From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Science vs Philosophy of
Date: 31 Aug 92 13:22:31 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Originator: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com


In article <Btp38D.EKz@unx.sas.com>, sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
|> 
|> In article <1992Aug27.214247.28254@sics.se>, torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen) writes:
|> 
|> |>   What is "historicist" or "sociological" about Lakatos's doctrines
|> |> regarding "the methodology of scientific research programs"?
|> ...
|> |>   Actually the people you refer to don't at all claim that philosophy of
|> |> science = history of science, but that we need to know the history of science
|> |> in order to do philosophy of science.
|> 
|> You and I have been reading different stuff or reading it differently.
|> I will come up with some references over the weekend.  Meanwhile,
|> if you have the time, are so inclined, and have access to the
|> _Proceedings_ of the Philosophy of Science Association for the 1980
|> meetings, you might look at "Moderate Historicism and the Empirical
|> Sense of 'Good Science'".

Okay, what with preparing the kids for the start of school, tuba practice,
and calling in chemical strikes on the pasture, I didn't have much time
this weekend to dive back into the literature.  So for right now I'll give
you a quick and dirty response here based on the aforementioned _Proceedings_.

In volume 1 of those _Proceedings_ is a section entitled "History and the
Metaphilosophy of Science" which contains the papers:

	"Toward a Historical Meta-Method for Assessing Normative
         Methodologies:  Rationability, Serendipity, and the Robinson
         Crusoe Fallacy"  (Stephen J. Wykstra)

	"Moderate Historicism and the Empirical Sense of 'Good Sciende'"
	(me)

	"History and the Norms of Science"  (James Robert Brown)

I will not attempt to reproduce the analyzes or arguments of these papers
here, but give just a brief summary that may put my previous remarks in
more of a context.

The papers are interesting in a collective sense because even though none
of the authors knew of the others' work and no one of the three mentions either
of the others, there are nonetheless some common threads.  Both Wykstra and
I attack a historicist approach on roughly the same grounds that early
Carnapian positivism is commonly attacked (though this is just one of the
attacks, and not really the most central one).  I distinguish radical historicism
from a more popular (at least at that time) weaker form that I
called "moderate historicism".  I then argue at length that the moderate
position is either incoherent or reduces to the radical form.  (I think
your objection is that Lakatos, et al. do not hold the radical form.  My
argument may be seen as showing that in so far as their views are coherent,
they do.)  Brown was then kind enough to explicitly articulate precisely
the type of moderate historicism I attacked, claiming that although it
is not Lakatos's position (he seems to think that Lakatos is in fact either
extremely vague or incoherent), it is nonetheless "inspired" by Lakatos.

Your statement that

|> ...
|> |>   Actually the people you refer to don't at all claim that philosophy of
|> |> science = history of science, but that we need to know the history of science
|> |> in order to do philosophy of science.

is in some sense correct (at least for *some* of these people, notably Lakatos).
But both I and Wykstra argue that when the details of their positions are
worked out (both by them and by others analyzing the consequences of those
positions) these positions are exposed as variants of a more radical historicist
methodology.  In passing, Wykstra notes that Musgrave had previously argued
along similar lines that Lakatos's position reduces to the anarchistic views
of Feyerabend.

I won't include either a complete bibliography or a sprinkling of quotes here,
but a good place for someone to get a grip on these issues (and the stuff that
set me off) is Fred Suppe's _The_Structure_of_Scientific_Theories_ (U. of Ill.
Press, 1977).  Suppe gives a quite lengthy account of the alternative historicist
methodologies and subscribes to a "moderate" version.  It is this version that
I took as the paradigm and attacked explicitly, but I believe it is clear that
this is all part of a Kuhn/Lakatos/Suppe/et al. thread.


-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech