Philosophy of Science

 

  • Is the success of science best explained by the truth of science?

    Although it comes in different varieties, roughly, scientific realism is the view that science is a cluster of well-developed, truth-aimed practices for understanding and mapping an objective, natural world. As such, scientific realists think that the success of successful science (i.e. science that is able to both account for the observations we make, as well as make accurate, novel predictions), is best explained by the truth of scientific theories and observations. I first became interested in scientific realism in grad school during a philosophy of science seminar with Martin Curd. As part of the course, we did a close read of Stathis Psillos’ (1999) Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth—such a clear and well-argued book, and one that gave precise philosophical language for things I’d been wondering about before.

    Prior to that seminar, I had become interested in how science connects to different ways of forming beliefs about the world—in particular, religious beliefs. While it’s currently in vogue among historians of science to dismiss “the conflict thesis,”—the idea that the there’s an intrinsic conflict between science and religion—there is still a fair amount of conflict between what many people believe about the world on the basis of their religion, and what science tells us is true about the world. As a Christian, that perceived conflict always struck me as odd, because it just seemed obvious to me that our best science is our best way of understanding so, so, so much of the natural world—and that if one’s theology conflicted with (established) science, one’s theology should be modified. It just seemed obvious to me that the overwhelming success of science is best explained by the truth of science—I was a scientific realist before I knew what that term referred to! All three papers in this section touch on realism in some way, but the first and third do so more explicitly.

    This was my very first peer-reviewed publication, and it began as a term paper in Martin Curd’s grad seminar mentioned above. I add to the vast literature on Arthur Fine’s concept of the “Natural Ontological Attitude,” (NOA) which he thinks avoids the realist/anti-realist dichotomy in philosophy of science. I argue that Fine’s NOA depends on two faulty assumptions.

    • “The Quest for Natural Ontological Attitudes Within the Limits of Reason,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (2002):103-16.

  • The following papers come out of a research program in philosophy of science/philosophy of chemistry with Amanda J. Nichols, Professor of Chemistry at Oklahoma Christian University. In the first paper, we explain some of the basic principles behind nuclear chemistry, including some of the historical developments that lead to our current understanding of how atoms emit energy. We then show that this framework has successful medical applications for both diagnosing and treating disease. But that same framework also supports radiometric dating of objects, according to which the earth is very, very old. As a result, “young-earthers” (those who think the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and yes there are still a lot of young-earthers) can’t rationally have it both ways: accepting the fruits of nuclear chemistry in medicine but rejecting it in radiometric dating.

    • “Nuclear Chemistry and Medicine: Why Young-Earthers Can’t have it Both Ways,” (with Amanda J. Nichols) Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith Vol. 71 (December 2019):203-217.

    ——
    This paper was first presented in the final conference of a multi-year grant on scientific realism organized by Co-PI’s Peter Vickers and Tim Lyons. There were some fantastic philosophers at this conference, as well as at other events that were part of the grant, some of whom are featured in the volume of which we are a part—very grateful to be included. In our chapter, we look at a historical episode in 19th century chemistry where there were competing models for the structure of cobalt complexes. Both models were confirmed experimentally for a time, but Alfred Werner’s geometrical model (and his supporting idea of coordination chemistry) eventually won out—both of which are still part of modern chemistry. We show that the elements of the failed model that lead to its limited empirical success, survived theory change and were still a part of Werner’s theory, and that this supports a version of realism known as “selective scientific realism.”

    • “Selective Scientific Realism and Truth-Transfer in Theories of Molecular Structure,” (with Amanda J. Nichols) in Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge from the History of Science. Eds. Peter Vickers and Timothy D. Lyons. Oxford University Press (2021):130-158.

    ——
    This next paper began life as a presentation at the 2020 SURe (Scientific Understanding and Representation) conference. In this paper, we develop an argument for realism about molecular structures based on measurements from both infrared spectroscopy and high-magnitude microscopes. Data collected through these precise measurement techniques corresponds with what the models predict the data should be. We argue that the best explanation for the correspondence between predicted and observed data is that molecular models are correct with respect to the depicted number and kind of atoms, bond connections, and orientation in three-dimensional space.

    • “Realism About Molecular Structures,” in Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics and Physics, Eds. Insa Lawler, Kareem Khalifa, and Elay Shech. Routledge (2022): 178-198. With Amanda Nichols. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003202905-16