James Robert Brown

Sergio Sismondo's “Boundary Work and the Science Wars” nicely exemplifies a hotly debated central issue. One side, let me call them the rationalists, tries to explain episodes in the history of science in terms of reason. They claim that scientists, past and present, believe what they do because of the evidence that they have at the time. The other side, following Sismondo, let me call them STSers , claim that social and other non-cognitive factors are the frequent causes of belief. This disagreement naturally leads to a meta-level debate. Rationalists, such as myself, try to give reasons for believing the STSers are wrong-headed in their approach. And Sismondo replies with the claim that whether I realize it or not I am really doing boundary work – an explanation of my activity in terms of social factors

There is sufficient evidence that intellectual property rights are corrupting medical research. One could respond to this from a moral or from an epistemic point of view. I take the latter route. Often in the sciences factual discoveries lead to new methodological norms. Medical research is an example. Surprisingly, the methodological change required will involve political change. Instead of new regulations aimed at controlling the problem, the outright socialization of research seems called for, for the sake of better science. I appeal to an analogy between socialized medicine and socialized research. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2M8, Canada; e‐mail: [email protected].

Everyone appreciates a clever mathematical picture, but the prevailing attitude is one of scepticism: diagrams, illustrations, and pictures prove nothing; they are psychologically important and heuristically useful, but only a traditional verbal/symbolic proof provides genuine evidence for a purported theorem. Like some other recent writers (Barwise and Etchemendy [1991]; Shin [1994]; and Giaquinto [1994]) I take a different view and argue, from historical considerations and some striking examples, for a positive evidential role for pictures in mathematics.

From the 19th century the philosophy of science has been shaped by a group of influential figures. Who were they? Why do they matter? This introduction brings to life the most influential thinkers in the philosophy of science, uncovering how the field has developed over the last 200 years. Taking up the subject from the time when some philosophers began to think of themselves not just as philosophers but as philosophers of science, a team of leading contemporary philosophers explain, criticize and honour the giants. Now updated and revised throughout, the second edition includes: - Easy-to-follow overviews of pivotal thinkers including John Stuart Mill, Rodolf Carnap, Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper - Coverage of central issues such as experience and necessity, logical empiricism, the sociology of science and realism - An afterword looking ahead to emerging research trends - Study questions and further reading lists at the end of each chapter Philosophy of Science: The Key Thinkers demonstrates how the ideas and arguments of this group of key thinkers laid the foundations of our understanding of modern science.

In his long-awaited new edition of Philosophy of Mathematics, James Robert Brown tackles important new as well as enduring questions in the mathematical sciences. Can pictures go beyond being merely suggestive and actually prove anything? Are mathematical results certain? Are experiments of any real value?" "This clear and engaging book takes a unique approach, encompassing nonstandard topics such as the role of visual reasoning, the importance of notation, and the place of computers in mathematics, as well as traditional topics such as formalism, Platonism, and constructivism. The combination of topics and clarity of presentation make it suitable for beginners and experts alike. The revised and updated second edition of Philosophy of Mathematics contains more examples, suggestions for further reading, and expanded material on several topics including a novel approach to the continuum hypothesis."--BOOK JACKET.

From Lucretius throwing a spear beyond the boundary of the universe to Einstein racing against a beam of light, thought experiments stand as a fascinating challenge to the necessity of data in the empirical sciences. Are these experiments, conducted uniquely in our imagination, simply rhetorical devices or communication tools or are they an essential part of scientific practice? This volume surveys the current state of the debate and explores new avenues of research into the epistemology of thought experiments

Thinkers as diverse as Kuhn and Salmon agree that should an account of scientific rationality not square with actual scientific practice, then this should be considered as a reductio ad absurdum of the proposed norms and not be taken as evidence that the history of science is in large measure irrational. While many are willing to accept the need to do justice to the history of science as a constraint on the acceptability of any candidate theory of scientific method, very few are willing to use the history of science as evidence in the positive, confirming sense. However, some are; and I join them in believing that the history of science can be used as evidence for or against the various rival normative philosophies of science. That is, of the competing accounts which claim to be the scientific method , the history of science provides the sort of evidence which can lead to a choice from among them. ;This, then, is my starting point: There is a history-methodology evidential relationship. The problem to be tackled is how to characterize this relationship. Just how does what scientists have actually done support or refute an account of what scientists ought to do? This is the main quesion the thesis is devoted to answering. ;Starting from the same assumption that there is a history-methodology evidential relationship, Lakatos and Laudan have given accounts of just what the relationship is. They are critically investigated here and found wanting. ;The account which I think correct and which I defend is along these lines: That normative philosophy of science is correct which best is able to reconstruct the history of science so that it is maximally rational while maintaining a coherence with our best theories in other domains, e.g., psycho-social theories. In arguing for such an account of the history-methodology relation there are many difficulties to overcome. One is that the history of science has to be written up in order for it to be used as evidence. But such an historiography is loaded with normative concepts, so is it not the case that the testing procedure is circular? This is a problem of long standing, but it is shown that the account of testing rival methodologies that I offer will completely obviate the difficulty. This is one piece of strong evidence for my account, and others come from the fact that it overcomes the difficulties that I see in the accounts of Lakatos and Laudan. . . . UMI

The most embarrassing thing about ‘facts’ is the etymology of the word. The Latin facere means to make or construct. Bruno Latour, like so many other anti-realists who revel in the word’s history, thinks facts are made by us: they are a social construction. The view acquires some plausibility in Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts which Latour co-authored with Steve Woolgar.1 This work, first published a decade ago, has become a classic in the sociology of science literature. It is in the form of field notes by an ‘anthropologist in the lab.’ This may seem an odd place for an anthropologist, but Latour finds his presence easy to justify. ‘Whereas we have a fairly detailed knowledge of the myths and circumcision rituals of exotic tribes, we remain relatively ignorant of the details of equivalent activity among tribes of scientists … ’.