That is, insofar as our theory is interwoven with historically and culturally variable linguistic and conceptual elements, it seems difficult to prove that theory at the same time gives us only a purely objective, correspondentially true account of the material world. Maxwell, however, seeks to pull the rug out from all of these arguments wholesale - again, by attacking what he sees as their shared core, namely the notion of a strong distinction between theory and observation. Kristen finds that Keller stakes out a middle ground of instrumentalism between the strict realism of earlier positivisms and the reduction of science to culture and subjectivity in radical feminist and social constructivist critiques that follow on Kuhn's work. Pickering analyzes in close detail the experimental set-up, arguments, and social contexts of the discovery of the weak neutral current in the early 1970's. From the PreSocratics to the Middle Ages - based primarily on Oldroyd's The Arch of Knowledge and Peter Singer, these documents provide an initial overview of the basic methodological assumptions of what becomes modern science, and shows how the epistemological and metaphysical beliefs underlying these methodologies emerge in the historical development of Western philosophy.
American assumptions re.
This document also contains the second major class Project - suggestions for synthesizing the history and philosophy of science as we have examined it thus far.