From: Robert.Vienneau@launchpad.unc.edu (Robert Vienneau)
Subject: Re: Natural Kinds (was re: Are all crows black?)
Followup-To: sci.logic,sci.philosophy.meta
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 17:26:10 GMT

Gary Merrill writes:
>
>In article <1992Nov9.010144.18902@samba.oit.unc.edu>, Robert.Vienneau@launchpad.unc.edu (Robert Vienneau) writes:
>
>|> I think one should also have some idea of what criteria 20th century
>|> philosophers have put forward to demarcate science from non-science. I'd
>|> like to suggest that if one is going to sound like one knows what one is
>|> talking about, one should have at least a passing acquaintance with the
>|> ideas of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul Feyerabend.
>
>I'd like to suggest that this would provide a pretty narrow perspective
>on 20th century philosophy of science since it provides a view from
>only one particular "school" or "tradition".  Indeed, it is neither the
>"received view" nor representative of the bulk of work in the philosophy
>of science over (say) the last 20 years.
>-- 
>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

Gary, your response disappoints me. I'd seriously like reading
suggestions. Who would you suggest is of comparable status? (By limiting
yourself to the last 20 years, you provide yourself with a problem even
more than I do by limiting myself to the 20th century. It's extremely
hard to say whose work will age well, or even if current arguments will
not seem pointless and too narrowly focused in another 100 years.)

Your response also makes me wonder if you know what you are talking
about. How can you characterize the four I listed as being of a single
school? Granted they were all aware of each other's work and reacted
to one another. But I think Popper's falsificationism, Kuhn's contrast
between paradigm changes and normal science, Lakatos' Scientific
Research Programs, and Feyerabend's methodological anarchism provide a
fairly diverse set of views on whether science is rational, what
constitues scientific progress, etc.

One of the few propositions I think this crew would agree on is the
following: 

If somebody claims to provide rules that scientists should follow, or a
criteria for seperating science from nonscience, they should test these
rules against history. If history shows that these rules abstract from
essential elements of cases in which everybody agrees there was progress
(e.g. Gailleo, Newton, Einstein), and not only that, these rules declare
essential elements of what brought about this progress to be irrational,
then one should modify these criteria.

Having amateurishly studied the philosophy and history of science
somewhat, I doubt that anybody can provide a single criteria that meets
this test. I know I haven't seen any characterization of science here
that I find at all convincing.
                                          Robert Vienneau
--
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