A01=Richard W. Miller
Absurdity
Agnosticism
Anti-realism
Atomic theory
Author_Richard W. Miller
Axiom
Bayesian
Bayesian probability
Begging the question
Calculation
Case study
Category=PDA
Category=QDTK
Causality
Classical mechanics
Classical physics
Concept
Contradiction
Counterexample
Deductive-nomological model
Epistemology
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Existence
Explanation
Explication
Extrapolation
General relativity
Hypothesis
Hypothetico-deductive model
Illustration
Inference
Ingenuity
Inquiry
Logical consequence
Measurement
Mechanics
Molecule
Natural science
Phenomenon
Philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy of science
Physicist
Positivism
Prediction
Premise
Prima facie
Principle
Probability
Quantum mechanics
Rational choice theory
Rationality
Reality
Reason
Relevance
Requirement
Result
Scientific method
Scientific realism
Scientific theory
Scientist
Simplicity
Skepticism
Superiority (short story)
Symptom
Theoretical physics
Theory
Theory choice
Theory of justification
Theory of relativity
Thought
Truism
Unobservable
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691020457
- Weight: 907g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 21 Jan 1988
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this bold work, of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science. By questioning both positivism and its leading critics, he develops new solutions to the most urgent problems about justification, explanation, and truth. Using a wealth of examples from both the natural and the social sciences, Fact and Method applies the new account of scientific reason to specific questions of method in virtually every field of inquiry, including biology, physics, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and literary theory. Explicit and up-to-date analysis of leading alternative views and a wealth of examples make it an ideal introduction to the philosophy of science, as well as a powerful attempt to change the field. Like the works of Hempel, Reichenbach, and Nagel in an earlier generation, it will challenge, instruct, and help anyone with an interest in science and its limits. For the past quarter-century, the philosophy of science has been in a crisis brought on by the failure of the positivist project of resolving all basic methodological questions by applying absolutely general rules, valid for all fields at all times.
Professor Miller presents a new view in which what counts as an explanation, a cause, a confirming test, or a compelling case for the existence of an unobservable is determined by frameworks of specific substantive principles, rationally adopted in the light of the actual history of inquiry. While the history of science has usually been the material for relativism, Professor Miller uses arguments of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Galileo, and others both to undermine positivist conceptions of rationality and to support the positivists' optimism that important theoretical findings are often justifiable from all reasonable perspectives.
