•  1
    Lakatos
    In W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.
    Imre Lakatos (9 November 1922–2 February 1974) is the most important philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential philosophers of science since the mid‐twentieth century. A Hungarian, Lakatos changed his name from Lipschitz to Molnar during the Nazi era and then to Lakatos (“locksmith”). After the war he remained politically active, as secretary in the Hungarian Ministry of Education. Later he was imprisoned as a dissident, and escaped to the West during the revolt of 1956. He stud…Read more
  • Discovery
    In W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.
    We begin with some questions. What constitutes a scientific discovery? How do we tell when a discovery has been made and whom to credit? Is making a discovery (always) the same as solving a problem? Is it an individual psychological event (an ahal experience), or something more articulated such as a logical argument or a mathematical derivation? May discovery require a long, intricate social process? Could it be an experimental demonstration? How do we tell exactly what has been discovered, give…Read more
  •  19
    Science and Hypothesis
    Erkenntnis 21 (3): 433-438. 1984.
  •  14
    Book reviews (review)
    with Eric Schwitzgebel, Stephen E. Braude, Hilary Kornblith, and William W. Schonbein
    Philosophical Psychology 10 (4): 551-564. 1997.
  •  8
    The crowbar model of method and its implications
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 34 (3): 357-372. 2019.
    There is a rough, long-term tradeoff between rate of innovation and degree of strong realism in scientific practice, a point reflected in historically changing conceptions of method as they retreat from epistemological foundationism to a highly fallibilistic, modeling perspective. The successively more liberal, innovation-stimulating methods open up to investigation deep theoretical domains at the cost, in many cases, of moving away from strong realism as a likely outcome of research. The crowba…Read more
  •  5
    Guest editors’ introduction
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 34 (3): 317-320. 2019.
  •  9
  •  6
    Science and Hypothesis
    Philosophy of Science 49 (4): 653-655. 1982.
  •  23
    The paper locates, appreciates, and extends several dimensions of Simon’s work in the direction of more recent contributions by people such as Gigerenzer and Dennett. The author’s “crowbar model of method” is compared to Simon’s scissors metaphor. Against an evolutionary background, both support a pragmatic rather than strong realist approach to theoretically deep and complex problems. The importance of implicit knowledge is emphasized, for humans, as well as nonhuman animals. Although Simon was…Read more
  •  42
    This is a brief, personal retrospective on developments in the treatment of scientific discovery by philosophers, since about 1970.
  •  27
    Theory and Meaning. David Papineau (review)
    Philosophy of Science 48 (3): 500-502. 1981.
  •  71
    Are we entering a major new phase of modern science, one in which our standard, human modes of reasoning and understanding, including heuristics, have decreasing value? The new methods challenge human intelligibility. The digital revolution inspires such claims, but they are not new. During several historical periods, scientific progress has challenged traditional concepts of reasoning and rationality, intelligence and intelligibility, explanation and knowledge. The increasing intelligence of ma…Read more
  • Scientific Discovery, Logic and Rationality
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34 (3): 306-310. 1983.
  • Finocchiaro, Maurice A., "History of Science as Explanation" (review)
    Erkenntnis 14 (n/a): 93. 1979.
  • The Structure and Interrelationships of Physical Theories
    Dissertation, Princeton University. 1969.
  • Justification as Discoverability II
    Philosophia Naturalis 21 (2/4): 563-576. 1984.
  • Logics of Discovery
    Philosophica 35 7-32. 1990.
  •  14
    On Some Autonomy Arguments in Social Science
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1976 12-24. 1976.
    Arguments, suggested by readings of Durkheim and Kroeber, for the integrity and autonomy of social theory are examined. These arguments may be construed as closure arguments on domains of social events and of social facts. Causal closure, ontic closure, and several kinds of nomic and explanatory closure are distinguished. Discussion of the relations of various kinds of closure, integrity, autonomy, etc. under plausible assumptions concerning causation and explanation leads to the conclusion that…Read more
  • Psa 1982 (edited book)
    with P. D. Asquith
    Philosophy of Science Association. 1983.
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  •  74
    Life at the frontier: The relevance of heuristic appraisal to policy (review)
    Axiomathes 19 (4): 441-464. 2009.
    Economic competitive advantage depends on innovation, which in turn requires pushing back the frontiers of various kinds of knowledge. Although understanding how knowledge grows ought to be a central topic of epistemology, epistemologists and philosophers of science have given it insufficient attention, even deliberately shunning the topic. Traditional confirmation theory and general epistemology offer little help at the frontier, because they are mostly retrospective rather than prospective. No…Read more
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