100% satisfaction guarantee Immediately available after payment Both online and in PDF No strings attached
logo-home
Philosophy of Science - summary lecture 1-12 $9.12
Add to cart

Summary

Philosophy of Science - summary lecture 1-12

 7 views  0 purchase
  • Course
  • Institution

Philosophy of Science - summary lecture 1-12

Preview 4 out of 49  pages

  • June 11, 2022
  • 49
  • 2021/2022
  • Summary
avatar-seller
Philosophy of Science Lecture
Notes
Lecture 1 – 9th of February 2022 – Ways of Knowing
 Why “Philosophy of Science”?
o Helps to reflect on personal scientific practice
 How do different disciplines conceptualize the world?
 What does it mean to have knowledge?
 How do scientists’ reason?
o Equips you to develop solutions to problems yet unknown
 Ascent to abstraction
o Philosophy of science is higher abstraction
o Equipping you to meet problems coming over the horizon
 Three groups of sciences
o Natural Science
 Physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy
o Humanities
 History, history of art, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, religious
studies
o Social science
 Sociology, political science, economics, psychology, anthropology
 Natural Sciences
o Ancient intellectual endeavors
 Astronomy arose in Babylonia, 1200 BCE
 Modern natural science developed partly from Chinese, Indian, and
Islamic sources in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
o “Scientific revolution”
 Europe, 1550-1700
o Physical universe is uniform and simple
o Natural sciences focus on universal and regularities
 E.g., the phenomenon of free fall
 Less interest in concrete historical particulars, such as the fall of this
stone
o Standard techniques of theorizing
 Mathematization, abstraction, idealization
 Yield knowledge in concise, powerful forms
o Example: laws of nature
 Mathematical equations among physical quantities
 Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation, 1687
o Laws as paradigms of knowledge
 Taken to represent the highest grade of scientific knowledge
 Even by many outside the natural sciences
 Humanities
o Liberal arts in ancient and medical education were “ways of doing”

,  Grammar, logic, rhetoric
o They turned gradually into subjects of study
 Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467 – 1536) and other Renaissance
humanists
o And then developed into present day humanities disciplines
o World studies by the humanities
 Focuses on historical human actors
o Historical actors are creative
 They originate acts, texts, artworks
 Creation follows no rules – unpredictable
o Important methodological consequences
o Historical particularity
 Every event and context are unique
 We identify periods (e.g., Renaissance, Enlightenment), but then
zoom in past these categories
o Mistrust of generalization and idealization
 Highest form of knowledge is intimate knowledge of particulars
 Little or no use for scientific laws
o Main output: interpretations
 Of acts, texts, artworks
 Often imbedded in theoretical frameworks
o Empathy, hermeneutics
 We attempt to reconstruct the historical actor’s world of experiences
and meanings
o Objectivity of interpretation
 We test interpretations against the text or other material
 Some complications
o Both groups of disciplines are more diverse than I have described
o Variety in natural sciences
o Variety in humanities
 Linguistics, archaeology use some methods inspired by the natural
sciences
 Marxist historiography: belief in universal laws of historical
development
 Question
o How to…
 Conceptualize the differences between natural sciences and
humanities?
 Analyze the diversity of the social sciences?
o Answer: using the concepts of nomothetic and ideographic approaches
 Nomothetic approach
o What does the nomothetic approach consist in?
 Identifying regularities in the world
 Formulating generalizations and laws to describe theses regularities
 Deriving explanations of observed outcomes from these
generalizations and laws

, o Typical of the natural sciences
 But not unknown in humanities and social sciences
o Strength: nomothetic approach can…
 Identify similarities and structures that underlie apparently diverse
cases
 Yield sweeping, general knowledge
 Yield economical knowledge
o Weakness: nomothetic approach can…
 Erase the specificity of outcomes
 Be reductive, mechanistic, positivistic
 Idiographic approach
o What does the idiographic approach consist in?
 Understanding the meaning of contingent, unique, and often
subjective outcomes
o Typical of the humanities
o Strength: idiographic approach can…
 Reveal differences between apparently similar cases
 Yield detailed, context-sensitive knowledge
o Weakness: ideographic approach can…
 Be blind to general factors that constrain outcomes
 Review: nomothetic/idiographic
o Nomothetic approach: tendency to…
 Generalize
 Explain outcomes by appeal to general rules
o Idiographic approach: tendency to…
 Specify
 Understand the meaning of unique, contingent, and often subjective
acts
o Tension between these approaches
 Felt particularly in the social sciences
 Social sciences
o Youngest group of disciplines
 Originated in late 19th century French and German debates on how to
study societies
o Present day disciplines
 Sociology, political science, economics, psychology, anthropology
o World of the social sciences contains…
 Human agents and institutions
 Forms of behavior
 Rationality and ritual
 Cultures
o Social sciences feel the attraction of both natural sciences and humanities
o Economics, demography
 Largely nomothetic disciplines
 Predominantly mathematical investigation or underlying phenomena
o Cultural anthropology, political theory

,  Largely idiographic disciplines
 Produce interpretations and ascribe meaning
o Diversity even within single disciplines
 E.g., psychology
o Nomothetic approach
 Psychometric approach to personality
 Categories individuals in terms of underlying universal traits or
dimensions
o Ideographic approach
 Sigmund Freud’s analysis of “kleine Hans”, a boy with a phobia of
horses, 1909
 Clinical notes running up to 150 pages
 Recapitulation
o Characteristics of…
 Natural science, humanities, social sciences
 Nomothetic and ideographic approaches
o This overview gives you a basis to…
 Interpret what knowledge each discipline can product
 Integrate the output of diverse disciplines

Lecture 2 – 16th of February 2022 – Knowledge, Truth,
and Facts
 Lecture Breakdown
o Classification of forms of knowledge
 Focus on propositional knowledge
o What is knowledge?
 Knowledge as a justified true belief
o What is truth?
 Correspondence theory of truth
o What is a fact?
 Permanence of facts and of truth
 Three forms of knowledge
o “Knowledge about” or by acquaintance
o “Knowledge how to” or skills knowledge
o “Knowledge that” or propositional knowledge
 I know that P
 … where P is a proposition
 Here we focus on propositional knowledge
 Propositional knowledge
o We regard propositional knowledge as the highest form of knowledge. Why?
 It is knowledge of facts
 Important in science, in logical reasoning, in arguments
o Each of us may claim many items of propositional knowledge…
 In various categories
 Knowledge that P: examples
o Knowledge of observed states of affairs

The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.

Quick and easy check-out

Quick and easy check-out

You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.

Focus on what matters

Focus on what matters

Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!

Frequently asked questions

What do I get when I buy this document?

You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.

Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?

Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.

Who am I buying these notes from?

Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller sterrenvliet. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.

Will I be stuck with a subscription?

No, you only buy these notes for $9.12. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.

Can Stuvia be trusted?

4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)

52510 documents were sold in the last 30 days

Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now

Start selling
$9.12
  • (0)
Add to cart
Added