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Curd and Cover is pretty much standard undergraduate textbook for philosophy of science courses. It has a ton of very good articles and a ton of very well put together commentary on each article. If you are interested in getting into the philosophy of science it is literally your best choice.

The Rosenberg and this book, which I have read and would definitely recommend, are very good supplements to help you understand the general themes in the philosophy of science, but the Curd and Cover is your best bet. If you have to choose one choose that one. It it such a good compilation of the most important essays in the philosophy of science.

Yeah. Don't know how much harder I can stress: Curd and Cover is great.

>This second one is from what seems like a very well respected and legit publishing company that has a gigantic list of books, which all seem excellent after reading descriptions:

You'd be surprised how little this means in academia, especially philosophy. Essentially if you have a good cv and can write a coherent statement of purpose you can get a book published, probably even on a big name academic publisher. Books aren't referee'd the way articles are, and if you get a book deal the chances of them pulling the plug is very small (you'd have to fuck up big). Articles by contrast have to go through a rigorous process of peer review, and only the best (hopefully) make it to the pages of a journal. Curd and Cover is a compilation of the best articles in the philosophy of science.

Wilson is a lot of fun if you approach his stuff with the right attitude. You can't expect to agree with everything he says. If you did, he would probably slap you and tell you "think for yourself, schmuck!" Part of his deal is that he intermingles fact, fiction, and hyperbole so that the reader has to continually ask themselves "how much of this do I really believe?" What really messes with the reader's head is that many of his seemingly crazier points actually stand up to fact-checking.

>"For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, if T includes a statement of its own consistency then T is inconsistent."

I'm not sure if anakantavada includes arithmetical truths or truths about formal provability, so it might not fall into the Godel trap. But I'm still not totally clear on what anakantavada does or does not entail. It seems, at least intuitively, to be making a very important point: our understandings of things are usually partial and seemingly conflicting accounts may just be drawing attention to differing aspects of a thing. But then maybe anakantavada is just one aspect of things as well. Perhaps this can all be coherent - I'm not sure.

As much as I enjoy paradoxes, sometimes a contradiction is just an indication that one has made a mistake in reasoning.


>I was judging "truth" in a pragmatic sense as "Ideas … become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience. (1907: 34)"

This seems to me to set the bar too low. Can't false ideas also help us "get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience." It seems implausible to deny this, given how regularly people are satisfied with their false ideas, and yet to accept it pretty much eviscerates the notion of truth. I have some sympathy with many aspects of pragmatism - particular the point that theory and practice don't come apart as easily in practice as they do in theory - but the pragmatic theory of truth always struck me as unhelpful.

>For questions about ethics and purpose, religion and philosophical frameworks are much better. Being able to solve problems with one's emotions and intuitions is a lot better than cold reason.

I agree to a certain extent about the value of emotion and intuitions, but they need to be checked by feedback from reason because our biases can run amok and don't always have built-in standards of decency. Sometimes what peoples' intuitions tell them is ethically abhorrent.

When it comes to religion, I'm not as optimistic as you are. Religion can be quite dangerous for propagating incredibly harmful values and shielding them from legitimate criticism. In America, we've got conservative Christians referencing a collection of writings from the bronze-age to justify repressive laws aimed at women and homosexuals. They tell us global warming is nothing to worry about because the literal end of the world is coming at the hands of God, and that their religion, being the one true one, needs to be all over our courtrooms, classrooms, and government buildings. In the Middle East, we're seeing religion used to justify suicidal terrorism, extreme misogyny, stoning apostates to death, and anti-semetic attitudes that rival those of the Third Reich (Mein Kamph is still a bestseller in several Muslim countries).

On the other hand, we find that many of the most atheistic countries in the world also rank among the happiest and have the best human rights records (e.g. Norway, Netherlands, Denmark). That gives me hope a less religious future might be on in which we all get along a little better.

Loved the Asimov passage!

edit: A good place to start with Wilson is Prometheus Rising.

• "Windows of the Soul: Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780" by Martin Porter
  https://global.oup.com/academic/product/windows-of-the-soul-9780199276578?cc=us&lang=en&
  
  
• "Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture" by Wouter J. Hanegraaff
  http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/religion/religion-general-interest/esotericism-and-academy-rejected-knowledge-western-culture?format=HB&isbn=9780521196215#RPgRv3Wdp7EWoiFr.97
  
  
• "The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan" by Monica Azzolini
  http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066632&content=reviews
  
  
• "Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul" by Titus Burckhardt
  https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Science-Cosmos-Soul/dp/1887752110
  
  
  To answer your question: Yes, I would consider hermetics a historic philosophical science. While hermetics isn't a reputable modern scientific field of study, its history and principles are worth studying within the social and political contexts of the time period you're interested in. We see throughout history, especially in the Renaissance, that occult sciences and hermetic principles made their way into the studies of many 'scientists' or "natural philosophers" in that era. Occult practices and philosophies sometimes neither were prominent in the overt studies of such scholars, nor heavily publicized by these scholars, because of the 'mystical'/secretive nature of possessing such occult knowledge (emphasis on the Latin origin of "occult" which means "to conceal/hide"). Despite them being hidden away from public eye, these philosophies were recorded, and sometimes even encrypted by their creators (like Hermes Trismegistus), giving historians who discover the writings a better idea of the development of scientific inquiry and how it progressed to the science we know today. It is definitely fascinating to study such a topic that has been discounted in modern scientific communities, since its sheds light on the fact that many of these occult philosophies were perceived by scholars of antiquity as valid methods of studying the natural world and universe. It can also be interesting to trace the lineage of what was considered 'taboo' natural philosophy and what was 'sound' natural philosophy back then, and then discovering where the branching of modern scientific method occurred.
  
  Best wishes & I hope you enjoy! The books above are great reads from I course I once took called "The Philosophy and History of Occult Science."

Your description is good, but it starts to look a lot more like a scientific culture at that point.

There's really no clear overarching method that links a theoretical physicist, an epidemiologist, a research chemist, a neurologist, and a geologist.

It's more like you say - a culture dedicated to the notion that you gain a clearer, more reliable and useful description of things through open assent tied to reproducible evidence, and the careful removal of intentions from the process of description.

If OP's interested in a thought-provoking, fairly troll-worthy, look at the various... meta-techniques (?) used in science - say, practical abstractions like equations and scale models, what's common between them and why they're so powerful, etc., then Bruno Latour's Science in Action is a different, wacky, but not pretentious and dense, read.

>Also, you were making a fallacy by making an appeal to humor instead of logic

In the same way the Sokal hoax was a fallacy? Because it was humourous? The point is not to make a didactic point: but to gently poke fun at the absurd pretensions and obfusticating language of PoMo. As such it did very well indeed.

>and if you actually read about it you'll realize that it isn't as simple as it seemed...

I'm sorry? You seem to be assuming I haven't read it and read about it. Why should you assume that? My copy of The Sokal Hoax is upstairs at the moment, I think, and I haven't read it for a few years but I really can't see what you're driving at.

>if you need good post structuralist readings

I have many. Yet to find a good one...though I do quite enjoy early, briefer Barthes. I still talk about a zero-degree haircut to this day, years after I read Mythologies.

So...in brief...it's very obvious I know this stuff much better than you do. Give it up, it's an absurd waste of time.

>Why shouldn't we take the approach in favor of intelligence when explaining nature?

It would be helpful if you could explain a bit more what you mean by intelligence. Without first explaining this, your discussion falls bit flat: we don't have any clue what sort of intelligence (if any at all) we are looking for and we can't assume that the world conforms to our sort of intelligence. Just because some phenomena seem to follow what you (or anyone else) considers to be intelligent, it does not follow that the world is that way or that you are correct in thinking that this is actually intelligent (what you think is intelligent may be incorrect). Hence we have to be very careful not to project our familiar view of things onto the world since our view of intelligence could easily be leading us astray.

You should check out Peter Godfrey-Smith's new book (2009) on evolution called, "Darwinian Populations". He has an extended discussion about the psychological approach of agents and design in biological explanation.

I was just asked this the other day by an incoming graduate student. It's really hard -- textbooks are a real hassle. For history, the best book I know, though it's limited in scope, is David Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science. It runs up through 1450. After that, you have trouble -- you have to start looking at individual figures or periods. H.F. Cohen's The Scientific Revolution is nice for its period. Then you get really fragmented. The Cambridge Studies in the History of Science series (1 2 3) is really nice for what it covers, if its topics interest you.

For PoS, again, textbooks are hard. I like the Curd and Cover anthology, it's got lots of primary readings with good explanatory material (dt already recommended that one, I see -- I didn't realize it because I've never referred to it by title...). Rosenberg's Routledge Introduction also seems pretty good, though I should warn that I've never read it, I'm going on brief skims and what I know of the author's other stuff (which is great).

Good luck! You can always come back here to ask questions!

https://www.amazon.com/Reliable-Knowledge-Exploration-Grounds-original/dp/0521406706/

https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Science-University-Center-Values/dp/069117900X/

https://www.amazon.com/Golem-Second-Should-Science-Classics/dp/1107604656/

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Salvation-Modern-Myth-Meaning/dp/0415107733/

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Science-Boris-Castel/dp/1551113872/

https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Literacy-Method-Illini-Books/dp/0252064364/

https://www.amazon.com/Representing-Intervening-Introductory-Philosophy-Natural/dp/0521282462/

As to your question - the next layer would be: what is the difference between a scientific theory and an ad hoc fitting superstition?

Maybe one answer has to do with range. A good theory will fit a wide range of phenomena. "ad hoc" usually refers to a narrow range of phenomena.

Perhaps a fair guess would be that it is fairly safe to extrapolate a theory hmmm 20% beyond the range that it has been tested. If you tested a fit out to 10 miles, you can fairly walk another 2 miles before checking your life insurance policy. If the fit has been tested for 1000 miles, you can feel good for another 200 miles. So if you need to walk say 20 more miles to reach those ripe peaches, better to work with the 1000 mile fit.

As for your main question, Theory and Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith is definitely something you want to read. Godfrey-Smith's general work focuses on philosophy of biology as a subset of philosophy of science which may be particularly interesting to you. Theory and Reality itself deals with a wide range of issues. From epistemic, to methodological, to historical, to sociological. The only stuff it doesn't really touch on are the metaphysical issues in philosophy of science. But even if that's what you're looking for, the book's content will be indispensable to you in developing a baseline knowledge about philosophy of science which you can bring to the table when reading more specific literature that you're interested in. It's broad approach is also just a good way to discover said interests.

As for your bonus question, the answer really turns somewhat on what you mean by "testable" but especially on what you mean by "useless". Useless in terms of what? Forming justified beliefs? Or for instrumental applications? Or something else?

Given this uncertainty, two positions come to mind: verificationism about meaning and Popper's falsificationism. But I might be able to give you something better if you could answer my above questions.

Hope that's helpful!

I highly recommend "Theory and Reality" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Another great text is "What is This Thing Called Science?" by A.F. Chalmers. As a book with primary readings my favorite thus far is "Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues" edited by Martin Curd and J.A. Cover. The Curd & Cover book is a tad expensive, but it is worth every penny. There are about 50 primary texts with commentary, and introductions to each main section.

Some other books that may be of help and/or of interest after a basic foundation is set are: "Philosophy of Biology" by Elliot Sober; "Quantum Reality" by Nick Herbert; "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn; "Sex and Death" by Kim Sterelny and Paul E. Griffiths; "Progress and It's Problems" by Larry Laudan; "The Empirical Stance" by Bas C. Van Fraassen; and "The Rise of Scientific Philosophy" by Hans Reichenbach. I welcome others to suggest more or to critique the ones I chose to highlight as too difficult or not worth the time.

Edit: Formatting and a comma.

Here's a twofer ya. The reason one should believe in theories is that theories have explanatory power. Most of the philosophical razors you have heard of are an attempt to get at good explanations.

A great book about explanatory power is The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch, and his 'hard to vary' razor is keener than Occam's.

Theory and Reality : An Introduction to Philosophy of Science by Peter Godfrey-Smith at Harvard. Small and readable. Recommended by PoS academics I have met. PGS is a youngish guy and writes in an understandable fashion. Here is his Harvard website. Awesome reference in my view. Covers all the main issues. Podcast with him about PoS at Philosophy Talk.

This is my favorite book.

And why studying philosophy of science? Because science is the way you know things (or perhaps less rudely it's the best practice to do so)

And knowing things, how to say.. it is the key to everything? There's so much to it that any example would seem reductive.

If you want a good introductory text and have money to burn, check out Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues.

Popper's.

The same goes for astrology. It was never science. It was never a scientific theory. Popper wrote whole essays on why astrology is not and never was a science.

This is where I got most of my understanding of the subject:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393971759

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393971759

and

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Philosophy-Science-Kenneth-Schaffner/dp/0872204502

And if you can access this: http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631221081_chunk_g97806312210814

For refresh your knowledge, the basic:

• "Theory and Reality" by Goodfrey-Smith.
  
  
  And check too /r/neurophilosophy.