Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives

by Peter Machamer (Editor), Marcello Pera (Editor), Aristides Baltas (Editor)

Overview

Traditionally it has been thought that scientific controversies can always be resolved on the basis of empirical data. Recently, however, social constructionists have claimed that the outcome of scientific debates is strongly influenced by non-evidential factors such as the rhetorical prowess and professional clout of the participants. This volume of previously unpublished essays by well-known philosophers of science presents historical studies and philosophical analyses that undermine the plausibility of an extreme social constructionist perspective while also indicating the need for a richer and more realistic account of scientific rationality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195119879
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/20/2000
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	9.24(w) x 6.34(h) x 0.94(d)
Lexile:	1440L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

	Contributors	ix
	Scientific Controversies: An Introduction	3
Part I	The Structure of Scientific Controversies
1.	Patterns of Scientific Controversies	21
2.	Classifying Scientific Controversies	40
3.	Rhetoric and Scientific Controversies	50
4.	On the Cognitive Analysis of Scientific Controversies	67
Part II	Historical and Contemporary Reflections on Controversies
5.	The Concept of the Individual and the Idea(l) of Method in seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy	81
6.	Dialectics, Experiments, and Mathematics in Galileo	100
7.	A Rational Controversy over Compounding Forces	125
8.	The Structure of a Scientific Controversy: Hooke versus Newton about Colors	143
9.	Scientific Dialectics in Action: the Case of Joseph Priestley	153
10.	Controversies and the Becoming of Physical Chemistry	177
11.	Anthropology: Art of Science? A Controversy about the Evidence for Cannibalism	199
12.	Multiple Personalities, Internal Controversies, and Invisible Marvels	213
13.	The Theory of Punctuated Equilibria: Taking Apart a Scientific Controversy	230
14.	Quasars, Causality, and Geometry: A Scientific Controversy that Should Have Happened but Didn't	254
	Index	271