Science and Hypothesis Historical Essays on Scientific Methodology

This book consists of a collection of essays written between 1965 and 1981. Some have been published elsewhere; others appear here for the first time. Although dealing with different figures and different periods, they have a common theme: all are concerned with examining how the method of hy­ pothesis came to be the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of science and the quasi-official methodology of the scientific community. It might have been otherwise. Barely three centuries ago, hypothetico­ deduction was in both disfavor and disarray. Numerous rival methods for scientific inquiry - including eliminative and enumerative induction, analogy and derivation from first principles - were widely touted. The method of hypothesis, known since antiquity, found few proponents between 1700 and 1850. During the last century, of course, that ordering has been inverted and - despite an almost universal acknowledgement of its weaknesses - the method of hypothesis (usually under such descriptions as 'hypothetico­ deduction' or 'conjectures and refutations') has become the orthodoxy of the 20th century. Behind the waxing and waning of the method of hypothesis, embedded within the vicissitudes of its fortunes, there is a fascinating story to be told. It is a story that forms an integral part of modern science and its philosophy.

1. Introduction.- 2. The Sources of Modern Methodology: Two Models of Change.- 3. A Revisionist Note on the Methodological Significance of Galilean Mechanics.- 4. The Clock Metaphor and Hypotheses: The Impact of Descartes on English Methodological Thought, 1650–1670.- 5. John Locke on Hypotheses: Placing The Essay in the ‘Scientific Tradition’.- 6. Hume (and Hacking) on Induction.- 7. Thomas Reid and the Newtonian Turn of British Methodological Thought.- 8. The Epistemology of Light: Some Methodological Issues in the Subtle Fluids Debate.- 9. Towards a Reassessment of Comte’s ‘Méthode Positive’.- 10. William Whewell on the Consilience of Inductions.- 11. Why was the Logic of Discovery Abandoned?.- 12. A Note on Induction and Probability in the 19th Century.- 13. Ernst Mach’s Opposition to Atomism.- 14. Peirce and the Trivialization of the Self-Corrective Thesis.- Bibliographic Note.- Index of Names.