Scientific Method: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction

285 Pages·1996·1.14 MB·english

by  Barry S. Gower

Scientific Method
‘Barry Gower’s book introduces students to the philosophy of science in
a way I heartily applaud: scientific method, logic and probability are
given centre-stage and are developed historically—through examination of
the views of some of the greats: Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Bayes,
Poincaré, …, and in close connection with developments in science itself.
Theses and arguments are presented with great clarity and sound
judgement.’
John Worral, LSE

The results, conclusions and claims of science are often taken to be
reliable because they arise from the use of a distinctive method. Yet
today, there is widespread scepticism as to whether we can validly talk
of method in modern science. This outstanding new survey explains
how this controversy has developed since the seventeenth century and
explores its philosophical basis. Scientific Method

(cid:127) introduces readers to controversies concerning method in the natural
sciences
(cid:127) provides an historical context to these issues
(cid:127) shows that questions of method have played a vital role in the work
of scientists
(cid:127) challenges the current view that scientific method is a philosophical
fiction.

Questions of scientific method are discussed through key figures such as
Galileo, Bacon, Newton, Bayes, Darwin, Poincaré, Duhem, Popper and
Carnap. The concluding chapter contains stimulating discussions of
attacks on the idea of scientific method by key figures such as Kuhn,
Lakatos, and Feyerabend.
Essential reading for students of history and the philosophy of science,
Scientific Method will also appeal to anyone with an interest in what
philosophers say about science.
Barry Gower teaches Philosophy of Science at Durham University.

Scientific Method
An historical and philosophical
introduction
Barry Gower
London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1997 Barry Gower
The author has asserted his moral rights in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Gower, Barry.
Scientific method: an historical and philosophical
introduction/Barry Gower.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Science-Methodology.
2. Science-Methodology-Philosophy.
3. Science-Methodology-History. I. Title.
Q175.G685 1996
502.8–dc20
96–7865
CIP

ISBN 0-415-12281-3 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-12282-1 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-04612-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-22250-4 (Glassbook Format)
Contents
Preface vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Galileo Galilei: New methods for a new science 21
3 Francis Bacon: Why experiments matter 40
4 Isaac Newton: Rules for reasoning scientifically 63
5 The Bernoullis and Thomas Bayes: Probability and scientific
method 83
6 John Herschel, John Stuart Mill and William Whewell: The
uses of hypotheses 109
7 Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem: Conventions and
scientific reasoning 130
8 John Venn and Charles Peirce: Probabilities as frequencies 152
9 John Maynard Keynes and Frank Ramsey: Probability logic 170
10 Hans Reichenbach and Karl Popper: The (in) dispensability
of induction 189
11 Rudolf Carnap: Scientific method as Bayesian reasoning 212
12 Conclusion: Experimental interventions and social
constructions 236
Bibliography 262
Index 272
Preface
Those of my friends and colleagues who knew that I was writing a
book about scientific method often expressed their surprise. Why, they
said, should anyone wish to revive such a long-expired steed? People do
not now believe in scientific method. Perhaps they should, for their
dismissal is based more on specious rhetoric than on solid argument;
but still, my friends told me, writers who would be read must address a
real, rather than an ideal, world. My answer has been that the real
world has a history, and to state the truth about it we must take
account of that history. Scientific method—the logic of science—has
occupied the attention of some of the greatest scientific and
philosophical thinkers. If we dismiss what engaged their attention, then
we had better be sure that we know why it engaged their attention.
They were, no doubt, subject to prevailing cultural influences and
attitudes of which they may have been unaware. But so are we, and if
we can, with the help of history, exercise a degree of self-reflection, we
may wish to circumscribe the influences which try to prevail over our
thinking. Setting aside the radical scepticism of some philosophers, we
can know something about the past, including something about how our
predecessors have considered scientific method. But for our predecessors
the future, including that future of theirs in which we live, is unknown.
We should take advantage of that difference. We willingly assert that
our predecessors would not have believed some of what their
contemporaries urged them to believe about scientific method if they
had known what we know about it; we should just as willingly assert
that we would not believe some of what our contemporaries urge us to
believe about scientific method if we knew what our predecessors had
known about it.
Not unexpectedly, few friends have been persuaded. Many, though,
have not only tolerated my persistence, but encouraged and helped me
to promote my unfashionable view. This is my opportunity to thank
them. But I must also record my intellectual debt to Bob MacGowan
and Rom Harre who introduced me to the philosophy of science, and to
Preface vii
David Knight with whom I have been teaching the history and
philosophy of science for almost thirty years. For helpful comments and
criticism of various chapters of this book I thank Vernon Armitage,
Donald Gillies, Stathis Psillos, Geoffrey Scarre and Michael Sharratt. I
have not always taken the advice they gave me, so, for that reason as
well as others, the faults that remain are my faults. Thanks, too, to the
Research Committee of Durham University and to my colleagues in the
Philosophy Department for a period of leave in 1994 enabling me to
begin work on the book. Chapters, or parts of chapters, have been read
to audiences in Belfast, Dublin, London, Florence and Virginia, as well
as in Durham, and I am grateful for the advice I have received on those
occasions. For less direct but nevertheless invaluable help I thank Robin
Hendry, Roger MacAdam, Holger Maehle, David Mossley, Kathleen
Natrass and Wendy Short.
But the greatest encouragement has come from my students at
Durham University, and therefore my most heartfelt thanks go to them.
I have been very lucky in having the opportunity to introduce
philosophy to students of the natural sciences. Their response, their
questions, their suggestions and their critical judgement have been very
much in my mind as I wrote. Such success as I have had in identifying,
articulating and addressing the philosophical questions which are the
subject of this book is due in large part to their aid.
In this book’s concluding chapter I have adapted material which
appeared in ‘Method in methodology’, Methodology and Science 18 (1985):
30–47, and in ‘Chalmers on method’, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 39 (1988): 59–65. I am grateful to the editors of those journals
for permission to recycle the required paragraphs.
Barry Gower
January 1996

1 Introduction

We have increasingly powerful reasons for acquiring some understanding
of the natural sciences. Their influence on the technologies that shape our
lives has already been immense, and undoubtedly will continue to grow.
In peace and in war, in work and in leisure, in health and in sickness, in
each of the different stages of life, we cannot escape that influence. This
book is being written with the aid of an electronic computer of a type
which, as little as twenty years ago, was unavailable and unimagined by
most people. You could well be reading it in circumstances equally
unanticipated. On the surface at least, the most prominent differences
between our lives and those of earlier generations are differences which
have come about as a result of discoveries, investigations, explorations
and inventions in the natural sciences. If we compare our modes of
transport or communication with those available to previous generations,
or compare our education with theirs, we cannot help but be struck with
the consequences, for good or for ill, of scientific knowledge. On the
credit side, that knowledge, but not that knowledge alone, has resulted in
such benefits as the elimination of drudgery and repetitive work for some
people, the eradication and control of some life-threatening diseases, and
increases in crop productivity. For the sake of these and other benefits we
have welcomed science. But we also fear science because, on the debit
side, scientific knowledge, though not scientific knowledge alone, is
responsible for such harms as the damage suffered by our environment,
and has led to questionable experimental practices which need the control
of so-called ‘ethics committees’. Without the scientist’s knowledge of
theories, of laws, of techniques and, in general, of what is possible and
what is not, the circumstances in which we live our lives would
undoubtedly be different.
At a deeper level, too, we feel the effects of the growth of natural
science and its technological consequences. Many people feel uneasy
about, and some are alienated by, the impersonality of science, and even
more so by what they perceive as its inhumanity; the future societies