustration Description
4 line drawings
Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I. Descartes' Rationalism and Laws of Motion
Chapter 1. Descartes' Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence
Chapter 2. Descartes' Fifth Meditation: Ontological Proof of God
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Introduction
Part I. Descartes' Rationalism and Laws of Motion
Chapter 1. Descartes' Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence
Chapter 2. Descartes' Fifth Meditation: Ontological Proof of God
Chapter 3. Descartes' Laws of Motion
Chapter 4. Daniel Garber, Descartes' Metaphysical Physics
Part II. Newton's Inductivism and the Law of Gravity
Chapter 5. Newton's Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy
Chapter 6. Newton's "Phenomena" and derivation of the law of gravity
Chapter 7. Newton on "hypotheses," God, and gravity
Chapter 8. A Guide to Newton's Principia
Chapter 9. Whewell's critique of Newton's methodology
Part III. Hypothetico-Deductivism, the Mill-Whewell Debate, and the Wave Theory of Light
Chapter 10. Young's Wave Theory of Light
Chapter 11. Whewell's Hypothetico-Deductivism
Chapter 12. Popper's Falsificationism
Chapter 13. Mill's Inductivism and debate with Whewell
Chapter 14. Waves and Scientific Method
Part IV. Realism vs. Antirealism, and Molecular Reality
Chapter 15. Duhem's Anti-Realism
Chapter 16. van Fraassen's Anti-Realism
Chapter 17. Perrin's realism and argument for molecules
Chapter 18. Salmon's Empirical Defense of Realism
Chapter 19. Does Perrin's Argument for Molecules establish Scientific Realism?
Part V. Rejections of Universal Rules of Method, and Galileo's Tower Argument
Chapter 20. Galileo's Tower Argument
Chapter 21. Feyerabend's Rejection of Universal Rules
Chapter 22. An Evaluation of Feyerabend's Anarchism
Chapter 23. Kuhn's Rejection of Universal Rules
Chapter 24. Kuhn and Subjectivity
Suggested further reading
Index

Author Bio
Peter Achinstein
Featured Contributor

Peter Achinstein

Peter Achinstein is a professor of philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University. His previous books include Concepts of Science, Law and Explanation, The Nature of Explanation, Particles and Waves, and The Book of Evidence.