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1LakatosIn 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
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1DiscoveryIn 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
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Metodologia, euristica e razionalitàIn Marcello Pera & Joseph C. Pitt (eds.), I Modi del progresso: teorie e episodi della razionalità scientifica, Il Saggiatore. 1985.
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9The crowbar model of method and its implicationsTheoria: 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
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13Guest editors’ introductionTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 34 (3): 317-320. 2019.
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12Do Cognitive Illusions Make Scientific Realism Deceptively Attractive?In Wenceslao J. Gonzalez (ed.), New Approaches to Scientific Realism, De Gruyter. pp. 104-130. 2020.
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25Bounded rationality, scissors, crowbars, and pragmatism: reflections on Herbert SimonMind and Society 17 (1-2): 85-96. 2018.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
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44Scientific Discovery as a Topic for Philosophy of Science: Some Personal ReflectionsTopoi 39 (4): 841-845. 2020.This is a brief, personal retrospective on developments in the treatment of scientific discovery by philosophers, since about 1970.
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77Alien Reasoning: Is a Major Change in Scientific Research Underway?Topoi 39 (4): 901-914. 2020.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
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Scientific Discovery, Logic and RationalityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34 (3): 306-310. 1983.
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Finocchiaro, Maurice A., "History of Science as Explanation" (review)Erkenntnis 14 (n/a): 93. 1979.
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15On Some Autonomy Arguments in Social SciencePSA: 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
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Twixt method and madnessIn Nancy J. Nersessian (ed.), The Process of Science: Contemporary Philosophical Approaches to Understanding Scientific Practice, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1987.
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262Normal science: From logic to case-based and model-based reasoningIn Thomas Kuhn, Cambridge University Press. pp. 142-77. 2003.
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20Scientific Discovery: Case StudiesTaylor & Francis. 1980.The history of science is articulated by moments of discovery. Yet, these 'moments' are not simple or isolated events in science. Just as a scientific discovery illuminates our understanding of nature or of society, and reveals new connections among phenomena, so too does the history of scientific activity and the analysis of scientific reasoning illuminate the processes which give rise to moments of discovery and the complex network of consequences which follow upon such moments. Understanding …Read more
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79Beyond divorce: Current status of the discovery debatePhilosophy of Science 52 (2): 177-206. 1985.Does the viability of the discovery program depend on showing either (1) that methods of generating new problem solutions, per se, have special probative weight (the per se thesis); or, (2) that the original conception of an idea is logically continuous with its justification (anti-divorce thesis)? Many writers have identified these as the key issues of the discovery debate. McLaughlin, Pera, and others recently have defended the discovery program by attacking the divorce thesis, while Laudan ha…Read more