Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

One reason is that the historical development of general ideas about science is itself an interesting topic.

red herrings.

the proper place of science in society.

Where does science begin and end?

People often think of physics as the purest example of science.

A few have suggested that theoretical physics is becoming less "scientific" than it used to be, as it is evolving into an esoteric, mathematical model-building exerci...

The work done by physicists and molecular biologists when they test h...

scientific

rigorous methods and hence delivers results we should trust.

"science" or "scientific"

work that assesses ideas and solves problems in a way guided by observational evidence.

"science" more narrowly, seeing it as a cultural phenomenon that is local...

science is treated as a special social institution with a...

in order to understand science, we need to distinguish it from other kinds of inv...

general understanding of how humans gain knowledge of the world around them and

the work descended from the Scientific Revolution different from other kinds of investigation of the world.

epistemological issues and metaphysical issues

Epistemology is the side of philosophy that is concerned with questions about knowledge, evidence, and rationality.

general questions about the natur...

descriptive and normative theories.

"scientific method."

Science, it was argued, is too creative and unpredictable a process for

there to be a recipe that descr...

logical structure of...

looking for a recipe is too simplistic, and looking for a logical theory is too abstract, what might we look for instead?

scientific strategy for investigating the world.

how science works.

view about where all knowledge comes from, not just scientific knowledge.

the differences between science and everyday thinking as differences of detail and degree.

Scientific thinking and investigation have the same basic pattern as everyday thi...

the only source of real knowledge about the worl...

But science is especially successful because it is organized, systematic, and especially ...

will be routinely found in everyday con...

A curiosidade do gato

an interesting place to look is the histo...

Ignaz Semm...

John Snow

Doctor Pettenkofer.

direct empirical tests are no guarantee of success.

experiences pour into the mind and somehow turn into knowledge.

reasoning, including very elaborate reasoning, is needed to make sens...

It is written in the language of mathematics,

What makes science different from other kinds of investigation, and especially successful, is its attempt to understand the natural world using mathematical tools.

mathematics shows us that there must be another route to knowledg...

experience is a source of knowledge, but not the only...

Copernicus was not ignoring experience but dealing with apparent conflicts between different aspects of experience, in the light of his background beliefs.

science-Darwin's achievement in On the Origin of Species ([11859] 1964)-makes no real use of mathematics.

scientific communities.

Social Structure and Science: What makes science different from other kinds of investigation, and especially successful, is its unique social structure.

Ciência é uma construção social

mainstream empiricism often operates within the fantasy that each individual can observationally...

If each individual insisted on testing everything himself, science would never advance beyond...