The lucidity of Mr. Copilowish's argument makes the task of the reviewer very pleasant, even if he disagrees as completely as I do with the conclusion, which is the main thesis Mr. Copilowish attempts to prove. Only at one minor point does his exposition not quite suit my taste. He chose to preface his argument with a string of quotations supposedly supporting the position he wishes to defend. It seems to me that with the proper historical precautions these passages allow for a very different interpretation. Yet I shall not pursue this matter, partly because I believe that Mr. Copilowish merely followed a literary stereotype, but mainly because the issue ought to be discussed on its merits rather than through the clouds of witness one could adduce on either side.

In a recent article G. Hatfield claims that Descartes for a certain time thought a purely a priori science to be possible. Hatfield's evidence consists of his reading of the Cartesian method in the Regulae and of a letter to Mersenne, written in May 1632. I argue that Hatfield misinterprets the Cartesian method and Descartes' claim in the letter to Mersenne. I first show that the latter does not argue for an a priori science. Then, I show that the method of the Regulae is not a priori. Finally, I propose a reading of Descartes' letter.

When discussions of scientific method shift from natural sciences to social sciences, we tend to feel that we are turning from strict sciences to subject matters which may have achieved some measure of intellectual competence but which lack the rigor, objectivity and principles of organization found in mature science. This sense of a difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences is connected with questions of the meaning and rôle of laws. To the extent to which social and historical events have not been reduced to laws or perhaps cannot be, the disciplines which study such events are considered immature or imperfect sciences. To the extent to which social sciences do not offer predictions, they are felt to have little application to the solution of actual and immediate problems. When a bridge has to be built over a chasm, the laws of the natural sciences can be brought to bear. But when a treaty is to be drawn, where, it is asked, are the social and historical laws which can be applied to the situation?

This article is devoted to the question: does the Duhemian argument support the position taken by those contemporary philosophers who—like W. V. O. Quine and M. White—reject the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements? The term “Duhemian argument” is used to refer to the following statement: it is impossible to put to the test one isolated empirical statement; testing empirical statements involves testing a whole group of hypotheses. An analysis of the logical structure of reductive reasoning leads to the conclusion that the Duhemian argument is valid and that it entails the following statements: (1)—experience alone cannot compel us absolutely to the acceptance of any isolated empirical statement whatsoever, independently of our acceptance or rejection of some other statements, and (2)—no isolated empirical statement can be conclusively falsified by experience, independently of our acceptance or rejection of some other statements. The Duhemian argument seems then to establish conclusively the cogency of the claim that, in principle, it is possible to reject or to maintain any particular empirical statement, provided we make appropriate changes in the system of hypotheses which is put to test. The philosophers who reject the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements—in particular Quine—claim that the same line of reasoning supports their contention. It is alleged that: (1)—the Duhemian argument makes impossible a definition of statement synonymy and, consequently, a definition of analyticity in terms of synonymy, and (2)—that the unit of empirical significance is the whole of science or the total science, and (3)—that it is a folly to seek a boundary between synthetic and analytic statements, because all our statements are equally open to revision. The article tries to show that these conclusions do not follow from the Duhemian argument. In particular it is shown: (1)—that the Duhemian argument does not exclude the definition of statement synonymy, (2)—that this argument does not support the contention that the enigmatic entity called “the whole of science” or the “total science” is involved in each and every testing procedure, (3)—that the principle of fundamental revisability of every statement does not change the fact that in scientific practice the situation is never so hopeless as the Duhemian argument seems to imply, because even inconclusive arguments may differ in their adequacy, and (4)—that the term “revision” is ambiguous and only this ambiguity lends an air of plausibility to Quine's formulations. The conclusion is that the Duhemian line of reasoning does not support the contention of philosophers who reject the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.

By dialectical fundamentalism I mean the view that maintains the inerrancy of the orthodox classical scriptures of dialectical materialism; by flexible scientific naturalism I mean the view recognizing the past heuristic value of dialectical materialism, but also the realization for the need to develop and change it along lines suggested by complementary philosophies relevant to the scientific outlook.

Since the collapse of the ‘received view’ consensus in the late 1960s, the question of scientific realism has been a major preoccupation of philosophers of science. This paper sketches the history of this debate, which grew from developments in the philosophy of language, but eventually took on an autonomous existence. More recently, the debate has tended towards more ‘local’ considerations of particular scientific episodes as a way of getting purchase on the issues. The paper reviews two such approaches, Fine's and Hacking's, describing their positions, their prospects, and how they are related. Finally, the paper suggests that local philosophies of science offer a way for our discipline to engage more fruitfully with the public and the scientific community.

Prior to the advent of evolutionary theory the Natural System was generally conceived as based on “distinctions of kind, not consisting in a given number of definite properties” (J.S. Mill). It was considered final and unique, to be arrived at by more than one approach. Evolutionary theory has shifted emphasis to different characters, yet explicitly or implicitly the belief in a final natural system in biology persists in many textbooks and taints research. Allegedly natural systems are shown to be fundamentally arbitrary and artificial, dependent on numerous value judgments and intrinsically conflicting to varying degrees. Because of this and because it has turned into a bar to clear thinking, the adjective “natural” should be abolished.

1. Introduction. Professor Nagel's account of the “cognitive status” of scientific theories has been attacked by P. K. Feyerabend [5] and M. B. Hesse [8] in terms of his alledgedly misguided distinction between experimental laws and theories. The difficulty lies, these critics agree, in Nagel's attempt to find a stable basis for scientific theories in an observational basis of experimental laws. Both Feyerabend and Hesse note the vacillation in Nagel's account of the stability of the meaning of experimental terms and in his discussion of the status of observational as opposed to theoretical terms. They find Nagel too “positivistic” and see as a first step toward a more adequate account of scientific theories the abandonment of the theoretical-observational dichotomy as having more than a pragmatic significance. Nagel's discussion of the theoretical-observational dichotomy is, I agree, inadequate in certain respects. I shall, however, suggest a quite different remedy from those of Feyerabend and Hesse, one that depends neither on a phenomenalistic reduction of theoretical entities nor on a blurring of the theoretical-observational dichotomy.

A serious problem for covering law explanation is raised and its consequences for the Hempelian theory of explanation are discussed. The problem concerns an intensional feature of explanations, involving the manner in which theoretical law statements are related to the events explained. The basic problem arises because explanations are not of events but of events under descriptions ; moreover, in a sense, our linguistic descriptions outrun laws. One form of the problem, termed the problem of weak intensionality, is apparently solved by a simple logical move, but in fact the problem arises in a new, strong form. It is found that Hempel's model for deductive explanation (to which this discussion is confined) requires modification to handle the weak intensionality problem but then is faced with the problem of strong intensionality. In consequence, it is suggested that Hempel's important concept of explanation sketch is not as widely applicable as usually claimed, especially for explanations in the behavioral and social sciences and history. Reason is found to reject the covering law thesis that every scientific explanation must contain at least one law statement. An important feature of the discussion is that some of the main reasons given for altering the deductive model and for considering other forms of explanation are internal to the covering law theory.

Another critical analysis of the intellectual antecedents or the logical structure of Thorstein Veblen's thought is hardly needed. Since his death—iconoclasm's reward is often posthumous—a goodly number of such studies has appeared. I do not intend to add to the pile, but rather to analyze Veblen's work as representative of the response of “intellectuals” to specific ideologies and to ideology in general. This is a subject that has not received the direct attention it deserves, and, to my knowledge, Veblen has never been studied in this connection.

By “ideology” I mean a system of beliefs that presents value-judgments as empirical truths in order to justify, with or without conscious intent, a particular socio-economic group's claim to material and prestigial rewards. The valuejudgments in an ideology fall into two categories: those which have to do with a hero-subject, individual or group, whom the ideologue believes worthy of the rewards, and those which concern a villain-subject, individual or group, whom the ideologue believes unworthy. To win general acceptance of these valuejudgments an ideology also contains a set of reality-statements. These, in purporting to tell the “truth” about the world—about men, nature, God—serve to objectify, and thus justify, the choice of the hero and villain-subjects.

Information about the prehistoric past is available only in the material remains. To be meaningful, these remains must be interpreted under the influence of a theory of some general or specific aspect of the past. For this reason, prehistoric archaeology clearly shows the reciprocity between theory and evidence and the tension between having to impose information on the evidence in order to discover information in the evidence. We use a specific case in the archaeology of Minoan Crete, a case that uses Central Place Theory as a guide to understanding the evidence, to demonstrate a coherence model of scientific knowledge.

Theories of intentionality need to account for non-cognitive states like emotions as well as cognitive states like beliefs. When certain non-cognitive states are included, one can formulate a feasible physicalist account of intentionality that highlights its evolutionary roots. I argue that recent experimental data support just such a move.

Thought experiments play an important epistemic, rhetorical, and didactic function in Galileo’s dialogues. In some cases, Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio agree about what would happen in an imaginary scenario and try to understand whether the predicted outcome is compatible with their respective theoretical assumptions. There are, however, also situations in which the predictions of the three interlocutors turn out to be theory laden. Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio not only disagree about what would happen, but they reject one another’s solutions as question begging and sometimes even dismiss one another’s thought experiments as misleading or nonsensical.

Recent discussion of the problem of the conclusive falsification of scientific hypotheses has generally regarded the Duhemian Thesis (D-Thesis) as both true and interesting [10] but has dismissed the claim that disconfirmed hypotheses can be retained in explanations of the disconfirming evidence as either trivial [3] or unargued [12]. This paper rejects these positions. First, the status, in the argument for the D-Thesis, of the claim that auxiliary assumptions are necessary for the derivation of evidential propositions from hypotheses is examined. It is concluded that depending on this status, the D-Thesis is either trivially true or unargued. Then the retention of contextually disconfirmed hypotheses is discussed. It is found that the use of such hypotheses in explanations of the disconfirming evidence is mediated by principles of scientific methodology. A new thesis is presented connecting the problem of conclusive falsification with changes in methodology. The argument for this thesis introduces a new analysis of methodological principles as inductive generalizations from scientific practice. Finally, the contribution of this analysis to the understanding of scientific change is described.

To make sense of large data sets, we often look for patterns in how data points are “shaped” in the space of possible measurement outcomes. The emerging field of topological data analysis (TDA) offers a toolkit for formalizing the process of identifying such shapes. This article aims to discover why and how the resulting analysis should be understood as reflecting significant features of the systems that generated the data. I argue that a particular feature of TDA—its functoriality—is what enables TDA to translate visual intuitions about structure in data into precise, computationally tractable descriptions of real-world systems.

A common strategy for simplifying complex systems involves partitioning them into subsystems whose behaviors are roughly independent of one another at shorter timescales. Dynamic causal models clarify how doing so reveals a system’s nonequilibrium causal relationships. Here I use these models to elucidate the idealizations and abstractions involved in representing a system at a timescale. The models reveal that key features of causal representations—such as which variables are exogenous—may vary with the timescale at which a system is considered. This has implications for debates regarding which systems can be represented causally.

Climate scientists frequently employ heavily idealized models. How should these models be interpreted? Some philosophers have advanced a possibilist interpretation: climate models stand in for possible scenarios that could occur but do not provide information about how probable those scenarios are. This article argues that possibilism is (1) undermotivated, (2) incompatible with successful practices in the science, and (3) unable to correct for known biases. The upshot is that the models should be interpreted probabilistically in at least some cases.

We model scientific theories as Bayesian networks. Nodes carry credences and function as abstract representations of propositions within the structure. Directed links carry conditional probabilities and represent connections between those propositions. Updating is Bayesian across the network as a whole. The impact of evidence at one point within a scientific theory can have a very different impact on the network than does evidence of the same strength at a different point. A Bayesian model allows us to envisage and analyze the differential impact of evidence and credence change at different points within a single network and across different theoretical structures.