Philosophy of Science - summary lecture 1-12

Philosophy of Science Lecture
Notes
Lecture 1 – 9th of February 2022 – Ways of Knowing
 Why “Philosophy of Science”?
o Helps to reflect on personal scientific practice
 How do different disciplines conceptualize the world?
 What does it mean to have knowledge?
 How do scientists’ reason?
o Equips you to develop solutions to problems yet unknown
 Ascent to abstraction
o Philosophy of science is higher abstraction
o Equipping you to meet problems coming over the horizon
 Three groups of sciences
o Natural Science
 Physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy
o Humanities
 History, history of art, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, religious
studies
o Social science
 Sociology, political science, economics, psychology, anthropology
 Natural Sciences
o Ancient intellectual endeavors
 Astronomy arose in Babylonia, 1200 BCE
 Modern natural science developed partly from Chinese, Indian, and
Islamic sources in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
o “Scientific revolution”
 Europe, 1550-1700
o Physical universe is uniform and simple
o Natural sciences focus on universal and regularities
 E.g., the phenomenon of free fall
 Less interest in concrete historical particulars, such as the fall of this
stone
o Standard techniques of theorizing
 Mathematization, abstraction, idealization
 Yield knowledge in concise, powerful forms
o Example: laws of nature
 Mathematical equations among physical quantities
 Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation, 1687
o Laws as paradigms of knowledge
 Taken to represent the highest grade of scientific knowledge
 Even by many outside the natural sciences
 Humanities
o Liberal arts in ancient and medical education were “ways of doing”

,  Grammar, logic, rhetoric
o They turned gradually into subjects of study
 Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467 – 1536) and other Renaissance
humanists
o And then developed into present day humanities disciplines
o World studies by the humanities
 Focuses on historical human actors
o Historical actors are creative
 They originate acts, texts, artworks
 Creation follows no rules – unpredictable
o Important methodological consequences
o Historical particularity
 Every event and context are unique
 We identify periods (e.g., Renaissance, Enlightenment), but then
zoom in past these categories
o Mistrust of generalization and idealization
 Highest form of knowledge is intimate knowledge of particulars
 Little or no use for scientific laws
o Main output: interpretations
 Of acts, texts, artworks
 Often imbedded in theoretical frameworks
o Empathy, hermeneutics
 We attempt to reconstruct the historical actor’s world of experiences
and meanings
o Objectivity of interpretation
 We test interpretations against the text or other material
 Some complications
o Both groups of disciplines are more diverse than I have described
o Variety in natural sciences
o Variety in humanities
 Linguistics, archaeology use some methods inspired by the natural
sciences
 Marxist historiography: belief in universal laws of historical
development
 Question
o How to…
 Conceptualize the differences between natural sciences and
humanities?
 Analyze the diversity of the social sciences?
o Answer: using the concepts of nomothetic and ideographic approaches
 Nomothetic approach
o What does the nomothetic approach consist in?
 Identifying regularities in the world
 Formulating generalizations and laws to describe theses regularities
 Deriving explanations of observed outcomes from these
generalizations and laws

, o Typical of the natural sciences
 But not unknown in humanities and social sciences
o Strength: nomothetic approach can…
 Identify similarities and structures that underlie apparently diverse
cases
 Yield sweeping, general knowledge
 Yield economical knowledge
o Weakness: nomothetic approach can…
 Erase the specificity of outcomes
 Be reductive, mechanistic, positivistic
 Idiographic approach
o What does the idiographic approach consist in?
 Understanding the meaning of contingent, unique, and often
subjective outcomes
o Typical of the humanities
o Strength: idiographic approach can…
 Reveal differences between apparently similar cases
 Yield detailed, context-sensitive knowledge
o Weakness: ideographic approach can…
 Be blind to general factors that constrain outcomes
 Review: nomothetic/idiographic
o Nomothetic approach: tendency to…
 Generalize
 Explain outcomes by appeal to general rules
o Idiographic approach: tendency to…
 Specify
 Understand the meaning of unique, contingent, and often subjective
acts
o Tension between these approaches
 Felt particularly in the social sciences
 Social sciences
o Youngest group of disciplines
 Originated in late 19th century French and German debates on how to
study societies
o Present day disciplines
 Sociology, political science, economics, psychology, anthropology
o World of the social sciences contains…
 Human agents and institutions
 Forms of behavior
 Rationality and ritual
 Cultures
o Social sciences feel the attraction of both natural sciences and humanities
o Economics, demography
 Largely nomothetic disciplines
 Predominantly mathematical investigation or underlying phenomena
o Cultural anthropology, political theory

,  Largely idiographic disciplines
 Produce interpretations and ascribe meaning
o Diversity even within single disciplines
 E.g., psychology
o Nomothetic approach
 Psychometric approach to personality
 Categories individuals in terms of underlying universal traits or
dimensions
o Ideographic approach
 Sigmund Freud’s analysis of “kleine Hans”, a boy with a phobia of
horses, 1909
 Clinical notes running up to 150 pages
 Recapitulation
o Characteristics of…
 Natural science, humanities, social sciences
 Nomothetic and ideographic approaches
o This overview gives you a basis to…
 Interpret what knowledge each discipline can product
 Integrate the output of diverse disciplines

Lecture 2 – 16th of February 2022 – Knowledge, Truth,
and Facts
 Lecture Breakdown
o Classification of forms of knowledge
 Focus on propositional knowledge
o What is knowledge?
 Knowledge as a justified true belief
o What is truth?
 Correspondence theory of truth
o What is a fact?
 Permanence of facts and of truth
 Three forms of knowledge
o “Knowledge about” or by acquaintance
o “Knowledge how to” or skills knowledge
o “Knowledge that” or propositional knowledge
 I know that P
 … where P is a proposition
 Here we focus on propositional knowledge
 Propositional knowledge
o We regard propositional knowledge as the highest form of knowledge. Why?
 It is knowledge of facts
 Important in science, in logical reasoning, in arguments
o Each of us may claim many items of propositional knowledge…
 In various categories
 Knowledge that P: examples
o Knowledge of observed states of affairs