The Scientific Revolution

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The Scientific Revolution
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Scientific progress?
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1. Poppers view of science

• Science is a corpus of theories
• Each theory is tested against experiments
• The purpose of experiments is to infirm a theory
• No theory is ever confirmed by experiment. Each
  theory is only a tentative description of the
  reality
• Each theory it will eventually fail and be
  replaced with a better one
• Better closer to the truth
• Asymptotic approach towards the truth

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The historical view of science

• Revolutions changes of world image and world
  view
• The new picture is better than the old one in
  more subtle ways

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2. The historicism

• Science does not uniformly progress through
  scientific method
• Science has a historical development and is
  context dependent
• Scientific theories develop inside paradigms
  (higher rank theoretical models)

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• Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
  Revolutions, 1962
• Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the
  Infinite Universe, The Astronomical Revolution
  etc.
• Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific
  Thought
• A.C. Crombie, Styles of thinking
• Hacking, Toulmin, Osler, etc.
• A revolution in historiography

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3. The science as a cultural construct

• science will be presumed to be a human cultural
  institution whose interactions with other
  cultural institutions are subject to all of the
  kinds of questions that might be asked of any
  other What interests does it legitimately
  serve? and What interests does it legitimately
  threaten? From this point of view it becomes
  possible both to ask why some group of individual
  within a particular historical context should
  selectively accept elements of the scientific
  tradition and to understand that other groups or
  persons might have legitimate and rational
  grounds for rejecting them. (Olson,1990, p.5)

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• Shaffer, Shapin, Leviathan and the Air Pump, CUP,
  1986
• Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, 1996
• The Edinburgh School

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4. An intermediate view?

• Science as a special kind of human enterprise,
  involving concepts, theories, world pictures,
  experiments, values etc.
• Peculiar and context dependent features
• Characteristics of modernity

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Kuhn and the Scientific Revolution
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A different concept of science

• The research activity
• The scientific community (group)
• Theories
• Models
• Methods, directions of research etc.
• Values

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Paradigms

• Attract a group of adherents away from competing
  models of scientific activity
• Sufficiently open-ended to leave many problems
  for the redefined group of practitioners to solve
• (Kuhn, Chapter II)

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The scientific group

• Science is a group-enterprise
• Rules, methods, structure, values of the
  scientific group
• Baconians, Cartesians, Gassendists, Newtonians
  etc.
• Philosophical sects in seventeenth century

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Kuhn and the Scientific Revolution

• Normal science
• Paradigm
• Crisis
• Revolution paradigm shift
• New paradigm
• Incommensurability of paradigms

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The Scientific Revolution

• pre-paradigmatic thought
• Paradigm the organic model of the Cosmos
• Crisis
• Revolution
• Paradigm the mechanical philosophy

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From the closed world to the infinite universe

• Aristotelianism
• Closed Cosmos
• Teleological
• Qualitative
• Organic model or processes and changes (living
  being)

• The new mechanical philosophy
• Open Universe
• Non-teleological
• Quantitative, mathematical
• Mechanical model (clock universe)

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Paradigms

• The organism

• The clock

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Paradigms

• Successful models for a field of scientific
  research
• A certain organization of the scientific
  community to produce science out of the
  explorations and actualization of the model
• Associated values

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Why are paradigms useful?

• Scientific community
• Sects in seventeenth century
• Common values
• Philosophical wars
• Common styles of thinking
• Dividing between new and old philosophies

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Bibliography for the next course

• Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Bk.I
• The article of Bacon and Baconianism from
  Dictionary of the History of Ideas
• Vickers, Bacon and the Progress of Knowledge,
  JHI, 1992

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Further reading

• The Rosicrucian Manifestoes, in Yates,
  Iluminismul rozicrucian, Humanitas, 1997
  (Appendix and first chapter)
• Yates, Iluminismul rozicrucian, Humanitas, 1997
• Dickson, Johann Valentin Andreae Utopian
  Brotherhoods, Renaissance Quarterly, 49, 1996,
  760-802
• Webster, Charles. The Great Instauration
  Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626-1660. chap.
  6 'The Puritan World View and the Rise of Modern
  Science.' London, Duckworth, 1975. 
• Foster-Jones, Richard, Ancients and Moderns A
  Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in
  17th century England, Dover Publications, Dover,
  1982