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389Darwinian Theory ReinterpretedIn N. Maxwell (ed.), Cutting God in Half - And Putting the Pieces Together Again: A New Approach to Philosophy, Pentire Press. pp. 264-300. 2010.It is argued that purposive action of living things plays a crucial role in Darwinian evolution. As evolution proceeds, the mechanisms of evolution evolve as well, giving an increasingly important role to purposive action - to be understood in a sense which is compatible with physics (the atom of purposiveness being the thermostat). Nine versions of Darwinian theory are distinguished. The first denies that purposive action has any role in evolution at all; each successive version gives an inc…Read more
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Can Academic Inquiry help Humanity become Civilized?,Philosophy Today (13 May 1993): 1-3. 1993.Humanity is confronted by immense global problems. In order to learn how to tackle them we need a new kind of academic inquiry, rationally organized and devoted to helping us resolve our problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways.
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1356Science, reason, knowledge, and wisdom: A critique of specialismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 23 (1). 1980.In this paper I argue for a kind of intellectual inquiry which has, as its basic aim, to help all of us to resolve rationally the most important problems that we encounter in our lives, problems that arise as we seek to discover and achieve that which is of value in life. Rational problem-solving involves articulating our problems, proposing and criticizing possible solutions. It also involves breaking problems up into subordinate problems, creating a tradition of specialized problem-solving - s…Read more
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373Can Scientific Method Help Us Create a Wiser World?In N. Dalal, A. Intezari & M. Heitz (eds.), Practical Wisdom in the Age of Technology: Insights, Issues and Questions for a New Millennium, Routledge. pp. 147-161. 2016.Two great problems of learning confront humanity: (1) learning about the universe, and about ourselves as a part of the universe, and (2) learning how to make progress towards as good a world as possible. We solved the first problem when we created modern science in the 17th century, but we have not yet solved the second problem. This puts us in a situation of unprecedented danger. Modern science and technology enormously increase our power to act, but not our power to act wisely. All our cu…Read more
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Alpha Partricle Emission and the Orthodox Interpretation of Quantum MechanicsPhysics Letters 43 (1): 29-30. 1973.It is argued that Robinson's attempt to show that alpha particle emission contradicts orthodox quantum mechanics does not succeed. However, the possibility remains that alpha particle emission does contradict quantum mechanics.
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1294Popper's paradoxical pursuit of natural philosophyIn J. Shearmur & G. Stokes (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Popper, Cambridge University Press. pp. 170-207. 2016.Philosophy of science is seen by most as a meta-discipline – one that takes science as its subject matter, and seeks to acquire knowledge and understanding about science without in any way affecting, or contributing to, science itself. Karl Popper’s approach is very different. His first love is natural philosophy or, as he would put it, cosmology. This intermingles cosmology and the rest of natural science with epistemology, methodology and metaphysics. Paradoxically, however, one of his best kn…Read more
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566Science Under AttackThe Philosopher’s Magazine 31 37-41. 2005.Science has been under attack ever since William Blake and Romantic movement. In our time, criticisms of modern science have led to Alan Sokal's spoof, and the so-called science wars. Both sides missed the point. Science deserves to be criticized for seriously misrepresenting its highly problematic aims, which have metaphysical, value and political assumptions associated with them. Instead of repressing these problematic aims, science ought rather to make them explicit, so that they can be c…Read more
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915What's Wrong with Science and Technology Studies? What Needs to Be Done to Put It Right?In R. Pisano & D. Capecchi (eds.), A Bridge Between Conceptual Frameworks: Sciences, Society and Technology Studies, Springer. 2015.After a sketch of the optimism and high aspirations of History and Philosophy of Science when I first joined the field in the mid 1960s, I go on to describe the disastrous impact of "the strong programme" and social constructivism in history and sociology of science. Despite Alan Sokal's brilliant spoof article, and the "science wars" that flared up partly as a result, the whole field of Science and Technology Studies is still adversely affected by social constructivist ideas. I then go on to sp…Read more
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1095Are probabilism and special relativity compatible?Philosophy of Science 55 (4): 640-645. 1988.Are special relativity and probabilism compatible? Dieks argues that they are. But the possible universe he specifies, designed to exemplify both probabilism and special relativity, either incorporates a universal "now" (and is thus incompatible with special relativity), or amounts to a many world universe (which I have discussed, and rejected as too ad hoc to be taken seriously), or fails to have any one definite overall Minkowskian-type space-time structure (and thus differs drastically from…Read more
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1142Misconceptions Concerning WisdomJournal of Modern Wisdom 2 92-97. 2013.If our concern is to help wisdom to flourish in the world, then the central task before us is to transform academia so that it takes up its proper task of seeking and promoting wisdom instead of just acquiring knowledge. Improving knowledge about wisdom is no substitute; nor is the endeavour of searching for the correct definition of wisdom.
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291Observation, meaning and theory: Review of For and Against Method by Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend (review)Times Higher Education Supplement 1 30-30. 2000.Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend initially both accepted Popper's philosophy of science, but then reacted against it, and developed it in different directions. Lakatos sought to reconcile Kuhn and Popper by characterizing science as a process of competing research programmes, competing fragments of Kuhn's normal science. Feyerabend emphasized the need to develop rival theories to facilitate severe empirical testing of accepted theories, but then, as a result of a disastrous mistake, came to ho…Read more
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1130The rationality of scientific discovery part 1: The traditional rationality problemPhilosophy of Science 41 (2): 123--53. 1974.The basic task of the essay is to exhibit science as a rational enterprise. I argue that in order to do this we need to change quite fundamentally our whole conception of science. Today it is rather generally taken for granted that a precondition for science to be rational is that in science we do not make substantial assumptions about the world, or about the phenomena we are investigating, which are held permanently immune from empirical appraisal. According to this standard view, science is ra…Read more
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537What Philosophy Ought to BeIn Charles Tandy (ed.), Death And Anti-Death, Volume 11: Ten Years After Donald Davidson (1917-2003), Ria University Press. pp. 125-162. 2014.The proper task of philosophy is to keep alive awareness of what our most fundamental, important, urgent problems are, what our best attempts are at solving them and, if possible, what needs to be done to improve these attempts. Unfortunately, academic philosophy fails disastrously even to conceive of the task in these terms. It makes no attempt to ensure that universities tackle global problems - global intellectually, and global in the sense of concerning the future of the earth and humanity…Read more
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932Is Science Neurotic?Metaphilosophy 33 (3): 259-299. 2002.Neurosis can be interpreted as a methodological condition which any aim-pursuing entity can suffer from. If such an entity pursues a problematic aim B, represents to itself that it is pursuing a different aim C, and as a result fails to solve the problems associated with B which, if solved, would lead to the pursuit of aim A, then the entity may be said to be "rationalistically neurotic". Natural science is neurotic in this sense in so far as a basic aim of science is represented to be to improv…Read more
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429How Humanity Might Avoid DevastationEthical Record 120 (1): 18-23. 2015.We face grave global problems. One might think universities are doing all they can to help solve these problems. But universities, in successfully pursuing scientific knowledge and technological know-how in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living, have actually made possible the genesis of all our current global problems. Modern science and technology have led to modern industry and agriculture, modern medicine and hygiene, modern armaments, which in …Read more
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582Understanding Scientific Progress: Aim-Oriented EmpiricismParagon House. 2017."Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and …Read more
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817How can life of value best flourish in the real world?In Leemon McHenry (ed.), Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell, Ontos Verlag. 2009.The Urgent Need for an Intellectual Revolution For much of my working life (from 1972 onwards) I have argued, in and out of print, that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of science – and of academic inquiry more generally. Instead of giving priority to the search for knowledge, academia needs to devote itself to seeking and promoting wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom thus including kno…Read more
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828Do Philosophers Love Wisdom?The Philosophers' Magazine 22 (2): 22-24. 2003.There is an urgent need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry, its whole character and structure, so that it takes up its proper task of promoting wisdom rather than just acquiring knowledge. We need to put right a philosophical blunder – a philosophical disaster one should perhaps say – that has overtaken academia, and is built into its structure. It is a blunder about what the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry ought to be. The responsibili…Read more
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908The metaphysics of science: An account of modern science in terms of principles, laws and theories (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23 (2). 2009.This is a review of Craig Dilworth's The Metaphysics of Science (Dordrecht, Springer, 2007). The book propounds an immensely important idea. Science makes metaphysical presuppositions. Unfortunately, Dilworth ignores work that has been done on this issue which takes the matter much further than he does.
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827The Enlightenment Programme and Karl PopperIn I. I. Jarvie, K. Milford & D. Miller (eds.), Karl Popper: A Centenary Assessment. Volume 1: Life and Times, Values in a World of Facts, Ashgate. 2006.Popper first developed his theory of scientific method – falsificationism – in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery, then generalized it to form critical rationalism, which he subsequently applied to social and political problems in The Open Society and Its Enemies. All this can be regarded as constituting a major development of the 18th century Enlightenment programme of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a better world. Falsificationism is, however, def…Read more
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463Wisdom-inquiryThe Philosophers' Magazine 22 (50): 84-85. 2010.The most exciting and important new philosophical idea of the past decade, in my view, is the discovery that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academic inquiry more generally, so that the basic intellectual aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom. We urgently need to transform our schools and universities so that they become rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to tackle our grave global problems, and thus make progress towards as good a world as possibl…Read more
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545Articulating the Aims of ScienceNature 265 (January 6): 2. 1977.Most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted the standard empiricist view that the basic intellectual aim of science is truth per se. But this seriously misrepresents the aims of scieince. Actually, science seeks explanatory truth and, more generally, important truth. Problematic metaphysical and value assumptions are inherent in the real aims of science. Precisely because these aims are profoundly problematic, they need to be articulated, imaginatively explored and criticall…Read more
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363Replies to Criticisms and CommentsDialogue and Universalism 22 (3): 133-152. 2012.This article consists of my replies to criticisms of and comments on a talk I gave at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, in 2011. My original talk was called "The Menace of Science without Civilization: From Knowledge to Wisdom": for the text. In my talk I argued that our extraordinarily successful pursuit of scientific knowledge and technology has vastly increased our power to act, without increasing our power to act wisely. This puts us into a situation of unprecedented danger, …Read more
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35The fate of the enlightenment: Reply to KekesInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 29 (1-4): 79-92. 1986.If humanity is to learn how to live together more cooperatively and wisely than at present, it is essential that we create a new kind of academic inquiry and education that is rationally devoted to helping us learn how to be cooperative and wise. This new kind of inquiry would give intellectual priority to articulating our problems of living, proposing and criticizing possible solutions, possible cooperative actions. The pursuit of knowledge would play a subordinate role. This in essence is the …Read more
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651Cutting God in Half argues that, in order to tackle climate change, world poverty, extinction of species and our other global problems rather better than we are doing at present we need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more generally. We need to put our problems of living – personal, social, global – at the heart of the academic enterprise. How our human world, imbued with meaning and value, can exist and best flourish embedded in the physical universe is, the book argue…Read more
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284An Idea to Save the WorldSublime (17): 90-93. 2009.Here is an idea that just might save the world. It is that science, properly understood, provides us with the methodological key to the salvation of humanity.
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472On relativity theory and openness of the futurePhilosophy of Science 60 (2): 341-348. 1993.In a recent paper, Howard Stein makes a number of criticisms of an earlier paper of mine ('Are Probabilism and Special Relativity Incompatible?', Phil. Sci., 1985), which explored the question of whether the idea that the future is genuinely 'open' in a probabilistic universe is compatible with special relativity. I disagree with almost all of Stein's criticisms.
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1032Relativity Theory may not have the last Word on the Nature of Time: Quantum Theory and ProbabilismIn Giancarlo Ghirardi & Shyam Wuppuluri (eds.), Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding, Imprint: Springer. pp. 109-124. 2016.Two radically different views about time are possible. According to the first, the universe is three dimensional. It has a past and a future, but that does not mean it is spread out in time as it is spread out in the three dimensions of space. This view requires that there is an unambiguous, absolute, cosmic-wide "now" at each instant. According to the second view about time, the universe is four dimensional. It is spread out in both space and time - in space-time in short. Special and gen…Read more
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206Wisdom-inquiryThe Philosophers' Magazine 50 84-85. 2010.The most exciting and important new philosophical idea of the past decade, in my view, is the discovery that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academic inquiry more generally, so that the basic intellectual aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom. We urgently need to transform our schools and universities so that they become rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to tackle our grave global problems, and thus make progress towards as good a world as possibl…Read more
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380Aim-oriented empiricism: David Miller's critiquePhilsci Archive. 2006.For three decades I have expounded and defended aim-oriented empiricism, a view of science which, l claim, solves a number of problems in the philosophy of science and has important implications for science itself and, when generalized, for the whole of academic inquiry, and for our capacity to solve our current global problems. Despite these claims, the view has received scant attention from philosophers of science. Recently, however, David Miller has criticized the view. Miller’s criticisms ar…Read more
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