Phil. 125
Philosophy of Science Philosophy 125 Spring Semester 2004 sec. 1, TR 12:00-1:15 Prof. Dowden
	Catalog description: A study of the philosophical problems that arise in the sciences: how claims are justified, the limits and styles of explanation, identifying pseudoscience, values in science, unity and diversity of the sciences, and science's impact on our world view. 3 units.   Grades: Your grade will be determined from the following assignments: Four homework sets (60% total), plus an end-of-semester essay that is 8-10 pages long, typed double-space (40%). Homework 1 due Thursday, Feb. 19 Homework 2 due Thursday March 11 Homework 3 due Thursday April 1 Homework 4 due Thursday April 29 Class attendance is optional, although some parts of the assignments will be on material introduced only during class meetings. All the homework assignments will be composed of essay questions. They are due at the beginning of the day's class meeting. You may turn in homework by email if you wish, but look for a thank-you from me by return email to ensure that my spam filter didn't delete your email.   Textbooks: Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science, by Klemke, 3rd edition. In addition, some videotapes will be shown in class and a few short articles will be handed out.   Prerequisites: There are no prerequisite courses, although it is recommended that you have completed your G.E. critical thinking requirement (area A3) plus have had either (I) two college-level science courses, or (ii) one college science course and one philosophy course. Very little previous knowledge of any specific science is presupposed in our course, so there is little danger that you will be blinded by technical material. This course can be used to satisfy your B5 requirement in the G.E. program.   Goals of the course: By the end of the course you will have an overall view of all the sciences and how they work. Also, you will know what the central problems are that interest philosophers about science, and you will know some of the major solutions to those philosophical problems. In short, you will understand science more deeply and be better prepared to explore on your own these and other philosophical and scientific questions. At the same time you will gain a better understanding of the scope and limits of human knowledge. Finally, because there are writing projects such as the essay assignment and the essay questions on homework and exams, and because these writing projects are graded in part for the quality of the writing, the hope is that you will become a better writer.   Add-Drop:  To add the course, try to do so by using Casper. If the course is full, then see me about signing up on the waiting list. When there is room, students on the waiting list will be added in this order: seniors graduating this semester, then all others by random selection. To drop the course during the first two weeks, use the Casper system. No paperwork is required. After the first two weeks, it is harder to drop, and a departmental form is required, the "Petition to Add/Drop After Deadline." As with any university course, make sure you are dropped officially (by Casper or by the instructor or department secretary); don't simply walk away into the ozone or else you will get a "U" grade for the course, which is counted as an "F" in computing your GPA (grade point average).   Late work, and make-up assignments: There are no make-up assignments. Late homework assignments are accepted with a penalty of one-third of a letter grade per day, counting weekends, until the answer sheet is handed out. Homework turned in on the due date but after the beginning of class is considered late one day. For example, if it is due on Thursday at 12:00, it is late one day regardless of whether it is turned in on Thursday at 4:30 pm or Friday at 11:00 pm.     Professor: My office is in Mendocino Hall, room 3022, phone 278-7384. You may leave a message with the Department Secretary at 278-6424, although for a faster response send me e-mail at dowden@csus.edu.  My weekly office hours will be TR 10:30 - 12:00. Feel free to stop by or call at any of those times. If those hours are inconvenient for you, then we can arrange an appointment for an alternative time.   Disabilities: If you have a disability and require accommodation or assistance, please contact me early in the semester so that arrangements can be made.   First reading assignment: By the beginning of the second week, read the section "What is the Philosophy of Science?" at the end of our online syllabus at http://www.csus.edu/indiv/d/dowdenb/125/125-s04.htm, plus the section "What Is Philosophy of Science?" in Klemke, pages 19-25, plus the handouts distributed in class during the first week.     TOPICS AND READING ASSIGNMENTS 1. Introduction to the nature of science and to the philosophy of science. Survey of philosophical questions about science Historical development of science: Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Laplace, Semmelweis, the Enlightenment ideal of science. Reading: "What is the Philosophy of Science?" in our online syllabus. "What Is Philosophy of Science?" on pp. 19-25 in Klemke. "Rules of Reality" by John Casti, pp. 11-14 of Complexification. 2. The recent impact of pure science on our civilization's world view. How has science affected our understanding of our place in the world, especially in the last 150 years? It's given us new facts, new technologies and new laws, but has it changed our thinking in any deep way? Consider Darwin’s theory of evolution. Many of the people in the world agree with creation scientists that the theory of evolution is false and that God created all the species about 10,000 years ago. Consequently they have a tough time swallowing claims made by evolutionists that dinosaurs roamed the earth in 100,000,000 B.C. or that their mother is descended from a germ. What are the other implications of Darwin's idea of evolution? Is it "just a theory"? Turning to physics and astronomy, we will take a non-mathematical excursion into the 20th century theories of the Big Bang, relativity and quantum mechanics. The Big Bang theory is the astronomer's major theory of the origin of the universe. Einstein's two theories of relativity describe space, time and gravity. The theory of quantum mechanics provides a remarkably complete, accurate description of the behavior of atoms and subatomic entities, but it appears to demand a radical revision in our traditional view of the universe. For example, why do so many scientists interpret quantum theory as saying a thing doesn't exist unless it is being observed? Biology’s theory of evolution Determinism and chaos theory Astronomy’s Big Bang Theory Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Quantum physics Reading: “Darwin” by Louis Menand in The Metaphysical Club, pp. 120-124. Video: "God, Darwin, and Dinosaurs," by NOVA, #2090. Reading: “Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought” by Ernst Mayr, Scientific American, July, 2000, pp. 79-83. Reading: “Supernatural Selection” by Jim Holt, from The New York Times Book Review, April 14, 2002. Reading: “Evolutionists use circular reasoning”, from How to Think About Weird Things, by Schick and Vaughn, pp. 214-215. Reading: “Life is Digital” by Richard Dawkins from River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life.” Reading: “Insects as automata” by Richard Dawkins from River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life.” Reading: “Classical Physics to Chaos”. Reading: "Deterministic and Stochastic Systems" by Richard Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning, 1st ed., pp. 77-78. Reading: “Our Picture of the Universe” by Stephen Hawking. Reading: “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?” by Elliott Sober. Reading: "The Relativity of Simultaneity" by Albert Einstein, pages 1 and 2. Reading: “What’s Relative About Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?” by Elliott Sober. Reading: “Schrodinger’s Cat Revisited” by M. Kaku from Hyperspace. Reading: “On Quantum Mechanics,” by Timothy Ferris. 3. Science and Nonscience: Defining the Boundary. Philosophers disagree with each other about how to distinguish science from nonscience. How should we decide what is a science and what is not? For example, on what basis can we say the science of cosmetics should not be in the university's GE program for science credit? How can we decide whether parapsychology is a science? Reading: Klemke (3rd edition) articles 1 (Popper), 3 (Feyerabend), 4 (Thagard), and 5 (Kitcher). Video: “The Secrets of the Psychics” by James Randi, #4592. Video: “Science and Pseudoscience” by Paul Churchland 4. Unity, Reduction, and the Limits of Science. (a) In what sense is there a unity to science? (b) A notorious philosophical problem about science is the “reductionism problem.” That is, do the properties of big things always depend on the properties of their little constituents? For example, can scientists legitimately say allergic properties [such as sensitivity to ragweed pollen] depend on immunological properties, which depend on genetic properties, which depend on chemical properties, which depend on the properties of elementary particles in physics? That is, does biology reduce to, or supervene on, physics? (c) What are the limits on what science will ever be able to explain? Could it ever explain how life appeared in the universe or why there is a universe instead of no universe? As Daniel Dennett has remarked, there is no more potent source of anxiety about free will than the image of the physical sciences engulfing our every deed, good or bad, in the acid broth of causal explanation, nibbling away at the soul until there is nothing left to praise or blame, to honor, respect, or love. Or so it seems to many people. Reading: "The Process of Biological Evolution Could Not have Created Mind" by Daniel Dennett, from Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Reading: excerpts from "How the Brain Creates the Mind" by Antonio Damasio, Scientific American, Dec. 1999. Video: Interview with E.O. Wilson on Sociobiology Reading: "Sociobiology" by James Rachels. 5. Laws and Explanation: The Nature of Scientific Theories. Is every generalization a law? What is the argument for why scientific laws do not correspond to general facts of nature? How do scientific explanations differ from other kinds of explanations? Hempel offered the classical theory of explanation. Is he right? Is a statistical explanation an imperfect explanation? Does science really explain or does it just describe? Reading: articles 11 (Hempel), 14 (Salmon pages 241-248 only) and 13 (Cartwright) in Klemke. 6. Scientific Observation and Antirealism. How radically do our assumptions guide what we can perceive? Does science oscillate from paradigm to revolution to new paradigm, as Kuhn argues? We will also ask whether science aims to give us a literally true story of what the world is like, or aims only to give us representations that are useful for various purposes, such as for prediction, explanation and control of the environment. That is, do scientists discover truths or, instead, invent useful theories? Why are some theories that are not true so useful? Reading: Klemke, pp. 309-315 and articles 17 (Carnap), 19 (Hanson), 20 (Stace), and 21 (Toulmin). "The Revolution That Didn't Happen," by Steven Weinberg, "Putnam on Realism and Relativism" by John Passmore, pp. 92-99. 7. Confirmation and Acceptance. The classical and the new problems of induction. Why don't philosophers of science agree on whether scientists confirm their theories? The Quine-Duhem Thesis on the limits of falsification. Reading: Excerpts from Duhem and from Quine. Reading: In Klemke, articles 25 (Giere) and 28 (Frank). 8. Science, Objectivity and Human Values. Science is more objective than most other activities, but some philosophers say science is not as objective as others believe it to be. Who is right here? Reading: In Klemke, articles 30 (Hempel) and 31 (McMullin).   Schedule of Discussions Here is a tentative schedule of the dates on which we will cover the above topics and readings. January 27 Intro 29 Intro to Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes February 3 Scientific Revolution, Newtonian worldview, the Enlightenment 5 Semmelweis and the germ theory of disease, experimental controls 10 video #2090 "God, Darwin and Dinosaurs" 12 evolution 17 evolution 19 Chaos theory, determinism, Zeno's paradoxes 24 space, time, matter, and Einstein's theories of relativity 26 non-euclidean geometry, the two-slit experiment March 2 quantum mechanics 4 Randi video on pseudoscience 9 Demarcation problem; video of Churchland attacking Feyerabend in "Science and Pseudoscience" 11 Demarcation problem, Popper, Feyerabend, Thagard, Kitcher 16 consciousness and Cartesian dualism 18 consciousness, Dennett, Damasio, 23 other limits of science, Rachels 25 unity of sciences; reductionism, E. O. Wilson 30 laws and explanation, Hempel, Salmon, Cartwright. April 1 observation and antirealism, Carnap spring break 13 observation and antirealism, Hanson, Stace, and Toulmin 15 observation and antirealism, Weinberg, Kuhn 20 confirmation and acceptance, Hempel’s Paradox, Quine-Duhem Thesis 22 confirmation and acceptance, Giere 27 Nammour Symposium, no class meeting 29 confirmation and acceptance, Frank May 4 objectivity 6 science and values, Hempel 11 science and values, McMullin 13 Review for the final-essay   WHAT IS THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE? Practicing scientists get ahead in their field of science by intense concentration and specialization. To be recognized as successful, they must make original contributions in their specialty and not "waste" time on other pursuits. They aren't rewarded very much for writing introductory textbooks, for interpreting their field for fellow scientists, nor for popularizing their field to the general public. They are not rewarded for their breadth, for knowing even about other areas of their own science, nor for investigating any other science. Therefore, scientists aren't encouraged to develop a coherent picture of what the sciences tell us about the universe. Nor are they encouraged to develop an understanding of how the various sciences themselves work. This mastery of the breadth of the sciences, of the extent to which there is a coherent scientific world view, and of the methods by which the various sciences work must be done by philosophers of science, not by scientists. A philosopher of science looks at science philosophically and investigates the philosophical questions that arise in the sciences. We will be doing this in our course. To begin, let's consider the philosophical question, "What is science?" There is a distinction between applied science and pure science although not a sharp one. Engineering, automotive repair, cosmetic science, and the activities of doctors who treat illness aren't pure science. Let's talk about engineering. Most engineers, like inventors, primarily want to improve existing things that have been made by humans, such as plows and X-ray machines, or to improve human beings' abilities to do new things, such as to improve our ability to move fast and to communicate easily with people who are far away. Scientists often make use of advances in engineering, but scientists, pure scientists, generally have different concerns. Pure science is concerned with classifying, explaining, predicting, and theoretical understanding. Engineering isn't. Engineering is focused on control, on getting the things to function as we want them to in a particular situation.     The new technology is very helpful to the rest of us, but its creation isn't science. Nevertheless, there's a deep connection between science and technology. Without a scientific understanding of electromagnetic waves, the TV and the computer would never have been invented by engineers. On the other hand, scientists need engineers and their new technology. For example, without the invention of the telescope, no scientist would have created the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. That's how science can be distinguished from engineering, but how is science to be distinguished from art? Isn't science an art? No, but most people do not appreciate how much science is like art. Scientific theories do not automatically result from tedious data collection. To produce a theory that has great explanatory power is engage in a very creative act. That's one way science is like art; scientists and artists engage in very creative acts. One way science not like art is that scientific theory must be true to the way the world is. So, science has similarities with art, but also deep differences.     "Science" is the Latin term for knowledge. By "science" we will mean empirical science, the kind of science that is based on observation or experimentation. That rules out the "science of mathematics." Some empirical sciences are more experimental than others. Astronomy, geology, field biology, paleontology are fields where the scientists don't do many experiments but they do make observations. To begin, let's precisely define three important empirical sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics. Definitions: If it wiggles, then it's biology; if it stinks, then it's chemistry; and if it doesn't work, then it's physics. Hmmm. These sciences cannot be precisely defined, but no one really needs a precise definition. Precision is important in science, however, and proposing relatively precise questions and seeking precise answers is one of the keys to successful science. With precision comes sophistication. Although the scientist's vocabulary is often so technical that the rest of us cannot read a scientific research paper, science is not as distant from common sense as many people imagine. Scientists, like the rest of us, look around the world, try to explain what they observe, and are careful to back up what they say. Science is a slowed-down and more open and accountable image of what we normally do in coming to know about the world around us. Nevertheless, science isn't just common sense. Science often explains the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar, and science often overthrows traditional common sense in favor of new beliefs that can better stand up to testing. It once was common sense that the Earth is flat; but that belief is no longer common sense; it's a mistake. Everybody agrees that science is important, but some people think it is much more important than others do. According to the distinguished historian of science Herbert Butterfield, the rise of European science in the 17th and 18th centuries ...outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes....It changed the character of men's habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the nonmaterial sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself. The scientific revolution Butterfield is talking about was noteworthy for promoting the notion that scientific knowledge should be produced by the process that we now call "the scientific method." This new method was very different from the medieval method of attempting to acquire knowledge from careful reading of ancient texts. Our philosophical study of science will investigate the nature of this scientific method. The key idea of this method is to run experiments to check on hypotheses, that is, on interesting claims about how things are. The ancient Greeks also conducted experiments occasionally, but William Gilbert in the 17th century was the first person to methodically tie his experimental observations to the theories he proposed and to intentionally provide the necessary detail used in his experiments so that others could reproduce his results and find out for themselves. In short, Gilbert was more scientific because of his use of the scientific method.     There are other kinds of philosophical problems involving science that we will be studying. Consider the process of scientific change. Scientific textbooks are different this century than last century. Pointing to this as a lesson from the past, some philosophers conclude that this year's scientific results will be overturned by next year's results, and therefore today's Nobel prizes are being awarded for bogus contributions to knowledge, and billions of dollars are being spent on the detection of fictitious particles. Other philosophers have challenged this assessment of scientific change. Our job will be to understand the reasons for this disagreement. Philosophers of science do not do science, nor do they tell scientists how to do it. Yet scientists continually make philosophical assumptions even if they don't usually realize they are doing so. Philosophers of science spend some of their time trying to make those assumptions explicit and then subjecting the assumptions to critical examination. For example, scientists claim to know the mass of an electron. The mass was determined from several measurements at several labs over a few years. On this basis they claim to know the mass of the electrons that were inside the Sun a thousand years ago. Yet these scientists have never visited the Sun, and they weren't around a thousand years ago. Evidently certain interesting assumptions are involved here. In addition to examining assumptions and wrestling with paradoxes, philosophers of science analyze concepts to see if they make sense or if they lead people to confusions. A confused person might ask, "Has science confirmed or instead refuted the hypothesis that the Earth is right-side-up?" Most of us will immediately realize that the question is weird and be able to diagnose why it is weird. In real life, philosophers of science don't waste their time on unsophisticated mistakes. They are interested in more sophisticated mistakes that are behind questions such as the following: "If time began with the Big Bang, then what happened before that?" and "What was the crucial experiment that should convince the rational person to accept Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and to reject the alternatives?" and "If an electron is a zero-dimensional object, then isn't it too small to be a physical object?" and "If a quantum field theory implies that something comes from nothing, doesn't that violate our metaphysical knowledge that this is impossible and therefore doesn't that prove the scientific theory to be incorrect?" We will investigate why these are bad questions. The deeper, and ultimately more interesting, questions are these: Does scientific knowledge rest on firm foundations? What, precisely, is the scientific method, or is there such a thing? What is required of a scientific explanation in order that it be a good explanation? What are the limits on what science could ever know? Our class will explore the major answers to all of these deep questions. Although philosophers have tried to answer these philosophical questions about science, the answers have not been generally accepted by other philosophers. In contrast, scientists have answered many of the great scientific questions, and their answers are generally agreed to by the other scientists. Therefore, one of the most important differences between philosophy and science is that philosophy is not a discipline defined by a group of previously solved questions and agreed-upon answers. Philosophy of science is better defined by its interests, methods and agreed-upon questions.     PROF. DOWDEN / PHILOSOPHY DEPT. COLLEGE OF ARTS AND LETTERS / CSUS The web address of this file is http://www.csus.edu/indiv/d/dowdenb/125/125-s04.htm updated: 2/18/04