Scientific Progress

Kuhn and Feyerabend formulated the problem. Dilworth provides the solution.

In this highly original and insightful book, Craig Dilworth answers all the questions raised by the incommensurability thesis. Logical empiricism cannot account for theory conflict. Popperianism cannot account for how one theory is a progression beyond another. Dilworth's Perspectivist conception of science does both.

While remaining within the bounds of classical philosophy of science, Dilworth does away with the logicism of his competitors. On the Perspectivist view theory conflict is not contradiction, and theory superiority does not consist in deductive subsumption or set-theoretic inclusion. Here the relation between theories is analogous to the application of individual concepts, and the question of theory superiority becomes one of relative applicability. In this way Dilworth succeeds in providing a conception of science in which scientific progress is based on both rational and empirical considerations.

Provides the only solution to the problem of scientific progress that accounts for both conflict and progress Introduces a completely new, non-relativistic philosophy of science Provides a deep but concise critical overview of the whole of twentieth-century philosophy of science Expresses the most sophisticated form of perspectivism in philosophy Involves the most sophisticated use of the Gestalt-switch phenomenon in philosophy

Auteur
Craig Dilworth, born and raised in Canada, received his PhD in Sweden in 1981. He is presently Reader in Theoretical Philosophy at Uppsala University. While he is fundamentally a philosopher, Dilworth is at the same time a true generalist. He has been engaged in a wide variety of environmental projects on the local level, while at the same time developing his intellectual interests in the philosophy of science, human ecology, theoretical physics, theoretical biology, and the social sciences. He is the author of two major works in the philosophy of science, Scientific Progress and The Metaphysics of Science, and an earlier book in environmental science, Sustainable Development and Decision Making. He has spent the past 15 years researching the present book.

Contenu
The Deductive Model.- The Basis Of The Logical Empiricist Conception Of Science.- The Basis Of The Popperian Conception Of Science.- The Logical Empiricist Conception Of Scientific Progress.- The Popperian Conception Of Scientific Progress.- Popper, Lakatos, And The Transcendence Of The Deductive Model.- Kuhn, Feyerabend, And In Commensurability.- The Gestalt Model.- The Perspectivist Conception Of Science.- Development Of The Perspectivist Conception In The Context Of The Kinetic Theory Of Gases.- The Set-Theoretic Conception Of Science.- Application Of The Perspectivist Conception To The Views Of Newton, Kepler And Galileo.