SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY OF

the study, from a philosophical perspective, of the elements of scientific inquiry and of their validity. Taken broadly as the progressive improvement of the understanding of nature, the intellectual enterprise of science originally formed an integral part of philosophy, and the two areas of inquiry have never finally separated. Little more than a hundred years ago, theoretical physicsconcerned with the fundamental debate about physical naturewas still described as natural philosophy, as distinguished from the two other chief divisions of abstract discussion, viz., moral philosophy and metaphysical philosophythe latter including ontology, the study of the deepest nature of reality or being. In fact, only during the 20th century, following the professionalization and specialization of the natural sciences, did the philosophy of science become recognized as a separate discipline. Methodological and epistemological issuesi.e., issues regarding the investigator's manner of approach to natureare treated in this article. For issues regarding the substantive character of nature as so revealedi.e., as it is in and of itselfsee nature, philosophy of. Additional reading Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (1961); and M.W. Wartofsky, Conceptual Foundations of Scientific Thought (1968), together cover the main approaches to the philosophy of science as a general field of study; whereas Arthur Danto and Sidney Morgenbesser (eds.), Philosophy of Science (1962), provides a useful anthology of classic papers on the subject; and Samuel B. Rapport and Helen Wright (eds.), Science: Method and Meaning (1964), is a stimulating anthology of nontechnical papers. W.V. Quine, Theories and Things (1981), is a collection of papers by an eminent philosopher, on topics of ontology, logic, semantics, epistemology, philosophy of mathematics, identity, existence, etc.; W.H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science (1981), is an analysis of interpretations of science; V.V. Nalimov, Faces of Science (1981), is a collection of essays on the nature of science, which originally were published in Soviet philosophical journals; Loren R. Graham, Between Science and Values (1981), is an examination of the relationship of science to values; Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life (1982), is a study of philosophical aspects of information theory.The origins and development of natural science and the attitudes of philosophers toward scientific explanation in antiquity and the Middle Ages are well treated in Samuel Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, 2nd ed. (1962; orig. pub. in Hebrew, 1954); and The Physical World of Late Antiquity (1962); John H. Randall, Jr., Aristotle (1960); and in Alistair C. Crombie, Medieval and Early Modern Science, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1963). For the 17th and 18th centuries, see Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, 2nd ed. (1932); Alexandre Koyre, Newtonian Studies (1965); Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science: 13001800, rev. ed. (1965); I. Bernard Cohen, Franklin and Newton (1956); and Gottfried Martin, Immanuel Kant: Ontologie und Wissenschaftsheorie (1951; Eng. trans., Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science, 1955). For the 19th century, the most significant contributions have come from scientists writing as philosophers: Claude Bernard, Introduction l'tude de la mdecine exprimentale (1865; Eng. trans., An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, 1927, reprinted 1961); Hermann von Helmholtz, Popular Scientific Lectures (1962; reprint of a selection of lectures from Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, 1st and 2nd series, 1881); T.H. Huxley, Science and Culture, and Other Essays (1882); and William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History, 2nd ed. (1847, reprinted 1966). Ryan D. Tweney, Michael E. Doherty, and Clifford R. Mynatt (eds.), On Scientific Thinking (1981), consists of selections from the writings of Bacon, Newton, Descartes, Darwin, and Einstein; Edward Grant, Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution (1981), is a study of the origins of modern science and scientific thinking; Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World (1981), is a controversial analysis of scientific tradition with alternative suggestions for understanding the modern world.The background to the 20th-century debate in the philosophy of science, as it developed between 1890 and 1920, can be reconstructed from Ernst Mach, Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch Dargestellt, 9th ed. (1933; Eng. trans., The Science of Mechanics, 1960); and Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhltnis des Physischen zum Psychischen, 5th ed. (1906; Eng. trans., The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical, 1959); Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 3rd ed. (1960); Pierre Duhem, La Thorie physique: son objet et sa structure (1906; Eng. trans., The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, 1954); Henri Poincare, La Science et l'hypothse (1903; Eng. trans., Science and Hypothesis, 1905); and Heinrich Hertz, Die Prinzipien der Mechanik (1895; Eng. trans., The Principles of Mechanics, 1889, reprinted 1956), especially the Introduction. The subsequent course of the debate, between 1920 and 1960, is illustrated in Carl G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (1965); Rudolf Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability, 2nd ed. (1962); Karl R. Popper, Logik der Forschung (1935; 2nd ed., 1966; Eng. trans., The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959); Robin G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (1940); Norman R. Campbell, What Is Science? (1921); and William H. Watson, On Understanding Physics (1959). Two significant side-views of the debate from very different formal standpoints may be found in William V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. rev. (1961); and Ronald A. Fisher, Statistical Methods for Research Workers, 14th ed. (1970). Peter Achinstein and Stephen F. Barker (eds.), The Legacy of Logical Positivism (1969), is a first attempt at an historical appraisal of the period. Paul K. Feyerabend, Philosophical Papers, 2 vol. (1981), is a brilliant examination of historical and philosophical evidence of rationality of science; Richard L. Gregory, Mind in Science: A History of Explanations in Psychology and Physics (1981), is a study of philosophical ideas generated in different historical periods; Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler, Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance (1981; trans. from the German), is a discussion of scientific topics from evolution to information theory; Liebe F. Cavalieri, The Double-Edged Helix: Science in the Real World (1981), deals with sociophilosophical traits of science and technology.The debates about conceptual change and the rationale of discovery in science are central topics in Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 2nd rev. ed. (1965); Norwood R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (1958); Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding, vol. 1 (1972); Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. rev. (1970); Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (1970); and Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (1958). For broader cultural aspects of the contemporary debate about science, see C.H. Waddington, The Scientific Attitude, new ed. (1968); Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values, rev. ed. (1965); Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (1969); and Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine (1967). See also Peter B. Medawar, Pluto's Republic (1982), a discussion of the relationship between scientists and society; John W. Harrington, Dance of the Continents (1983), an explanation of the processes of interpretive scientific thinking; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science (1982; trans. from the German), a collection of essays on hermeneutic philosophy; Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (1982), suggesting a new vision of scientific reality; Richard Healey (ed.), Reduction, Time, and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of the Natural Sciences (1981), a collection of articles by eminent philosophers; and Peter Smith, Realism and the Progress of Science (1982), examining philosophical foundations of the progress of science.