Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T18:36:50.117Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Theories of Scientific Method

from Part I - The Public Cultures of the Physical Sciences After 1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Nancy Cartwright ,
Stathis Psillos  and
Hasok Chang
Edited by
Mary Jo Nye
Mary Jo Nye
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
Get access

Summary

Scientific methods divide into two broad categories: inductive and deductive. Inductive methods arrive at theories by generalizing from what is known to happen in particular cases; deductive methods, by derivation from first principles. Behind this primitive categorization lie deep philosophical oppositions. The first principles central to deductivist accounts are generally taken to be, as Aristotle described, “first known to nature” but not “first known to us.” Do the first principles have a more basic ontological status than the regularities achieved by inductive generalization – are they in some sense “more true” or “more real”? Or are they, in stark opposition, not truths at all, at least for a human science, because always beyond the reach of human knowledge?

Deductivists are inclined to take the first view. Some do so because they think that first principles are exact and eternal truths that represent hidden structures lying behind the veil of shifting appearances; others, because they see first principles as general claims that unify large numbers of disparate phenomena into one scheme, and they take unifying power to be a sign of fundamental truth. Empiricists, who take experience as the measure of what science should maintain about the world, are suspicious of first principles, especially when they are very abstract and far removed from immediate experience. They generally insist on induction as the gatekeeper for what can be taken for true in science.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 19 - 35
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bell, J. S., Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Bridgman, P. W., The Logic of Modern Physics (New York: Macmillan, 1927).Google Scholar
Brzezinski, J. and Nowak, L., ed. etc. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990–7).Google Scholar
Carnap, R., Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (Berlin: Weltkreis, 1928).Google Scholar
Carnap, R., Logical Foundations of Probability (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950).Google Scholar
Cartwright, N., The Dappled World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duhem, P., Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (New York: Atheneum, 1962), part II, chap. 6.Google Scholar
Dumas, J. B., Discours et éloges académiques (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1885), 2:.Google Scholar
Dupré, J., The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Feyerabend, P. K., Against Method (London: New Left Books, 1975).Google Scholar
Fodor, J., “Special Sciences, or the Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis,” Synthese, 28 (1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraassen, B. C., The Scientific Image (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, C., Theory and Evidence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
Glymour, C., “Why I Am Not a Bayesian,” in Theory and Evidence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
Gooding, D., Pinch, T., and Schaffer, S., eds., The Uses of Experiment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Hacking, I., Representing and Intervening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, I., “Do We See Through a Microscope?” in Images of Science, ed. Churchland, P. M. and Hooker, C. A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Hanson, N. R., Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).Google Scholar
Hempel, C. G., Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966), chap. 7.Google Scholar
Howson, C. and Urbach, P., Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989).Google Scholar
Kitcher, P., “Explanatory Unification,” Philosophy of Science, 48 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P., The Advancement of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Krantz, D. H., Luce, R. D., Suppes, P., and Tversky, A., Foundations of Measurement (New York: Academic Press, 1971).Google Scholar
Kripke, S. A., Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962; 2d ed. 1970).Google Scholar
Laudan, L., “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” Philosophy of Science, 48 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayo, D., Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, S. D., Daston, L., Gigerenzer, G., Sesardic, N., and Sloep, P., “The Why’s and How’s of Interdisciplinarity” in Human by Nature: Between Biology and the Social Sciences, ed. Weingart, P. et al. (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Morgan, M. S. and Morrison, M. C., eds., Models as Mediators (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oppenheim, P. and Putnam, H., “Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis,” in Concepts, Theories and the Mind-Body Problem, ed. Feigl, H., Scriven, M., and Maxwell, G. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958).Google Scholar
Poincaré, H., La Science et L’Hypothèse (Paris: Flammarion, 1902).Google Scholar
Popper, Karl R., The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959).Google Scholar
Psillos, S., “Scientific Realism and the ‘Pessimistic Induction,’” Philosophy of Science, 63 (1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regnault, V., “Relations des expériences … pour déterminer les principales lois et les données numériques qui entrent dans le calcul des machines à vapeur,” Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences de l’Institut de France, 21 (1847).Google Scholar
Smith, C. and Wise, M. N., Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar
Uebel, T., ed., Rediscovering the Forgotten Vienna Circle: Austrian Studies on Otto Neurath and the Vienna Circle (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wise, M. N., ed., The Values of Precision (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1958).Google Scholar
Worrall, J., “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?” Dialectica, 43 (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×