Philosophical Approaches To The Sciences

For the first Home Assignment for the course Philosophical Approaches to the sciences, students are expected to write an essay in which they exhibit personal reflection on one of the questions listed below. The essays are evaluated on 1) adequacy/correctness of the presentation of the source material discussed; 2) the quality of the argument and analysis; 3) the adequacy and clarity of the terminology and the phrasing; 4) the correctness of the language. The essay should be no shorter than 900 words, and no longer than 1100 words. It should be written in English. If you would like to write it in Dutch, you must agree on this beforehand with the teacher. The essay should include the name and student number of the student, and indicate the question that is being answered, a bibliography, and may have a title. These five elements do not count towards the word limit. All other elements (references, quotations, footnotes, etc.) do count towards the word limit. Papers are due on Monday 26/02/2018, before 17:00. Papers should besubmitted as a word or pdf file through turnitin on Blackboard. Late submissions are allowed, but 1 point will be deducted for each half day after the deadline. QUESTION 1. Every discipline is confronted with issues about autonomy from,dependence on, or interaction with, other disciplines. Thus, for instance, Radder (1997) pleads for a (qualified) autonomy of philosophy of science with respect to history of science; or, to give another example, Chang (1999) pleads for an integration of history and philosophy of science that seems to run in parallel (rather than being integrated itself) into current science. Is any of these (or other) forms of autonomy / dependence / interaction desirable? Why? QUESTION 2. In slightly different ways, the Vienna Circle (and heirs), the Kuhn of the ‘Scientific Revolutions’, and Massimi (2009) put on the research agenda ‘grand’ questions about science. For instance, what is scientific rationality?, what are revolutions in science?, what is scientific method?, or what are the conditions of possibility of knowledge? To what extent — if at all — do these types of question clash with those of historians of science or of HPS scholars, who instead look for more local philosophical problems in the sciences? Or with those of STS scholars, who instead tend to focus on the relations betweenscience and politics / society? QUESTION 3. Those who argue for HPS approaches insist on the importance and even necessity of including history into philosophical investigations (about the sciences). But are HPS approaches neutral with respect to historical methodologies? Or should we instead take a stance with respect to this? If so, what kind of history do, or should, we do in philosophy of science?