Theory of Science / Year 2024
Lecture 1 - April 16 2024 “Introduction to theory of science: the power of definitions”
Reading materials:
1. Chalmers, A. F. (2013). Introduction & Science as knowledge derived from the
facts of experience. In: What is this thing called Science? (fourth edition), pp.
xix-xxi & pp. 1-17 (Introduction & Chapter 1). Queensland: University of
Queensland Press. → this summarizes the more philosophical parts of the lecture in an
essayistic style.
2. Zachar, P. & Kendler, K. S. (2012). The removal of Pluto from the class of planets
and homosexuality from the class of psychiatric disorders: a comparison.
Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, 7(4), 1-7. → compares an example
from astrophysics with psychiatry. It illustrates an intriguing case of the power of
definitions and will actually also return in the session on mental disorders later in the
course.
3. Schleim, S. (2023). Preface. In: Mental Health and Enhancement: Instrumental
Substance Use and Its Social Implications, pp. xv-xvii (three pages). Cham:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Reading 1
Introduction chapter
1. What is so special about science?
Answer: science is derived from the facts rather than being based on personal opinions.
Chapter 1 - Science as knowledge derived from the facts of experience
1. When it is claimed that science is special because it is based on the facts.
● Facts are presumed to be claims about the world that can be directly
established by a careful, unprejudiced use of the senses.
, ● Science is to be based on what we can see, hear, and touch rather than on
personal opinions or speculative imaginings.
2. Galileo → “it was not so much the observations and experiments that caused the break
with tradition as Galileo attitude to them. For him, the facts based on them were taken as
facts, and not related to some preconceived idea. The facts of observation might/not fit
into an acknowledged scheme of the universe, but the important thing, it was to accept
the facts and build the theory to fit them”
3. Historical facts of science:
a. Modern science was born in the early 17th century when the strategy of taking
the facts of observation as the basis for science was seriously first adopted. It
was held by those who embrace and exploit this story about the birth of science.
b. Prior to the 17th century, the observable facts were not taken seriously as the
foundation for knowledge. Rather, knowledge was based largely on authority,
especially the authority of the philosopher Aristotle and the authority of the
Bible.
c. This authority then was challenged by an appeal to experience, by pioneers
of the new science such as Galileo, that modern science became possible.
4. Galileo and the Leaning tower of Pisa.
● Galileo researches the laws of motion as illustrated by falling bodies.
● Accepted axiom of Aristotle: the speed of falling bodies was regulated by their
respective weights: a stone weighing two pounds would fall twice as quick as one
weighing only a single pound and so on.
● No one questioned the correctness of this rule, until Galileo gave his
denial.
● Galileo: “weight had nothing to do with the matter, and that two bodies of unequal
weight would reach the ground at the same moment”.
, ● Galileo's statement was flouted by the body of professors, and he was
determined to put it to the public test.
● He invited the whole university to witness the experiment which he was about to
perform from the leaning tower.
● Galileo mounted to the top of the tower, carrying with him two balls, one weighing
one hundred pounds and the other weighing one pound. Balancing the balls
carefully on the edge of the parapet, he rolled them over together; they were
seen to fall evenly, and the next instant, they struck the ground together.
● Conclusion: the old tradition was false, and modern science, in the person
of the young discoverer, had vindicated her position.
5. Two schools of thought that involve attempts to formalize common view of science,
that scientific knowledge is derived from the fact;
a. Empiricists
b. Positivists
6. Empiricists
● British empiricists of the 17th and 18th centuries: John Locke, George Berkeley,
and David Hume held that all knowledge should be derived from ideas implanted
in the mind by way of sense perception.
7. Positivists
● Had a somewhat broader and less psychologically oriented view of what facts
amount to.
● Shared the view of the empiricists that knowledge should be derived from the
facts of experience.
● Logical positivists, a school of philosophy that originated in Vienna in the 1920s,
took up the positivism that had been introduced by Auguste Comte in the 19th
, century and attempted to formalise it, paying close attention to the logical form of
the relationship between scientific knowledge and the facts.
8. Empiricism and positivism share the common view that “scientific knowledge should
in some way be derived from the facts arrived at by observation.”
9. Two rather distinct issues involved in the claim that science is derived from the facts:
a. One concerns the nature of these facts and how scientists are meant to have
access to them.
b. Second concerns how the laws and theories that constitute our knowledge are
derived from the facts once they have been obtained.
10. Three components on the facts assumed to be the basis of science in the common view
can be distinguished:
Component Description
(a) Facts are directly given to careful, unprejudiced observers via the senses.
(b) Facts are prior to and independent of theory.
(c) Facts constitute a firm and reliable foundation for scientific knowledge.
11. The most important components of the human eye are a lens and a retina.
12. The functioning of the eye is analogous to that of a camera. A big difference is in the way
the final image is recorded.
13. Two points are strongly suggested by the foregoing account of observation through the
sense of sight that are incorporated into the common or empiricists view of science:
a. A human observer has more or less direct access to knowledge of some facts
about the world insofar as they are recorded by the brain in the act of seeing.
