Only those whose work and interests have led them to notice it, will have realised, in all probability, the remarkable extent to which the term organization has gained currency, or acquired new and special emphasis, throughout the entire range of scientific and sociological literature during the last ten or twenty years.

In biology and bio-chemistry organization has been discussed or used as a technical term, mostly since 1930 by at least thirty well-known authors; amongst the more prominent are Huxley, Wilson, Woodger, Cannon, Waddington, McDougall, Needham, Block, Hopkins and Sherrington. Under this magic term some authors refer to the physico-chemical nature of the cell or cytoplasm, and usually with special reference to selective or directive catalysis; others to the general constitution or structure of the organism and almost indistinguishable from general morphology and physiology; others to embryological development as such (i.e. progressive differentiation under specific chemical stimuli); others more especially to “relations” between cells, organs and structural parts, often in an abstract sense; others refer more particularly to a hypothetical integrating and/or co-ordinating factor (“entelechy', ”field“, ”formative force“, ”telepathic hierarchial monads“, ”diffused Maxwell's Demon“, and so forth): a few refer to re-constitution from dissociated cells (so-called ”re-organization“) as observed in experiments with Sponges and Hydroids.

Philosophers are often praised for their insight even if they are found wanting in their powers of analysis. The noble edifices of thought raised by the famous have been reduced to more or less noble ruins, if we consider what disintegrating, analytical time and tide have done to the weaker members of the structures. Some of the palaces of thought even seem to stand without any foundations. Yet they stand. They are admired no longer for their utility or for their massiveness, but for the beauty of their conception. Their conception is said to represent the insight of their authors.

Most attempts to justify the use of idealized models to explain appeal to the accuracy of the model with respect to difference-making causes. In this article, I argue for an alternative way to justify using idealized models to explain that appeals to universality classes. In support of this view, I show that scientific modelers seeking to explain stable limiting behaviors often explicitly appeal to universality classes in order to justify their use of idealized models to explain.

Support functions s(h,e) = p(h|e) – p(h) are widely used in discussion of explanation, causality and, recently, in connection with the possibility or otherwise of probabilistic induction. With this latter application in view, a rather complete analysis of the variety of support functions, their interrelationships and their “non-deductive” and “inductive” components is presented. With the restriction to two propositions, three variable probabilities are enough to discuss such problems. The analysis is illustrated by graphs, a Venn diagram and by using the Laplace Rule of Succession as an illustrative example. It is concluded that within this framework one cannot prove or disprove the possibility of probabilistic induction.

Publication in this journal recently of a paper by A. Grünbaum has induced me to submit a treatment of the same subject. Like Grünbaum, I shall use the framework of special relativity, but my analysis will be different. Some of his arguments, I believe, are inadmissable. I shall pose the problem in a form different from his, but the solution to be described will be applicable to his case as well.

Although the ideological struggle between the East and the West has been carried into the natural sciences, the author contends that there is no connection between Marxism and physical theory, whether deterministic or indeterministic. Marxism, which concerns itself with social theory, deals with physical theory only in so far as it is used for specific class purposes instead of social needs. Marxism does not derive its social theory, as has been asserted, either from, or by analogy with, physical processes, nor does it read “social laws” of development into nature. The attempt to do so by way of “dialectical materialism” must be regarded as a Marxist aberration. The author deals with the history of this aberration and with the reasons for its persistency in Marxism-Leninism.

Some recent and historical writers in the philosophy of science have concerned themselves with a certain problem which seems to occupy, at least in the minds of those who have written about it, a position of peculiar importance. Whether the problem is really as significant as its authors maintain need not be decided here; certainly many writers in this area have either neglected it or made only vague allusions to it. It can best be described as the problem of the development of science, and it is usually solved in terms of a certain theory that science passes in its growth, either naturally or under the control of conscious logical techniques, through various “stages” or “phases.” For some strange reason these levels are usually exactly three in number. One would like to believe that this number is not a magic one, but empirically demanded by the actual way in which the sciences develop. But the fact that the descriptions of these stages in the writings of the various authors appear to agree only in their triplicity, and not in content, would incline one to believe otherwise. There is, in fact, the slight suspicion that the number three has been preferred to the number two simply because a triad may be ordered in a way in which a couple may not, and to the number four or any larger number merely because of the preference for simplicity over complexity.

In this article, I present a serious problem for confirmation measure Z.

The manipulationist account of causation provides a framework for assessing causal claims and the experiments used to test them. But its pertinence to the more general class of scientific experiments—particularly those experiments not explicitly designed for testing causal claims—is less clear. I aim to show (1) that the set of causal inferences afforded by any experiment is determined solely on the basis of contrasting case structures that I call “experimental series” and (2) that the conditions that suffice for causal inference obtain quite commonly, even among “ordinary” scientific experiments not explicitly designed for the testing of causal claims.

One of the things I attempted to do in my paper on independent testability (1980) was to illustrate convincingly the very real difficulties of distinguishing between the accidental and essential features of a scientific experiment. The importance of this distinction is that independent testability presumably requires differences that are essential and telling and not merely accidental reflections of existing experimental technique or of the procedural preferences of the experimenter. In the case of the Michelson-Morley (MM) and Kennedy-Thorndike (KT) experiments, I showed, following a suggestion of M. G. Evans, that Grünbaum's attempt to distinguish these two experiments does not work. I also showed that certain obvious and natural variations of Grünbaum's approach do not adequately distinguish these experiments. So, for example, it will not do simply to claim that MM is characterized by equal arms and KT by unequal arms, since equal arms are required for MM only in the absence of adequate photographic registration methods. But if these methods are not available then KT is not possible. Conversely, if these methods are available, then while both MM and KT are experimentally possible, MM need not be restricted to equal arms.

Since the turn of the century there has been a strong trend to break through the wall which has separated philosophy from the “special sciences” and to investigate the problems which require a good judgment in both philosophy and science. The evolution of science itself and the increasing relevance of science in human life have given immense momentum to this trend. But this momentum could not be appreciated in its actual strength because scientists who wanted to raise their voices had trouble in finding a Journal where they could communicate with the people who were interested, for almost all the scientific journals were devoted exclusively to technical papers. In founding Philosophy of Science Dr. Malisoff started the construction of a channel by which this important flow of scientific investigation could reach its public. This line of thought found in the journal a possibility of self-expression and it became a real force in the life of the community of scientists and scholars, and even of educated men in general. From the first volume, papers were published which have later been quoted in every discussion about the philosophy of science. I mention, as an example only, R. Carnap's paper on Testability and Meaning. Nobody who has wanted information and stimulation in this modern field of investigation could get it without looking into Malisoff's Philosophy of Science.

The different social institutions involved in the development and distribution of science and technology tend to promote, primarily, commercial and private interests, even in situations with high social stakes. Acknowledging how these interests interplay with social and epistemic values is fundamental for understanding the role of values in science today. To show this, I use the global pandemic and the race to develop and distribute vaccines against COVID-19 as an example. I argue that a mere circumstantial alignment of values across the social institutions of science is not enough and that instead we need a more substantive alignment.

The use of the word “possible” without qualification invariably leads us to the endless, or at least well beyond our finite powers of analysis. Yet, to qualify possibility may itself become an endless task, if only because of the multitude of the available modes of approach. Somewhere in the middle of the realm of possibility one must parachute down and start ordering the scattered riches for our finite purposes with our limited and only newly acquired perspectives. What we have glimpsed of the realms of possibility before our descent may still be of use, but our immediate tasks will bind us to the sternly empirical gravitational pulls of what happens to have erupted in the historical fields of discovery.

Piccinini’s usability constraint states that physical processes must have “physically constructible manifestation[s]” to be included in epistemically useful models of physical computation. But to determine what physical processes can be implemented in physical systems (as parts of computations), we must already know what physical processes can be implemented in physical systems (as parts of processes for constructing computing systems). We need additional assumptions about what qualifies as a building process. Piccinini implicitly assumes a classical computational understanding of executable processes, but this is an assumption imposed on physical theories and may artificially limit our picture of epistemically useful physical computation.