Theories of Scientific Progress

by John Losee

What is the nature of scientific progress and what makes it possible? When we look back at the scientific theories of the past and compare them to the state of science today, there seems little doubt that we have made progress. But is it a continuous process which gradually incorporates past successes into present theories, or are entrenched theories overthrown by superior competitors in a revolutionary manner?
Theories of Scientific Progress is the ideal introduction to this topic. It is clearly organized, with suggestions for further reading that point the way to both primary texts and secondary literature. It will be essential reading for students of the history and philosophy of science.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a kind of strange book. It is along the same lines as the Godfrey Smith introduction to philosophy of science, but somehow even more focused in its subject and concise in its treatment. It is a whirlwind summary of dozens of arguments put forward to philosophically defend the idea that successive scientific theories are progressive toward truth, or at least away from ignorance, as opposed to fundamentally interchangeable. Each idea gets a brief explanation and a swift debunking – as is often the case with these books, there seems to be no conclusive answer and every option is flawed in some way. Of course, if you ask me, that's because scientific progress is not defensible as an absolute, and doesn't necessarily require a more fundamental explanation than the collection of conventions and meta-inductive observations that scientists intuitively reach for to answer this question. Anyway, it's very clear and concise and not riddled with digressions and opinions like the Godfrey-Smith.

The question of descriptive versus normative arguments that plagues the philosophy of science comes up frequently here. Both are found lacking, of course, largely from the existence of exceptions to conventional and intuitive answers but also in part from the unwillingness of philosophers to accept the convention of scientists as a sufficient philosophical justification. The ground covered here makes a lot of "Is Water H2O" seem less novel by showing that previous philosophers have considered the same problems (something Godfrey-Smith did much less frequently, despite or perhaps because of his wider scope).

I actually found the book in the first place looking for treatments of science as a phenomenon of cultural evolution, and on that subject found it relatively disappointing. It seems that little of the modern cultural evolution movement has been applied science yet, and the earlier, intuitive applications are quite flawed or limited in their mechanistic descriptions. This is the last theory Losee covers, and he seems to present it as a kind of least-worst option, but he is clearly not very convinced by it. It seems like there's a lot of room left to provide a more compelling evolutionary take on science, unless it is actually impossible/wrong.

[Tom]

Downloaded as an ebook to Sony PRS.