Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T21:50:34.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond Divorce: Current Status of the Discovery Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Thomas Nickles
Thomas Nickles*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Nevada, Reno
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Does the viability of the discovery program depend on showing either (1) that methods of generating new problem solutions, per se, have special probative weight (the per se thesis); or, (2) that the original conception of an idea is logically continuous with its justification (anti-divorce thesis)? Many writers have identified these as the key issues of the discovery debate. McLaughlin, Pera, and others recently have defended the discovery program by attacking the divorce thesis, while Laudan has attacked the discovery program by rejecting the per se thesis. This disagreement over the central issue has led to communication breakdown. I contend that both friends and foes of discovery mistake the central issues. Recognizing a form of divorce helps rather than hurts the discovery program. However, the per se thesis is not essential to the program (nor is the related debate over novel prediction); hence, the status of the per se thesis is a side issue. With these clarifications in hand, we can proceed to the next stage of the discovery debate–the development (or revival) of a generative conception of justification which goes beyond consequentialism to forge a strong linkage of generation (or rather, generatability) with justification.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 177 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I am indebted to the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, where I was a visiting fellow in 1982–83 when I wrote the first draft, and also to the National Science Foundation for partial support. For comments on earlier versions of these ideas, I thank Marcello Pera, Robert McLaughlin, Larry and Rachel Laudan, Andrew Lugg, James Woodward, John Worrall, Marjorie Grene, Kenneth Schaffner, and David Hull. I also received useful comments at York University and at the University of Maryland, College Park, where portions of the paper were presented in Spring, 1983.

References

Achinstein, P. (1970), “Inference to Scientific Laws”, in Steuwer (1970), pp. 87–111.Google Scholar
Achinstein, P. (1971), Law and Explanation. Oxford, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, B. (1985), “Steps Toward Mechanizing Discovery”, in Logic of Discovery, Schaffner, K. (ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. In press.Google Scholar
Dorling, J. (1973), “Demonstrative Induction: Its Significant Role in the History of Physics”, Philosophy of Science 40: 360–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorling, J. (1974), “Henry Cavendish's Deduction of the Electrostatic Inverse Square Law from the Result of a Single Experiment”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 4: 327–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, C. (1980), Theory and Evidence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gutting, G. (1980), “Science as Discovery”, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 131–32: 26–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, N. R. (1958), Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hanson, N. R. (1965), “The Idea of a Logic of Discovery”, Dialogue 4: 48–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hempel, C. G. (1945), “Studies in the Logic of Confirmation”, in Hempel (1965), pp. 3–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hempel, C. G. (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Herschel, J. W. F. (1830), A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Science. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans.Google Scholar
Keynes, J. M. (1921), A Treatise on Probability. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Laudan, L. (1980), “Why Was the Logic of Discovery Abandoned?”, in T. Nickles (1980b), pp. 173–83. Reprinted with revisions in Laudan (1981), pp. 181–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1981), Science and Hypothesis. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1983), “Invention and Appraisal”, (reply to McLaughlin), Philosophy of Science 50: 320–22.Google Scholar
Lenat, D. (1978), “The Ubiquity of Discovery”, Artificial Intelligence 9: 257–85.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, R. (1982a), “Invention and Appraisal”, in McLaughlin, (ed.), What? Where? When? Why?. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 69–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, R. (1982b), “Invention and Induction: Laudan, Simon, and the Logic of Discovery”, Philosophy of Science 49: 198–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, J. S. (1843), A System of Logic. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Musgrave, A. (1974), “Logical versus Historical Theories of Confirmation”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 25: 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musgrave, A. (1980a), “Heuristic Appraisal, Discovery, and Justification”, Paper read at University of Pittsburgh, June 1980.Google Scholar
Nickles, T. (ed.) (1980b), Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Rationality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickles, T. (ed.) (1982), “How Discovery Is Important to Cognitive Studies of Science”, presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, October, 1982.Google Scholar
Nickles, T. (ed.) (1983), “Justification as Discoverability”, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 6, P. Weingartner (ed.), pp. 157–160. An expanded version appears in Philosophia Naturalis (1984): in press.Google Scholar
Nickles, T. (ed.) (1984a), “Positive Science and Discoverability”, in PSA 1984, Asquith, P. and Kitcher, P., (eds.). Vol. 1. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 13–27.Google Scholar
Nickles, T. (ed.) (1984b), “Scoperta e Mutamento Scientifico”, (“Discovery and Scientific Change”), Materiali Filosofici 10: 7–27.Google Scholar
Nickles, T. (ed.) (1985), “Metodologia, Euristiche, e Razionalitá”, (“Methodology, Heuristics, and Rationality”), in M. Pera and J. Pitt (eds.). La Razionalità della Scienza. Milan: Il Saggiatore. In press.Google Scholar
Pera, M. (1981), “Inductive Method and Scientific Discovery,” in On Scientific Discovery, Grmek, M. D., Cohen, R. S., and Cimino, G. (eds.). Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 141–65.Google Scholar
Pera, M. (1982), Apologia del Metodo. Rome: Laterza.Google Scholar
Popper, K. R. (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1974), “On the ‘Corroboration’ of Theories”, in The Philosophy of Karl R. Popper, P. A. Schilpp (ed.). LaSalle, IL; Open Court, pp. 221–40.Google Scholar
Radnitzky, G., and Andersson, G. (eds.) (1978), Progress and Rationality in Science. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rescher, N. (1978), Peirce's Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1966), Foundations of Scientific Inference. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1970), “Bayes's Theorem and the History of Science”, in Steuwer (1970), pp. 68–86.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1977), “Does Scientific Discovery Have a Logic?”, Philosophy of Science 40: 471–80; reprinted in Models of Discovery. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 326–37.Google Scholar
Skagestad, P. (1978), “Taking Evolution Seriously: Critical Comments on D. T. Campbell's Evolutionary Epistemology,” The Monist 61: 611–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steuwer, R. (ed.) (1970), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 5. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Thagard, P. (1980), “Against Evolutionary Epistemology”, in PSA 1980, Asquith, P. and Giere, R., (eds.). Vol. 1. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 187–96.Google Scholar
Urbach, P. (1978), “The Objective Promise of a Research Programme”, in Radnitzky and Andersson (1978), pp. 99–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whewell, W. (1840), Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. 2 vols. London: Parker.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, W. (1980), “Reductionistic Research Strategies and their Biases in the Units of Selection Controversy”, in Scientific Discovery: Case Studies, Nickles, T. (ed.). Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 213–59.Google Scholar
Worrall, J. (1978), “The Ways in which the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes Improves on Popper's Methodology”, in Radnitzky and Andersson (1978), pp. 45–70.Google Scholar
Worrall, J. (1985), “Scientific Discovery and Theory-Confirmation”, in Change and Progress in Modern Science, Pitt, J. (ed.). Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Zahar, E. (1983), “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Invention?”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34: 243–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar