Theories of Scientific Progress An Introduction

What is the nature of scientific progress, and what makes it possible?
When we look back at the scientific theories of the past and compare them to the state of science today, there seems little doubt that we have made progress. But how have we made this progress? Is it a continuous process, which gradually incorporates past successes into present theories, or are entrenched theories overthrown by superior competitors in a revolutionary manner?
"Theories of Scientific Progress" presents the arguments for and against both these extremes, and the positions in between. It covers the interpretations of scientific progress from William Whewell through Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos to Thomas Kuhn and beyond, to the latest contemporary debates.
Along the way John Losee introduces and discusses questions about evidential support and the comparison of theories; whether scientific progress aims at truth or merely problem-solving effectiveness; what mechanisms underlie either process; and whether there are necessary or sufficient conditions for scientific progress. He ends with a look at the analogy between the growth of science and the operation of natural selection in the organic world, and the current ideas of evolutionary theorists such as Stephen Toulmin and Michael Ruse.

Introduction Part I: Progress as Incorporation 1. Whewell's 'Tributary-River' Image of Scientific Progress 2. Brewster on How Not To Do History of Science 3. Mill's Objections to Whewell's Historicism 4. Progress Through Reduction 5. Lakatos' Version of the 'Progress Is Incorporation' Thesis 6. Progress and the Asymptotic Agreement of Calculations Part 2: Progress as Revolutionary Overthrow 7. I. B. Cohen on the Identification of Scientific Revolutions 8. Kuhn's Taxonomic Criterion 9. Toulmin's 'Ideals of Natural Order' 10. Ideological Upheaval and Revolutionary Change 11. Kuhn's Three-Beat Pattern 12. Laudan's Reticulational Model of Scientific Change 13. Popper on Progress Through Overthrow-With-Incorporation Part 3: Descriptive Theories of Scientific Progress 14. Normative and Descriptive Theories 15. Scientific Progress and Convergence Upon Truth a. Peirce on Science as a Self-Correcting Enterprise b. Duhem and Quine on the Limits of Falsification c. Cartwright on the Importance of False Theories d. Rescher on Methodological Pragmatism and Scientific Progress e. Progress, Realism and Miracles 16. Laudan on Scientific Progress as Increasing Problem-Solving Effectiveness 17. Kitcher on Conceptual Progress and Explanatory Progress 18. Normative Naturalism 19. Scientific Progress and the Theory of Organic Evolution a. Toulmin on Conceptual Evolution b. Hull on Selection Processes c. Is the Evolutionary Analogy Appropriate? d. Campbell and Popper on Blind Variation and Selective Retention e. Does the Evolutionary Analogy have Explanatory Value? f. Ruse on the Evolutionary Origins of Evaluative Standards. Conclusion

John Losee is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Lafayette College, Eason, PA. He is the author of A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (1972), which has been translated into eleven foreign languages and is currently in its fourth English Edition, and Philosophy of Science and Historical Enquiry (1987).