Getting to Know the World Scientifically: An Objective View

Preface

Part I: Knowledge, Objectivity and Values

1.1 Ideals deriving from the Greeks

1.2 What is knowledge?

1.3 Inductive support and proof

1.4 Looking forward

2. Objectivity

2.2 Observation and experiment

2.3 Objectivity of interpretation

2.5 In the eyes of others

2.6 On the shoulders of others

2.7 Pressure: an example of progress in the articulation of a concept

2.8 Summary

3. Relativism

3.1 Vanquishing reason

3.2 Radical meaning change

3.3 Significant truth

3.4 Taking Stock

4. The Use and Abuse of Science

4.1 Introduction-The misuse of science

4.2 Abusing the right to declare "I know"

4.3 Fraud and controversy

4.4 Cooking

4.5 Masquerading as science

4.6 Science and responsibility

4.7 Error, risk and values

Part II: Philosophies of Science

5. Popper: Proving the Worth of Hypotheses

5.1 Popper's two central problems

5.2 The problem of induction

5.4 Falsifiability

5.5 Ad hoc hypotheses and scientific progress

5.6 Degree of falsifiability or induction by another name?

5.7 Verisimilitude

6. Duhem's Continuity Thesis

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The not so dark middle ages

6.3 Duhem's critique of the idea of a crucial experiment

6.4 Pushing the argument further

6.5 Precision

6.6 Reduction, unity and progress

7. Realism and the Advancement of Knowledge

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Superscientific inference

7.3 The vicissitudes of reference

7.3.1 Has "water" preserved its extension?

7.3.2 Has "atom" preserved its extension from Dalton's time?

7.3.3 Are there remnants of reference of apparently abandoned terms?

7.4 Underdetermination

7.5 Taking stock

Index