Bruce Edmonds (2011)
A Brief Survey of Some Relevant Philosophy of Science
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 14 (4) 7
<jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/14/4/7.html>
Received: 27-Jun-2011 Accepted: 19-Jul-2011 Published: 31-Oct-2011
The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution. The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence. And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.
PS1 → TT1 → EE1 → PS2 |
which is interpreted as follows. A problem situation (PS1) leads to a set of tentative theories (TT1), from which the bad ones are eventually falsified via a process of error elimination (EE1). This process leads by repeated stages to better theories that can be applied to new problem situations (PS2). This process is not feasible if the candidate hypotheses are not amenable in principle to being shown false by evidence, hence the crucial importance of falsifiability. The social aspects of this are the criticisability of conclusions and their openness to critique by a wider community of scientists. Reliable and useful theories are not reached via individual reason but by a community that continually criticises, rejects, posits tentative theories and applies them.
2In terms of philosophical norms, this is a very very brief survey. Even 'brief surveys' in philosophy are quite lengthy—words like 'brief' etc. in philosophy are defensive epithets, since if you summarise to any extent you are bound to be 'wrong'!
3If we were to apply this to the simulation of social processes (as opposed to seeing what it directly suggested about the processes of science) this would suggest an agent-based simulation, since the social embeddedness implies that the local interactions of scientists would be significant in shaping the aggregate outcomes.
4The difference between sociologists who think about the processes of science and philosophers who put weight on observing how scientists actually behave seems moot to me, ending up more an indication of a person's academic roots rather than method or content.
5Some also include originality (novelty of research) in this list.
6Not to mention an interesting, reasonably well paid and secure job!
7Some of the sense and text of this paragraph is taken from a personal correspondence with Giere; however the interpretation is mine. Giere remains one of my favourite modern philosophers, showing a good degree of common sense and knowledge of science, see www.tc.umn.edu/~giere/.
8A difference reflected in their evaluations of science.
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