scholarly journals Reason versus Ian Hacking’s styles of scientific reasoning

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. e21048
Author(s):  
Kola Abimbola
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Research Traditions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
View Change ◽  
Styles Of Reasoning

There is a view in contemporary philosophy of science according to which scientific methodology itself is subject to radical change as part of scientific progress. According to this view, change in science is not confined to accepted theories. The core principles of scientific theory appraisal, including the rules and categories used to rank and confer truth-values on theories, are also said to be subject to radical change as science develops. In this paper, I examine Ian Hacking’s (1975; 1980; 1982; 1983; 1985; 1996; 1999; 2012) version of this no-invariant-methodology thesis. I argue that, just like Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigms,” Larry Laudan’s “research traditions,” and Imre Lakatos’ “research programmes,” Hacking’s “styles of reasoning” fail to give an adequate account of scientific progress.

Characteristics of Scientific Inquiry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Miksza ◽  
Kenneth Elpus
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Statistical Tools ◽  
Basic Characteristics ◽  
Historical Developments

This chapter introduces the reader to basic characteristics of science and situates the design and analysis considerations presented throughout the book within the context of scientific inquiry. A brief description of key historical developments regarding the philosophy of science is provided. An overview of the fundamental aspects of inductive and deductive scientific reasoning and the importance of falsification to scientific progress is presented. In addition, the values of objectivity and transparency as well as the importance of scientific community are stressed. The usefulness of statistical tools for helping researchers clarify their questions, establish criteria for their judgments, and communicate evidence for their claims is also discussed.

scholarly journals Laparoscopy in Liver Transplantation: The Future Has Arrived

HPB Surgery ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quirino Lai ◽  
Rafael S. Pinheiro ◽  
Giovanni B. Levi Sandri ◽  
Gabriele Spoletini ◽  
Fabio Melandro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Liver Transplantation ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Laparoscopic Approach ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Hospital Length ◽  
Hospital Length Of Stay ◽  
Therapeutic Laparoscopy ◽  
Stage Disease ◽  
End Stage

In the last two decades, laparoscopy has revolutionized the field of surgery. Many procedures previously performed with an open access are now routinely carried out with the laparoscopic approach. Several advantages are associated with laparoscopic surgery compared to open procedures: reduced pain due to smaller incisions and hemorrhaging, shorter hospital length of stay, and a lower incidence of wound infections. Liver transplantation (LT) brought a radical change in life expectancy of patients with hepatic end-stage disease. Today, LT represents the standard of care for more than fifty hepatic pathologies, with excellent results in terms of survival. Surely, with laparoscopy and LT being one of the most continuously evolving challenges in medicine, their recent combination has represented an astonishing scientific progress. The intent of the present paper is to underline the current role of diagnostic and therapeutic laparoscopy in patients waiting for LT, in the living donor LT and in LT recipients.

Dead-Ends and New Directions

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-347
Author(s):  
Jean Francesco A.L. Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Good Science ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Earth ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolutionary Science ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation

Abstract The aim of this article is to investigate how Abraham Kuyper and some late neo-Calvinists have addressed the doctrine of creation in light of the challenges posed by evolutionary scientific theory. I argue that most neo-Calvinists today, particularly scholars from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), continue Kuyper’s legacy by holding the core principles of a creationist worldview. Yet, they have taken a new direction by explaining the natural history of the earth in evolutionary terms. In my analysis, Kuyper’s heirs at the VU today offer judicious parameters to guide Christians in conversation with evolutionary science, precisely because of their high appreciation of good science and awareness of the nonnegotiable elements that make up the orthodox Christian narrative.

Adaptive Design, Contingency, and Ontological Principles for Limited Beings

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 871-881
Author(s):  
Daniel S. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Adaptive Design ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Transcendental Arguments ◽  
Productive Role

Transcendental arguments are not popular in contemporary philosophy of science. They are typically seen as antinaturalistic and incapable of providing explanatory force in accounting for natural phenomena. However, when viewed as providing (certain types of) intelligibility to complicated concepts used in scientific reasoning, a concrete and productive role is recoverable for transcendental reasoning in philosophy of science. In this article I argue that the resources, and possibly the need, for such a role are available within a thoroughly naturalistic framework garnered from the work of Hasok Chang and William Wimsatt.

Rationalist Empiricism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Brown
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Digital Photography ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Core ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

Twenty-first century philosophy has been drawn into a false opposition between speculation and critique. In this important intervention, Nathan Brown argues that the key to overcoming this antinomy is rethinking the relation between rationalism and empiricism. If Kant’s transcendental philosophy attempted to displace the opposing claims of those competing schools, any speculative critique of Kant will have to reopen and consider anew the conflict and complementarity of reason and experience. Rationalist Empiricism shows that the capacity of reason and experience to both extend and delimit one another has always been at the core of philosophy and science, and that coordinating their discrepant powers is what enables speculation to move forward in concert with critique. Sweeping across ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy, as well as political theory, science, and art, Brown engages with such major thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Bachelard, Althusser, Badiou, and Meillassoux, while showing how the concepts he develops illuminate recent projects in the science of measurement and experimental digital photography. With conceptual originality and argumentative precision, Rationalist Empiricism is a book that reconfigures the history and the future of philosophy, politics, and aesthetics.

Zola and the Science of Painting

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-306
Author(s):  
Robert Lethbridge
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
Contemporary Painting

The article explores a paradox in Zola's writing: the resistance to advances in scientific theory by the author of Du Progrès dans les sciences et dans la poésie (1864), as the first of many such assimilations of scientific progress and artistic trends. This is exemplified by the challenge posed to his Naturalist aesthetic by Michel-Eugène Chevreul's seminal De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs (1839), popularised during the period of Zola's most sustained art criticism. This radical revision of the science of optics is increasingly accommodated in contemporary painting, from 1880 onwards, at the very moment of Zola's disenchantment with Impressionism. Although L'Œuvre, his novel of 1886, is set in the Second Empire (consistent with the historical limits of Les Rougon-Macquart), Zola inserts into his narrative the theory of complementary colours, the awkward anachronism notwithstanding, to explain his fictional painter's creative impotence. In relation to the latter, the article looks in detail at the genesis and textual details of a key passage in the novel in which Zola's irony at the expense of Chevreul's theories is almost explicit. At least as telling is his response to unsolicited advice about them: ‘J’ai plus de confiance dans l'observation directe que dans la théorie’. One could hardly conjure up a more succinct summary of Zola's unreconstructed approach to the science of painting which simultaneously testifies to his own principles of representation.

Associations among the Subtests: A Short-Form CART

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith E. Stanovich ◽  
Richard F. West ◽  
Maggie E. Toplak
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Principal Components Analysis ◽  
Principal Components ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Short Form ◽  
Statistical Reasoning ◽  
Rational Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
Components Analysis

Chapter 12 describes a large-scale study of the short-form version of the CART. The short-form is composed of 11 of the 20 subtests and can be completed in less than two hours by most subjects. The short-form CART includes both the Probabilistic and Statistical Reasoning and the Scientific Reasoning subtests, as both are at the core of most definitions of rational thinking. All four subtests that directly tap the avoidance of miserly processing are included in the short form. The Probabilistic Numeracy subtest is included in the short-form CART because it is statistically quite potent for the amount of time that it takes. All four subtests assessing contaminated mindware are included in the short-form. Chapter 12 reports the results of a study of short-form performance involving 372 subjects. Reliabilities of all the subtests are reported, as well as correlations with cognitive ability and the Actively Open-Minded Thinking scale. Correlations among all the subtests are reported as well as a principal components analysis of the subtests.

The Fuel of Scientific Progress

Black Boxes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 215-249
Author(s):  
Marco J. Nathan
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Main Stage ◽  
General Characterization ◽  
The Core ◽  
Cumulative Model ◽  
New Millennium

This chapter addresses a classic topic: the advancement of science. In the wake of Kuhn’s groundbreaking work, positivist philosophy of science was replaced by a more realistic and historically informed depiction of science. However, over half a century has now passed since the publication of Structure. Despite valiant attempts, we still lack a fully developed, viable replacement for the cumulative model presupposed by positivism. At the dawn of the new millennium, mainstream philosophy eventually abandoned the project of developing a grand, overarching account of science. The quest for generality was traded in for a more detailed analysis of particular disciplines and practices. The goal of this chapter is to show how the black-boxing strategy can offer a revamped formulation of scientific progress, an important topic that lies at the core of any general characterization of science, and bring it back on the philosophical main stage, where it legitimately belongs.

Solving Hardy-Weinberg with Geometry: An Integration of Biology and Math

2017 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-312
Author(s):  
Laura A. Schoenle ◽  
Matthew Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Geometric Interpretation ◽  
Student Understanding ◽  
Weinberg Equilibrium ◽  
The Core ◽  
Distributive Property ◽  
Genotype Frequencies ◽  
Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium ◽  
Using Data ◽  
And Mathematics

Introducing Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium into the high school or college classroom can be difficult because many students struggle with the mathematical formalism of the Hardy-Weinberg equations. Despite the potential difficulties, incorporating Hardy-Weinberg into the curriculum can provide students with the opportunity to investigate a scientific theory using data and integrate across the disciplines of biology and mathematics. We present a geometric way to interpret and visualize Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, allowing students to focus on the core ideas without algebraic baggage. We also introduce interactive applets that draw on the distributive property of mathematics to allow students to experiment in real time. With the applets, students can observe the effects of changing allele frequencies on genotype frequencies in a population at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Anecdotally, we found use of the geometric interpretation led to deeper student understanding of the concepts and improved the students' ability to solve Hardy-Weinberg-related problems. Students can use the ideas and tools provided here to draw connections between the biology and mathematics, as well as between algebra and geometry.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document