Philosophy
Exploring the Scientific Method
It's out! It's real. My textbook on the history and philosophy of science has been published by the University of Chicago Press.
It has a completely different pedagogical approach from the usual in that it uses a ?track-based? approach that allows the students? own interests to help motivate their thinking and to provide more of a sense of the history of science than one usually can present in an introduction to philosophy of science course.
In the early weeks of the semester, every student selects one of the following sciences: astronomy, physics, chemistry, genetics, evolutionary biology, geology, psychology, sociology, economics. As the class works through canonical readings on scientific methodology, grouped into six sections, students are helped to develop particular case studies in their science of interest in order to see whether the picture of the scientific method coming out of, say, Mill, Kuhn, or Feyerabend is applicable to the episode they are considering. By the end of the semester, each student will have traced the historical trajectory of their science from classical roots to contemporary issues and considered not only the growth of knowledge in the field, but the way in which practitioners have come to acquire that knowledge. I?ve taught it this way several times and it worked so well, that I turned it into a textbook.
I?ve included the table of contents below and the case studies. If you are interested in an exam copy, there is a tab on the book's page at the University of Chicago Press' website.
Table of Contents
Syntactic View of Theories Deductivism Aristotle from
Posterior Analytics, Physics René Descartes from
Discourse on Method Inductivism Francis Bacon from
Novum Organum Isaac Newton from
Principia John Stuart Mill from
System of Logic Hypothetico-Deductivism William Whewell from
Novum Organum Renovatum Rudolf Carnap ?Theoretical Procedures in Science?
R. B. Braithwaite from
Scientific Explanation
Paradoxes of Evidence David Hume from
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Nelson Goodman from
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast Carl Hempel from ?Studies in the Logic of Confirmation?
Falsificationism Karl Popper from
Logic of Scientific Discovery Holistic View of Theories Pierre Duhem from
Aim and Structure of Physical Theory Thomas Kuhn from
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Imre Lakatos ?Methodology of Research Programmes?
Semantic View of Theories Marshall Spector ?Models and Theories?
Max Black ?Models and Archetypes?
Ronald Giere from
Explaining Science Critical Views of Scientific Theories Paul Feyerabend from
Against Method Ruth Hubbard ?Science, Facts, and Feminism?
Bruno Latour ?The Science Wars?
Case StudiesAstronomyAristotle on the Motion of the Heavens
Ptolemy on the Motion of the Planets
Galileo?s Arguments for Heliocentrism
Kepler, Newton and the Shapes of Orbits
Einstein and the Perihelion of Mercury
The Demotion of Pluto
PhysicsEpicurean Atomism
Maxwell?s Kinetic Theory of Heat
Rutherford and the Discovery of the Nucleus
The Bohr Model
The Standard Model and the Discovery of the Top Quark
Lee Smolin and String Theory
ChemistryParacelsus? Alchemy
Boyles? Law
Priestly, Phlogiston, and Oxygen
Dalton, Proportions, and Atomic Theory
Kekulé and Stereochemistry
The Discovery and Retraction of Elements 116 and 118
GeneticsAristotle?s Germ Theory
Mendel?s Peas
Morgan, Fruit Flies, and Genes
Crick, Watson, and the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
The Human Genome Project
Public and Corporate Genomic Research
Evolutionary BiologyAristotle?s Species
Linnaeus and the Taxonomy of Life
Lamarck?s Acquired Characteristics
Darwin?s Natural Selection
Punctuated Equilibrium
Intelligent Design and Science Curricula
GeologyWoodward?s Catastrophism
Hutton?s Plutonism
Lyell?s Uniformitarianism
Wegener?s Plate Tectonics
GIS and Models
The Grand Canyon, Politics, and the Age of the Earth
PsychologyHippocrates, Humours, and Mental Illness
Weber?s Measurement of Perception
Pavlov and Conditioned Reflexes
Freud and the Rat Man
Harlow?s Maternal Bonding and Animal Models
The Changed DSM Classification of Homosexuality
SociologyHobbes? Laws of Nature
Durkheim, Social Facts, and Suicide
Weber, Religion, and Wealth
Sorokin, the Ideational, and the Sensate
Parson?s AGIL Model
Burawoy and Public Sociology
EconomicsAristotle and Currency
Quesnay, Famers, and Taxation
Smith and Natural Prices
Marx?s Dialectical Materialism
Keynes? Demand-Determined Equilibrium
The World Bank, the IMF, and the Politics of Macroeconomics
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