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LESSON-3-NOTES

Overview and History and Philosophy of Science

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12 views4 pages

LESSON-3-NOTES

Overview and History and Philosophy of Science

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stephen john agtoto
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Wednesday, 19 June 2024

MODULE 1 - Overview and History and Philosophy


of Science

Lesson 3 - Histories and philosophies of science and technology

I. History of Science and Technology

Bunch, B. & Hellemans, A. (2004). The History of Science and Technology. New York: Houghton Mi in Company.
Available from http://www.biyolojiegitim.yyu.edu.tr/ders/btpdf/hst.PDF

• Key Figures in the Development of Science and Technology:


1. Isaac Newton
- Key gure in physics and mathematics, known for his laws of motion and universal gravitation.
2. Albert Einstein
- Renowned for his theory of relativity, which revolutionized modern physics.
3. Marie Curie
- Pioneering researcher in radioactivity, rst woman to win a Nobel Prize.

• Important Sites and Places


1. Alexandria, Egypt
- The Library of Alexandria was a major center of learning in the ancient world.
2. Cambridge University, England
- Birthplace of many scienti c discoveries, including those by Newton and Darwin.
3. Silicon Valley, USA
- Modern hub of technological innovation.

• Important Concepts, Ideas, and Artifacts


1. The Scienti c Method
- A systematic way of learning about the world through observation and experimentation.
2. The Printing Press
- Revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge.
3. The Internet
- Transformed communication and information sharing globally.

• Development of People, Places, Ideas, and Artifacts:


• How and Why:
- The advancement of science and technology is driven by human curiosity and the desire to solve
problems.
- Innovations often build on previous knowledge and occur in environments that support research
and experimentation, such as universities and research institutions.
- Key gures like Newton and Einstein made groundbreaking discoveries that have had lasting
impacts on science and technology, while places like Alexandria and Silicon Valley have provided
fertile ground for intellectual and technological growth.

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II. Philosophies of Science and Technology

Philosophy of science. (2015, April 26). New World Encyclopedia. Available from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/
entry/Philosophy_of_science

• Philiosophy of Science
- a sub-branch of epistemology that examines the foundations, assumptions, and implications of
science.
- Includes natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology), social sciences (e.g., psychology,
history, sociology), and formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, set theory, proof theory).
- Closely related to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and formal systems of
logic and formal languages.
- There was a signi cant increase in research and literature on the philosophy of science during the
twentieth century.

• Origins and Development


- Philosophy of science, while recognized as a distinct branch in the last two or three centuries, has
roots in ancient Greek philosophy.
- The Pre-Socratics (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, etc.) were central, focusing on determining
the universe's basic elements and ordering principles.

1. Thales is often considered the father of science, proposing non-supernatural explanations for
natural phenomena.
2. Anaximander theorized life's origin from water and mud, a precursor to evolutionary theory.
3. Empedocles discovered air pressure using a simple experiment.
4. Democritus introduced the concept of atoms as fundamental components of matter.
5. Eratosthenes measured the Earth's circumference using basic trigonometry.
6. Pythagoras contributed to mathematics and music theory, coining the term “philosopher."

• Aristotle's philosophy of science:


• Aristotle
- produced the rst great philosophy of science, although his work in this eld is widely denigrated
today.
- his discussions about science were only qualitative, not quantitative
- he had little appreciation for mathematics.
• Aristotelian philosophy
- was not science, as this worldview did not attempt to probe how the world actually worked
through experiment and empirical test.
- Rather, based on what one's senses told one, Aristotelian philosophy then depended upon the
assumption that the human mind could elucidate all the laws of the universe, based on simple
observation (without experimentation) through reason alone.
- Aristotle's philosophy included teleological reasoning, where natural objects were seen as having

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a purpose or end (telos). For example, the telos of human life is to express virtue through rational
actions.

• 4 Causes: Aristotle introduced the concept of four causes to explain the existence and
nature of things:

1. Material Cause: The material that makes up an object.


2. Formal Cause: The blueprint or idea of what the object should be.
3. E cient Cause: The agent or entity responsible for bringing the object into existence.
4. Final Cause (Telos): The purpose or end that the object is meant to serve.

• The Copernican Revolution


- occurring roughly at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
- based as it was on observation of the world more than on thought and thought processes, meant
that science became much more empirically and experimentally oriented than it had been in
the Medieval-Aristotelian-Scholastic period
- and a philosophy of science based on an acknowledgement of the primary role—or at least the
large role—of observation and experiment in science came to the fore.

Inductivists and Reductionists


1. Inductivists
- Claimed scienti c hypothesis formation is an inductive process based on observation.
- They viewed causation as merely regularity observed through induction.
- Examples include John Stuart Mill, Ernst Mach, and members of the Vienna Circle.
2. Reductionism
- Often associated with instrumentalism and operationalism
- reducing scienti c theories to predictive tools rather than re ections of reality.

Realists and Scienti c Realism


1. Realists
- Argued scienti c knowledge combines sensory experience with organizing ideas contributed by
the knower.
- William Whewell exempli ed this view.
2. Scienti c Realism
- Asserts that scienti c statements re ect truths about an external, objective reality.
- Supporters, like Ludwig Boltzmann and N.R. Campbell, believe scienti c models accurately
depict entities such as electrons and magnetic elds.

Positivism and Instrumentalism


1. Positivism
- Emphasized the positive role of scienti c method in reforming philosophy and society.
- Founded by Auguste Comte
- it posited stages of human intellectual development from theological and metaphysical to
scienti c.
2. Instrumentalism
- Held that scienti c theories are pragmatic tools for explaining and predicting observations,
rather than truths about reality.
- In uenced by pragmatism, particularly John Dewey's philosophy.

• Ernst Mach
- Argued that scienti c laws are abridged descriptions of past experiences to predict future ones,
rejecting unobservable entities beyond sensory experience.
• Pierre Duhem
- Shared Mach's view that science uses models to represent underlying phenomena and
relationships observed in experiments.

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• Mathematics and Science
• Veri cationism
- is a philosophical doctrine that asserts that a statement or proposition is meaningful only if it can
be empirically veri ed or con rmed through sensory experience or logical analysis.
• Falsi cationism
- philosophical approach proposed by Karl Popper
- a criterion for demarcating scienti c theories from non-scienti c ones.
- It contrasts with veri cationism, which aimed to con rm or verify the truth of statements through
empirical evidence.

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