Reddit mentions of Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues

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!

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.

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

When talking about science it's best to have a decent knowledge of the philosophy of science, first. It doesn't help to be vague as to the intentions and criticisms of science and, most importantly from a SJW perspective, the values of scientists conducting research. The biggest push and pull in the debates over what constitutes the most "Scientific" type of knowledge revolves heavily around the menagerie of ideas sometimes called "object directedness" (i.e. we think about objects, thus creating a knowledge of them. that knowledge is constituted among other more biased thoughts or processes) or how we impose our beliefs on the objective world as we attempt to measure it.

If anyone here is serious about debating and taking down exact points within the Social Justice/Feminist critique of Science, I'd suggest buying/stealing/finding this book (Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues).

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Central-J-Cover/dp/0393971759

Sorry for the delayed response! I'm taking Summer courses, and they're eating up all my free time. I am so thrilled with all of the suggestions. Thank you all so much. I probably shouldn't have phrased my focus with such a narrow term. When I say astronomy, I'm also talking about cosmology, space and time. The main Phil o' Science text I'll be working with is


 


Curd, Cover, and Pincock's Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues
I plan on focusing on a couple sections within this text, including Science and Pseudoscience, Models of Explanation, Laws of Nature, and Empiricism and Scientific Realism. From these topics I'll incorporate the cosmology/space and time pieces.

 

The main text for the astronomy angle on the course will be
Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought

 

Everything that's been suggested sounds incredibly interesting. I think it might be neat to focus on gravity and use pieces like the suggested Smith and Wilson articles. I hope that clears things up. If there's anything else worth suggesting, I'm all ears. Even if I don't have time to incorporate it into the semester, I'm always looking to add things to my general reading list.

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

This is pretty interesting: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s04.html

An excerpt: Many general guiding ideas that lie at the foundation of modern science were first enunciated by the perceptive force of philosophical thought. One example is the idea of the atomic structure of things voiced by Democritus. Certain conjectures about natural selection were made in ancient times by the philosopher Lucretius and later by the French thinker Diderot. Hypothetically he anticipated what became a scientific fact two centuries later. We may also recall the Cartesian reflex and the philosopher's proposition on the conservation of motion in the universe. On the general philosophical plane Spinoza gave grounds for the universal principle of determinism. The idea of the existence of molecules as complex particles consisting of atoms was developed in the works of the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi and also Russia's Mikhail Lomonosov. Philosophy nurtured the hypothesis of the cellular structure of animal and vegetable organisms and formulated the idea of the development and universal connection of phenomena and the principle of the material unity of the world. Lenin formulated one of the fundamental ideas of contemporary natural science—the principle of the inexhaustibility of matter—upon which scientists rely as a firm methodological foundation

The latest theories of the unity of matter, motion, space and time, the unity of the discontinuous and continuous, the principles of the conservation of matter and motion, the ideas of the infinity and inexhaustibility of matter were stated in a general form in philosophy.

If we trace the whole history of natural and social science, we cannot fail to notice that scientists in their specific researches, in constructing hypotheses and theories have constantly applied, sometimes unconsciously, world-views and methodological principles, categories and logical systems evolved by philosophers and absorbed by scientists in the process of their training and self-education. All scientists who think in terms of theory constantly speak of this with a deep feeling of gratitude both in their works and at regional and international conferences and congresses.

Some people think that science has reached such a level of theoretical thought that it no longer needs philosophy. But any scientist, particularly the theoretician, knows in his heart that his creative activity is closely linked with philosophy and that without serious knowledge of philosophical culture the results of that activity cannot become theoretically effective. All the outstanding theoreticians have themselves been guided by philosophical thought and tried to inspire their pupils with its beneficent influence in order to make them specialists capable of comprehensively and critically analysing all the principles and systems known to science, discovering their internal contradictions and overcoming them by means of new concepts.

To artificially isolate the specialised sciences from philosophy amounts to condemning scientists to finding for themselves world-view and methodological guidelines for their researches. Ignorance of philosophical culture is bound to have a negative effect on any general theoretical conclusions from a given set of scientific facts. One cannot achieve any real theoretical comprehension, particularly of the global problems of a specialised science, without a broad grasp of inter-disciplinary and philosophical views. The specialised scientists who ignore philosophical problems sometimes turn out to be in thrall to completely obsolete or makeshift philosophical ideas without even knowing it themselves. The desire to ignore philosophy is particularly characteristic of such a trend in bourgeois thought as positivism, whose advocates have claimed that science has no need of philosophy. Their ill-considered principle is that "science is in itself philosophy". They work on the assumption that scientific knowledge has developed widely enough to provide answers to all philosophical problems without resorting to any actual philosophical system. But the "cunning" of philosophy lies in the fact that any form of contempt for it, any rejection of philosophy is in itself a kind of philosophy. It is as impossible to get rid of philosophy as it is to rid oneself of all convictions. Philosophy is the regulative nucleus of the theoretically-minded individual.

This is also pretty much where it all began:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy

Aristotle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle

Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance

In the biological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the nineteenth century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#Aristotle.27s_scientific_method

In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences

Now to your comment: I have not defined simply thinking as philosophy. When I think to turn on my blinker before I make a turn, I am not doing philosophy. I am thinking, but not philosophizing.

As for deciding which is science and which is philosophy being silly... well I think that notion is a bit confusing. Neither philosophy nor science are 'just thinking'. As for what makes science science: For one, science is ALWAYS FALSIFIABLE. Meaning, one can test the statements made by science. Philosophy is often abstract and untestable. Secondly, science is OBSERVABLE in the real world. We observe correlations in nature when we are doing science. Philosophy may or may not involve observation of natural phenomena. Science involves PHYSICAL EXPERIMENTATION. Philosophy involves thought experimentation. Science always makes PREDICTIONS. Philosophy doesn't have to make predictions. There are about six demarcating criteria that distinguish and define science as science. Science falls under the umbrella of philosophy. In other words, all science is philosophy, but all philosophy is not science.

My point is that if you know the history of science, and you know the history of philosophy, you know that philosophers are the fathers of modern day science. See, the inquisitive nature and thought that philosophers exhibited manifest itself in several ways. One of these manifestations was scientific method. See my last post.

I think also you may be misunderstanding the point. Not every scientist is thinking "I'm doing philosophy!" before he goes into experiment, although he is walking in the footsteps of philosophers, and even doing philosophy though he may not know it. Further, it was the love of wisdom, philosophy, that led to the scientific method in the first place. So any time someone is doing science, it is because they love wisdom (unless of course it's 'just a job'). They are seeking knowledge. This is philosophy. Philosophy both super cedes and precedes science.

If you have the time, and the money, and the desire, this is an excellent book:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Central-J-Cover/dp/0393971759/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268296671&sr=1-4

No, it takes ages to put together a formal argument supported by data. I would have to study the subject for a fairly long time to put together a solid argument.

The amount of work I would have to put in to do that would not be worth the effort when the people I am talking with would likely not be convinced no matter how well supported the argument. So why would I bother doing that to win an argument on a level that the person I am arguing with will not be bothered understanding?

I started listening to "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" as an audio book. It seem to be mostly fun anecdotes and a loosely structured biography from a great scientist rather than a writing on the scientific method.

Feynman isn't a saint, I have read accounts from people who knew him say that it appeared that he would go out of his way and get in the way of other people just so that he would be able to create interesting anecdotes and feed into the strange cult status of his idiosyncratic genius.

I have been reading Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions and soon I am going to dig into an anthology of key writings on the philosophy of science.

It is a bit of a cliche, but the more I learn the more I realise how much I don't know. I know enough to have a general understanding of a bunch of things and I know enough to know how to research to learn more about them and to link that new information into my world view.