Reddit mentions of What Is This Thing Called Science? Third Edition

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.

How can I best explain this... Did you see the submission about Sherlock Holmes?

While strictly true, we seem to have an uncanny ability to narrow in on the right answer, despite a theoretically limitless amount of alternative theories that can explain the data.

If you are interested, the book What is this thing called Science? has a good look at the problems with things like inductivism, naive falsification, positivism and other stuff.

Snowhare, below, also offers a good explanation. First principles being the basic axioms of logic...

addendum

I just thought of a way I can explain this. Naive inductivism would be like someone saying "just because you've thrown a rock up in the air, and each time you've done that it has come down, you can not say that it will always happen, that is an argument from ignorance because you're claiming that something you've not observed is going to continue to happen"...

Not the greatest explanation, but I hope it helps. Maybe someone else will be able to explain better.

> This means that their form must be such that to verify them and to falsify them must both be logically possible.

Popper is probably over-reaching here. Like you say, this would make the simplest of all statements, positive existentials, out to be mysterious.

He may also be setting up a position for the fall (you'd know the context of the statement better than I do). Popper was not a logical positivist, so it is possible when he discusses 'the positivistic dogma' it is in order to contrast it with his own view. His view is not positivistic, because he talks about the 'game of science', and this isn't something you can codify into a system of verification, and would be discounted as meaningless by hardcore positivists.

> Thanks for pointing me toward Lakatos. As far as I can tell, falsifiability is a core precept of empirical science, and I would be interested to read criticisms of it.

Falsifiability is no longer considered the hallmark of science (or a foundation of the philosophy of science) amongst most current philosophers of science. Lakatos is my own favourite (not that I'm a philosopher of science), and Kuhn's influence is of course enormous (though less in analytic philosophy than elsewhere in the humanities and the social sciences, by which I mean, isn't as monolithically popular). While the literature on this topic is enormous, this field possesses perhaps the finest intro-level textbook in philosophy (and certainly the best of my acquaintance), What is this Thing Called Science? by Alan Chalmers. If you have any interest in the topic at all, read that book. It's not the final word at all, but it is the best start you could have.

If you're interested in Epistemology, I recommend a book by Alan F. Chalmers called "What is this thing called science", which curiously has a retarded cat in the cover, wtf.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Thing-Called-Science-Third/dp/0335201091

There it takes you through the basics of epistemology and mentions all the most important authors. From there, start working yourself through the tree, reading the books mentioned in other books whose topics spark your interest.

Of course, if you're interested in philosophy, there is no real replacement to studying it academically. It's how it's designed to be studied, pretty much.

Know that you're talking about a path of, at minimum, hundreds of books, with no upper limit. If you're going in it with a goal in mind and you're not enjoying every step of the way, then it's probably not for you. There never comes a point when you stop feeling you're ready to stop learning and start producing. A philosopher is a permanent student, and a great philosopher is first and foremost a great student that reads voraciously non-stop for reading itself, and not for something he may or may not do afterwards, in my opinion.