27
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
|Formulated Year=2015
|Prehistory=In classical philosophy of science, although theories and methods are closely bound up with one another, theories change but the scientific method does not. According to [[Hoyningen-Huene]], [[CiteRef::
Hoyningen-Huene (2008)]] [[CiteRef::Hoyningen-Huene (2013)]] from the time of the Ancients until the second half of the 20th century science just was characterized by its method. [[Aristotle]] and his medieval successors identified science with absolute certainty guaranteed by axiomatic proof. In the Prior and Posterior Analytics as well as the Organon, Aristotle identified three determinants of scientific method: the aims of discovery/ordering/display of facts gained through passive observation, the nature of the knowledge pursued as well as the explanatory causes of that kind of knowledge, and a logical system to aid the proper arrangement of and inferences from observation.[[CiteRef::Anderson Andersen and Hepburn (2015)]] In the West, these ideas were perpetuated and refined by medieval thinkers like [[Albertus Magnus]], [[Thomas Aquinas]], [[Robert Grosseteste]], [[Roger Bacon]], [[William of Ockham]], [[Andreas Vesalius]], and [[Giacomo Zabarella]]. They developed accounts of the acquisition of knowledge through observation and induction and rules for the justification and application of induction. Scholars from the East such as [[Al-Kindi]], [[Alhazen]], and [[Averroes]] were more critical of the Ancients.
The Scientific Revolution of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries involved serious reflection on the legitimacy of the methods that facilitated the rapid advancements in scientific knowledge at the time. Thinkers like [[Galileo Galilei]] and [[Francis Bacon]] emphasized mathematical description and mechanical explanation as important constituents of a disinterested method. [[Isaac Newton]]’s Opticks (1704)[[CiteRef::Newton (1704)]] and Principia Mathematica (1726)[[CiteRef::Newton (1999)]] also excluded non-epistemic values and subjectivity from scientific practice through his implicit method of experiments and reasoning and his explicit methodological rules. Subsequent thinkers clarified and reinforced Newton’s approach, including [[Colin Maclaurin]], [[Denis Diderot]], and [[Francesco Algarotti]]. However, some criticized the self-effacement of the scientist and inductivism. These thinkers include the likes of [[George Berkeley]] (1734),[[CiteRef::Berkeley (1992)]] who challenged the Newtonian image of science, and [[David Hume]]’s attack on induction (1739).[[CiteRef::Hume (2000)]]
