Robin
Penultimate Amazing
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Larry Laudan's paper "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem" which was mentioned here in passing, illustrates for me my reservations about the philosophy of science.
Laudan begins by talking about the way Aristotle distinguished between something that was scientific and non-scientific. This is nonsense to begin with, when did Aristotle ever make such a distinction? What term did he use in Ancient Greek that was "scientific"? Although we see references to "scientia experimentalis" in the Middle Ages, the general use of "scientist" and "scientific" did not begin until much, much later and so this is an anachronism even if we can find a comparable term in Attic.
In any case he manages to get Aristotle completely backwards. He claims that Aristotle insisted that all scientific claims must be derived from first principles and that it must be infallible.
But Aristotle actually said that claims about the world cannot be derived from first principles and that the principles, if they can be found at all, must be derived using an inductive process over empirical data (Posterior Analytics Book II part 19). Moreover he never claimed the infallibility of any of his claims. For example in the History of Animals when he talks about how animals should be classified he goes over all sorts of systems and discusses why they don't work and concludes (paraphrasing from memory) that all that can be done is to 'do our best to understand the reasons people classified animals, for example, as birds and fishes, in the first place". That is neither an infallibilist claim, nor is it deriving from first principles.
But Laudan builds on this a claim that astronomers were denied the classification of "scientist" and were regarded as craftsmen instead because they tested their claims. This is again wildly anachronistic and in any case Aristotle consistently said that conclusions must match empirical observations or be wrong (although his own conclusions sometimes fell short of his own rule).
He claims that a large part of the furore over Copernicus and Kepler is that they were claiming to make astronomy scientific again. He appears to have simply made this up. The furore (for which Galileo bore the brunt) was over the contradiction to scripture and to Aristotle.
He also says that in the time of Galileo and Newton and right up to the 19th century, scientific claims were regarded as infallible. I know of no evidence that anyone thought such a thing at the time, never mind that it was generally believed.
So Laudan's conclusion (right or wrong) is based on a largely fictional view of history.
But a philosopher of science is free to do that and there is nothing in philosophy to stop him.
Laudan begins by talking about the way Aristotle distinguished between something that was scientific and non-scientific. This is nonsense to begin with, when did Aristotle ever make such a distinction? What term did he use in Ancient Greek that was "scientific"? Although we see references to "scientia experimentalis" in the Middle Ages, the general use of "scientist" and "scientific" did not begin until much, much later and so this is an anachronism even if we can find a comparable term in Attic.
In any case he manages to get Aristotle completely backwards. He claims that Aristotle insisted that all scientific claims must be derived from first principles and that it must be infallible.
But Aristotle actually said that claims about the world cannot be derived from first principles and that the principles, if they can be found at all, must be derived using an inductive process over empirical data (Posterior Analytics Book II part 19). Moreover he never claimed the infallibility of any of his claims. For example in the History of Animals when he talks about how animals should be classified he goes over all sorts of systems and discusses why they don't work and concludes (paraphrasing from memory) that all that can be done is to 'do our best to understand the reasons people classified animals, for example, as birds and fishes, in the first place". That is neither an infallibilist claim, nor is it deriving from first principles.
But Laudan builds on this a claim that astronomers were denied the classification of "scientist" and were regarded as craftsmen instead because they tested their claims. This is again wildly anachronistic and in any case Aristotle consistently said that conclusions must match empirical observations or be wrong (although his own conclusions sometimes fell short of his own rule).
He claims that a large part of the furore over Copernicus and Kepler is that they were claiming to make astronomy scientific again. He appears to have simply made this up. The furore (for which Galileo bore the brunt) was over the contradiction to scripture and to Aristotle.
He also says that in the time of Galileo and Newton and right up to the 19th century, scientific claims were regarded as infallible. I know of no evidence that anyone thought such a thing at the time, never mind that it was generally believed.
So Laudan's conclusion (right or wrong) is based on a largely fictional view of history.
But a philosopher of science is free to do that and there is nothing in philosophy to stop him.
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