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47Reply to Mary HesseThe Monist 55 (3): 525-525. 1971.I am happy to see Dr. Hesse’s clarification of her earlier discussion of consilience. I shall not comment here on her interesting, if controversial, thesis that a confirmed theory confers no likelihood on its untested entailments, except insofar as the latter are analogous to previously confirmed entailments of that theory. It would be premature to comment on the thesis until Hesse has spelled out in more detail her account of analogy.
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76Dominance and the disunity of method: Solving the problems of innovation and consensusPhilosophy of Science 56 (2): 221-237. 1989.It is widely supposed that the scientists in any field use identical standards for evaluating theories. Without such unity of standards, consensus about scientific theories is supposedly unintelligible. However, the hypothesis of uniform standards can explain neither scientific disagreement nor scientific innovation. This paper seeks to show how the presumption of divergent standards (when linked to a hypothesis of dominance) can explain agreement, disagreement and innovation. By way of illustra…Read more
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32Views of progress: Separating the pilgrims from the rakesPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 10 (3): 273-286. 1980.
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Progress and its problems: Towards a theory of scientific growthBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 32 (1): 57-71. 1978.
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The methodological foundations of Mach's anti-atomism and their historical rootsIn Peter K. Machamer & Robert G. Turnbull (eds.), Motion and Time, Space and Matter, Ohio State University Press. pp. 390--417. 1976.
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54A problem-solving approach to scientific progressIn Ian Hacking (ed.), Scientific revolutions, Oxford University Press. 1981.
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78Towards a Reassessment of Comte’s ‘Methode Positive’Philosophy of Science 38 (1): 35-53. 1971.In this study of Auguste Comte's philosophy of science, an attempt is made to explicate his views on such methodological issues as explanation, prediction, induction and hypothesis. Comte's efforts to resolve the dual problems of demarcation and meaning led to the enunciation of principles of verifiability and predictability. Comte's hypothetico-deductive method is seen to permit conjectures dealing with unobservable entities
Areas of Specialization
20th Century Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Law |
General Philosophy of Science |