Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:50:20.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Remarks on Problems and Methods in the Philosophy of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Patrick Suppes
Patrick Suppes*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

What sort of subject is the philosophy of science? It would be difficult to find any sort of agreement on the answer to this question. There are a large number of physicists who have promoted the idea that the subject is a kind of cosmic journalism: any new major discoveries in physics warrant an up-to-the-minute, catch-as-catch-can analysis of the boundaries of scientific knowledge. On the other hand, the Oxonian sirens of ordinary language tell us that any careful scrutiny of technical scientific matters is not proper philosophical activity. I want to argue that the philosopher of science need be neither a journalist of science nor merely an acute man of common sense eternally restricted to contemplating the general meaning of such notions as those of mind, free will, cause and determinism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1954 , pp. 242 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1954

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I am grateful to Professor Donald Davidson and Mrs. Muriel Winet for several helpful suggestions. This paper was read at the 1053 meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association.

References

1. Adams, Ernest, Axiomatic Foundations of Classical Rigid Body Mechanics, Dissertation, 1954, Stanford University.Google Scholar
2. Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values, New York, 1951.Google Scholar
3. Blackwell, D., and Girschick, M. A., Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions, Wiley and Co., forthcoming.Google Scholar
4. Carnap, R., “Testability and Meaning,” Philosophy of Science, 3 (1936), 419–471, and 4 (1937), 140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Carnap, R., Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago, 1950.Google Scholar
6. Frank, Philipp, Foundations of Physics, vol. I, no. 7, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Chicago, 1946.Google Scholar
7. Fraser, Lindley M., Economic Thought and Language, London, 1937.Google Scholar
8. Goodman, Nelson, The Structure of Appearance, Cambridge, Mass., 1951.Google Scholar
9. Hamel, G., “Über die Grundlagen der Mechanik”, Mathematische Annalen, 66 (1908), 350–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. Hamel, G., “Die Axiome der Mechanik,” Handbuch der Physik, 5, 1–42.Google Scholar
11. Hempel, C. G., “Problems and changes in the empiricist criterion of meaning,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1950, no. 11, 41–63.Google Scholar
12. Hempel, C. G., “The concept of cognitive significance: a reconsideration,” Proc. of the Amer. Academy of Arts and Sciences, 80 (1950), 61–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13. Hempel, C. G., Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science, vol. II, no. 7, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Chicago, 1952.Google Scholar
14. Hölder, O., “Die Axiome der Quantität und die Lehre vom Mass,” Ber. D. Sächs., Gesellsch. Wiss., Math-Phys. Klasse, 53 (1901), 1–64.Google Scholar
15. Lindsay, R. B. and Margenau, H., Foundations of Physics, New York, 1936.Google Scholar
16. Little, I. M. D., A Critique of Welfare Economies, Oxford, 1950.Google Scholar
17. Mach, E., Science of Mechanics, trans. from the German by T. J. McCormick, 5th American ed., La Salle, Ill., 1942.Google Scholar
18. McKinsey, J. C. C., Sugar, A. C., and Suppes, P., “Axiomatic foundations of classical particle mechanics,” J. of Rational Mechanics and Analysis, 2, 253–272.Google Scholar
19. McKinsey, J. C. C., and Suppes, P., “Philosophy and the axiomatic foundations of physics,” Proc. of the XIth Int'l Congress of Philosophy (1953), 6, 49–54.Google Scholar
20. McKinsey, J. C. C., and Suppes, P., “On the notion of invariance in classical mechanics,” to appear in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
21. Nagel, E., “Measurement,” Erkenntnis, 2 (1931), 313–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22. von Neumann, J. and Morgenstern, O., Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, 2nd ed., Princeton, 1947.Google Scholar
23. Robbins, L., An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2nd ed., London, 1935.Google Scholar
24. Rubin, H., “Axiomatic foundations of genetics,” unpublished.Google Scholar
25. Rubin, H. and Suppes, P., “Transformations of systems of relativistic particle mechanics,” to appear in Pacific Journal of Mathematics.Google Scholar
26. Suppes, P., “A set of independent axioms for extensive quantities,” Portugaliae Mathematica, 10 (1951), 163–172.Google Scholar
27. Suppes, P. and Winet, M., “An axiomatization of utility based on the notion of utility differences,” (Abstract), Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 60, 81–82.Google Scholar
28. Wald, A., Statistical Decision Functions, New York, 1950.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29. Woodger, J. H., The Axiomatic Method in Biology, Cambridge, England, 1937.Google Scholar
30. Woodger, J. H., Biology and Language, Cambridge, England, 1952.Google Scholar