PhiloSci: Module 1-2

Created @January 20, 2023 9:41 PM

Class PhiloSci

Type Study

https://ateneo.instructure.com/courses/33212/pages/0-dot-1-preliminary-explanations?
Materials module_item_id=1659882

Reviewed

Module 0

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/c78d47ed-c32a-4c2f-a1f1-28fbc0477f05/SYLL
ABUS_PHILO_30_Philosophy_of_Science_MARIANO_Sem_2_SY_2022-2023.pdf

Q-CAR system
a. Question: identify the main question (problem, issue, or concern)

b. Claim: accurately identify the basic claim (or position, or stand, or point) of the text.

The claim is the response of the writer (or author/philosopher/thinker, etc.) to the aforementioned question

c. Arguments: the author’s arguments that support his/her claim. The student must show were in the text such
arguments appear, and how they are presented and positioned in relation to each other in order to provide an
organized structure to prop up the author’s claim/s.

d. Response/Reaction: the critical assessment done by the reader on the author’s claims and arguments

employing all the tools of critical thinking at his/her disposal, including knowledge of rules of argumentation
and of logical fallacies in order to assess the value or quality of the claims and arguments of the author in
question. A student cannot simply say, "I agree with the author," or "I do not agree with the author," and not
provide any sound reasons for doing so

The Feynman Technique

1. Identify the topic you want to understand. Study it. Note down everything you know about the topic. Add new
information from new sources you encounter

2. Organize the information you’ve collected and write it down (in the simplest possible terms) in order to teach the
topic to someone who does not understand it. Go for brevity and avoid jargon.

3. Identify the gaps, go back, and re-learn the material until you no longer have to check the source material

4. Communicate your revised explanation in the form of a story. Make sure to organize and simplify your thoughts.
Use analogies, if possible. Employ simple sentences.

Important Tips and Reminders

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 1. Always make sure that you are ready to get into the topic at hand by reading and
studying carefully all the necessary material for the exercise in question.

1. Introduce what you are about to do clearly by:

a. Stating the question/issue/problem at hand in order to identify the general topic.

b. Identifying the specific activity you are performing and clarify how it connects to

(2.a.) above.

2. Concentrate on explaining the material we have actually covered (including articles and

lectures) and avoid as much as possible drawing from other, external material that would
need potentially unnecessary additional explanation.
a. If you do mention a name or an idea or a title of a work, especially if it has not been
covered in class before, clarify who or what this is.
b. Accurately provide citations for your sources.
4. Go directly to your point(s) and avoid unnecessary examples and long-winded
introductions. Always remember: Examples do not explain; explain beforehand, then give an
example later, but only if necessary.
5. Clarify thoroughly and accurately each important concept as soon as you mention it the
first time around.
6. Make sure to never simply repeat verbatim lines from your sources (including websites),
or even from your own notes. Instead, always “speak” in your own words and in your own
“voice.” Remember the Feynman Technique for Learning.

7. Pay careful attention and directly respond to the questions or remarks of the instructor
or of whoever is listening to or reading your work.

8. Be careful with your choice of words so that you avoid mentioning anything that can
lead to confusion. Do not mention anything (names of thinkers or writers, ideas, terms, or
concepts) that you cannot confidently explain thoroughly to your listener/reader.
9. Avoid saying, “My understanding of the topic is...,” or “This is how I understand this...,”
and so on, because doing this implies you are not confident that you actually understand
and can explain the topic. Instead, simply state what the topic is about.

10. Be careful with simplistic, “easy” resolutions to what you are trying to explain (for
example, by saying, “My answer to this is simple...”). Instead, show that you are aware of
potential complexities in the matter at hand (this shows “intellectual humility”).
11. Avoid simply saying, “In the end, the answer depends on what the person thinks, since
everyone has a different understanding of things,” or “One is free to think what s/he
wants,” or “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.” Saying such merely reports the de
facto situation (that people have different ideas), but does not really form a judgment on
the correctness or the truth of what is being said. The latter is one of the primary goals of
philosophizing: to attempt to establish using the strongest reasons what one can claim to be
true.

MARIANO—Reminders for Oral and Written Examinations and Reports both for Individuals and Groups

PhiloSci: Module 1-2 2

 Module 1.1: Science and the Philosophy of Science
Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
Philosophy

Comes from the Greek word “philosophia”, which is formed by the conjunction of two words: philein, which is
a verb that means (“to love”, or “to desire”), and sophia which is a noun that usually gets translated into
“wisdom”. For the Greeks, sophia is a special kind of episteme (”knowledge”)

“wisdom” is not just any kind of knowledge, but is the knowledge about the essence
 of something, about what a thing fundamentally is

To philosophize, therefore, means to love or to desire wisdom, which translates into the love or desire for the
kind of knowledge that aims at the essence of things. The philosopher thus desires to know what a thing
fundamentally is.

Science

can apply to any kind of systematic knowledge

However, the wider sense between the difference “inclusive” sense of science (seen in “science of theology”)
and the stricter, more technical sense (physics, chemistry, or biology) is that it seems to point to any kind of
knowledge that is somehow systematic.

The stricter sense ostensibly points to systematic knowledge, as well, but about one that pertains to
physical reality and which employs a particular kind of method to produce that knowledge. This method
seems to involve experimentation on and empirical observation of physical entities and physical
processes. Physics therefore is concerned with making sense of the realm of matter and energy, which
are physical realities. Chemistry focuses on the elements that make up all matter in the universe. Biology
studies living things, both animals and plants, by examining their structure, composition, and physical
processes.

Philosophy of Science
The science that philosophy of science focuses on is this kind of systematic knowledge of the physical universe.
This is why these fields are usually called the “natural” or “physical” sciences.

social science is only science in an analogical way. It is definitely a kind of systematic knowledge and it does
involve some kind of method, but its focus is on the interactions that human beings perform in their social
lives

The big difference between the natural/physical sciences and the social sciences is that the former studies
physical or material entities and processes, while the latter focuses on social realities that are the products of
human choices.

“Philosophy of science” therefore is the desire to understand the essence of the knowledge called
science, to know what science (in the sense of the natural or physical sciences) fundamentally is

the main purpose of our course, to understand how science works, including its limits, in relation to its
supposed object: the knowledge of the physical universe.

How is philosophy of science useful?

Michela Massimi: Defending the Philosophy of Science

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 How would you respond to those who disparage the philosophy of science as useless?

PhiloSci should matter to the sciences as it is not a foregone conclusion. However many scientists often find
themselves dismissing philosci as they believe the philosophy of science should be of use to scientists and
otherwise it would have no use at all.

In response;

1. philosci is as valuable as any other fields in the humanities, as it is valuable to ask why human kind
has a very sophisticated scientific history and cultural heritage. Understanding our scrutiny,
questioning, and inquiry.

2. Philosci also plays an important social function and media coverage and public discourse on
science, as it is often intertwined with controversies stirred with political lobbyists, it is the scientists job
to find the evidence and the scientific facts, and it is for the philosophers of science to also stand up for
science and build the narratives about issues such as evidence and the natural progress and truth
and realism and pluralism. And those narratives are important to political decision making and public
policy.

What is this thing called science?

Duncan Pritchard: What is Science?

Science, Pseudoscience, and non-Science

Pseudoscience: types of inquiry that resemble scientific inquiries but aren’t bonafide scientific
inquiries (fake science which masquerades as genuine science; compare astrology and astronomy)

I.e. Astronomy is a genuine science while Astrology isn’t

The difference: evidence of observations (Astronomy) through new technology vs evidence of

scripture (Astrology)

Galileo vs Cardinal Bellarmine (heliocentrism vs geocentrism): galileo appealed to a new kind of

scientific observation using telescope, to argue that the earth orbits the sun (heliocentrism), rather
than vice versa; Bellarmine appealed to the evidence of scripture to argue that the sun orbits the
earth (geocentrism)

Bellarmine is not dogmatist, since the use of Galileo’s scientific observation was irrelevant to his
observation through scripture, therefore, Bellarmine did not oppose Galileo’s view but they have
different conceptions on what constitutes scientific evidence

Non-science: types of inquiry which don’t even pretend to be genuinely scientific (such as literary theory)

Scientific Revolution

The debate about the nature of scientific questions and how they ought to be resolved

Epistemic Relativism: What counts as evidence for what. There is more than one set standards of epistemic
justification, that there is no way to demonstrate that your set of standards is superior to any other set,
and that knowledge claims are justified only relative to such sets

i.e. Galileo has a different conception of what constitutes as scientific evidence that is different than Bell
bitch’s evidence that there is no objective way of settling their dispute

Scientific realism

Key features;

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 a. the goal of science is to uncover the objective truth about the world around us

b. Scientific progress thus occurs when our theories more accurately represents the facts

c. In contrast to epistemic relativism is that there is an objective way of gaining scientific evidence and
therefore of settling scientific disputes (e.g. that’s why Galileo kicked Bell bitch’s in the argument for
heliocentrism

So what constitutes objective epistemic evidence? (objective method)

Inductivism (Induction): the view that the scientific method is essentially an inductive one.
Scientists make observations about the world, and on the basis draw inductive inference
about the way the world is. These inferences are fallible, like all inductive inferences, but they
are nonetheless rational (a rational way of drawing inferences about the world)

Garners data through observation, then using the collected data from observation to formulate
general conclusions about the world

Induction vs Deduction:

While a deductive inference entails the conclusion (i.e. if the premises are true, then the
conclusion must be true)

Ex: All cats meow; turkish angora’s are cats; therefore they meow

an inductive inference merely makes the conclusion likely to be true

Ex. I’ve observed that most swans are white, therefore all swans must be white

Falsificationism (Contra Inductivism): Karl Popper states that it is too inclusive, and that even
pseudo-scientific theorizing (e.g., astrology) could employ inductive inferences

Popper: The scientific method is essentially deductive. It proceeds by making bold conjecture and
then trying to find counterevidence that would logically refute (i.e., falsify) the conjecture

i.e. Observing that a majority of a bevy or wedge of swans might be white, and on that basis they
might make a bold conjecture that “all swans are white”. Yet, go out of their way to find a
counterexample which would falsify the conjecture

e.g. Astrology vs astronomy (Astrology: has vague observations thus making a definitive way of
testing them unclear, in contrast to science’s straightforward approach in finding the
counterexample which shows if this is true or false or still a live bold conjecture

Summary

there is difficulty in explaining what science is in such a way as to clearly demarcate it from pseudo-science
and non-science

The aforementioned item above used epistemic relativism as an example

And the introduction of scientific realism, which treats scientific inquiry as an objective method of finding out
about reality

Then inductivism which characterizes the scientific method as essentially inductive

then falsification which argues that the scientific method involves making bold conjectures and then
attempting to falsify them (essentially deductive)

PhiloSci: Module 1-2 5

 Module 1.2: The History of Science in the Western World
The History of “Science”
The English word “science” in its current meaning is of relatively recent origin, 1830’s, referring to the systematic
knowledge of physical reality through a specific method

Before it was known as “science” however, since ancient times, it was known as “natural philosophy” (philosophia
naturalis in Latin; physikoi as natural philosopher in Greek)

MQ: in order to understand how modern science has arrived at what it claims to know about the universe
now

R: one needs to obtain at least a general acquaintance with the history of science.

CLAUDIUS PTOLEMAIUS (Ptolemy) (c. 100-c.170 CE)

This bitch is holding a model on the geocentric view of the universe

GEOCENTRIC MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE, employed all throughout the ancient and medieval eras

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 ANCIENT GREEK VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE: Four terrestrial elements + Four terrestrial seasons + Four terrestrial
conditions + Four bodily humors (fluids).

MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMERS AT WORK: Natural Philosophers using only the equipment they had to observe the
heavens (before the invention of the telescope in 1608).

Short History of Ancient Greek Science

Socrates
didn’t even study nature, yet studied politics and morality (Apology excerpt where he regarded himself as the
smartest man in the room for not knowing anything)

“Knowledge comes from asking questions”

Socratic Method: constantly asking questions so that the problem can be steadily broken down into smaller parts,
parts in which we can test hypotheses against (negative hypotheses elimination); proving something is wrong to
narrow down the possibilities of what might be right

Plato
founded the physical school called the Academy to train Athenians how to think like Socrates

Wrote down dialogues between Socrates and other thinkers including Parmenides (the Eleatic philosopher who
believed that nothing really changes, and thus we can’t trust our senses

e.g., Republic: arguing for a “philosopher” rule rather than democracy; Timaeus: discusses the nature of the
universe

Plato based his own philosophy on geometric laws

Taught Pythagoras-inspired idealism: theory of nature based on perfect abstractions - rules, of which real-world
stuff could only ever be imperfect examples (this made many think of Plato as a philosopher rather than a

PhiloSci: Module 1-2 7

 scientist)

Aristotle
his ideas are based on empirical evidence. By observing the world and then coming up with a theory that
explained it

this order of operations is at the heart of scientific practices

by tutoring Alexander we are reminded of how “science is always social”; after his death however, he started his
own school called the Lyceum

e.g., Lyceum: called the Peripatetic (walkie); admittedly this is where he wrote his books Metaphysics, On the
Heavens, On the Soul, and Physics

Believed that knowledge can come from the senses

Plato vs Aristotle (the tea sis)

Plato
the cosmos are already perfect and had perfect rules that could be studied

had all cosmic stuff made up of atoms that were perfect geometric “Platonic solids”, each creating one
element, tetrahedrons of fire, cubes of earth, octahedrons of air, icosahedrons of water, and dodecahedrons
as the shape of the whole universe

theory of the heavens: the planets followed a path of circular motion (moving in a perfect circle)

We are in ideal forms

Aristotle
he attempted make observations using the observation echu

he crossed the same elements but made use of a new anti-void one called the aether

e.g.

Earth: dry; is the heaviest so it is at the center of the universe

Fire: Hot; is on top of air (they rose because they are just naturally going back to the fiery celestial
realm above the air

Air: Cold; naturally above water

Water: Wet; lighter than the earth so rested on top of it

Aether: stars, perfect circle moving objects

There was no void (Wtf?)

We are a hot mess (slay): naturally jumbled up and trying to get back to our natural place

The Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution is sometimes positioned as a break in Europe between a Christian concept of
knowledge and a secular or worldly one.

the concept of the Scientific Revolution comes from the nineteenth century. Historians looked back and said:“How
Europeans answered big questions such as ‘where are we?’really started to change around the middle of the

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 1500s. By the middle of the 1600s, natural philosophers had developed new methods of making all kinds of
knowledge; then dubbing this shift as the scientific revolution

a revolution didn’t take place, because the number of people involved at the time was small, and not much
changed in daily life due to new ideas in science. (cheers to the Gutenberg)

Thomas Kuhn
wrote a book called “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions published in 1962

It contained his discussion on how different scientists undergo “revolutions” when scientists gather enough
data that they can’t explain using their current paradigm or unstated, world-organizing theory about how the
universe works

Paradigm Shift

Normal Science: the kind of knowledge that professional scientists or natural philosophers make most of the
time

they have a combined research program and philosophy about what counts as valid knowledge
called a paradigm

Anomalies are things that the paradigm can’t explain, too many anomalies and we have a scientific
revolution

Nicolas Oresme
can be associated with the Scientific Revolution; in fact he spent a long time trying to answer the question “Where
are we?”

argued for heliocentrism (the earth revolves around the sun); he argued that the earth rotates on its own axis in
his book livre du ciel et du monte “The Book of the Heaven and the World in 1377 even as the Bible concluded
that the earth must remain still and chill

He also criticized astrology as a predictive science with the length of days not lining up perfectly with years

Pioneered the use of mathematical graphs to describe how objects move through space over time

The reason why he wasn’t as renowned as Copernicus was because he didn’t push these theories while
Copernicus even as using the similar methods gained more radical results

Nicolas Copernicus
would work later as a private physician-slash-economist for the high-ups in Poland

Taking up astronomy, Copernicus opposed the retrograde motion of planets, ultimately repudiating Ptolemy’s
“equant point” (an imaginary mathematical point that helped earlier astronomers see planets move at uniform
speeds)

Proposing a heliocentric universe of the universe (where the earth rotates around its own axis and revolves
around the sun once every year)

First wrote about it in Commentariolus or mini-commentary in 1514

Most people thought heliocentrism was wrong, and many found the idea downright blasphemous. So for
years, the only source of Copernicus’s radical new theory was the outline that his protege Rheticus published
in 1540, called Narratio prima, or The First Account.

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 When he was facing the end of his life, however, Copernicus relented. On his deathbed in 1543, he received
the first copy of his book, De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium, or what all the cool cats call “De rev”—On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

His contribution however wasn’t about coming up with a new idea, but taking a non-mainstream idea and
explaining it in a way that made people pay attention

In fact both Nick’s took this idea from Aristarchus who proposed the same bullshit but even put the planets in
the correct order around it

De Rev was not based on new observations, and it did not prove heliocentrism, yet Copie only hypothesized that
his theory must be a better-fit model for the cosmos than Ptolemy’s.

e.g. Copie’ theory even made the universe seem twenty times wider across than Ptolemy’s

But just like any other medieval asshole, old Copie’s math was a disaster, and that the Earth and other
planets revolve around a center point that was near the sun but not exactly the sun

Bro even thought the planets were still embedded in crystalline spheres

Copernicus used Ptolemy's fifteen-hundred year old data to build his system

The New Astronomy

Tycho Brahe vs Johannes Kepler vs Galileo
Tycho

an alchemist and astrologer

Hven: Uraniborg (Castle of the heavens); Stjerneborg (Castle of the Stars); bitch had his own printing press,
paper mill, alchemical equipment, and huge expensive instruments and an army of working scientists

he believed in a geo-heliocentric cosmos (the sun orbits the earth, but the other planets revolve around the
sun) but it also placed the sun on a collision course with the planets

He observed comets and in 1572 saw a nova stella, a new star, which we now call a supernova, and the
discovery of this new star gave him the idea that the heavens could change and dropped his new album
known as the “De Novella Stella; On the nEW sTAR”

Kepler

Tycho’s protege and close collaborator, however, as he died Kepler took his place and provided the emperor
with advice about astrology

Worked on optical physics and founded the greek snake thing-y and wrote his own novel De Nova Stella
around 1605

Astronomia Nova (1609): Discussing the new laws the governed how the planets move

e.g. he calculated many versions of Mars’ orbit using an equant point: an imaginary point in space that
Copie already figured out how to get rid of. Using such however, Kepler almost found a way to fit Tycho’s
crazy data set of years of observation

Two laws of planetary motion

a. every planet has an elliptical orbit: with the sun at one of the two foci of the ellipse, not its center

b. even though the speed at which a planet revolves around the sun will vary: because the planet will
travel faster when its closer to the sun - you can still figure out a constant speed for the planet,

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 called an area speed (this showed how planets actually move at non-uniform speeds)

c. Harmony of the music of spheres: the relationship between the distance from the planets to the Sun
and their orbital periods

Religious ideas helped Kepler move toward a heliocentric, eccentric model: he saw the sun as a symbol of
God the Father, as the center of things, moving planets faster when they came closer

Rejoicing at the harmony of ideas: his faith, empirical data, and elegant math

Galileo

dropped his album Sidereus Nuncius “The Starry Messenger”

according to Aristotle’s cosmology, a planet could not orbit another planet other than earth. So Sidereus
Nuncius represented an empirically based break with the older model. Soon after, Galileo went on to
make precise observations of Venus, Saturn, and even Neptune. Neptune was ultra-dim through the lens
of his telescope, a mere thirty-times magnification compared to the naked eye.

In his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems of 1632, Galileo explained the new astronomy of
Copernicus to a wide audience. And he did this in terms of a debate within science about what counts as
good evidence. That is, Galileo saw the birth of a new scientific paradigm as revolutionary! Galileo argued
publicly with geocentrists and believers in Tycho’s hybrid model. Galileo argued that the tides demonstrate
that the earth indeed moves, and that Copernicus’s model is right.

The Scientific Methods

Galileo vs Bacon vs Descartes
Galileo (independent, rational, comparison of theories about natural phenomena); practicing experiments

Made a much better model of the telescope

by researching the night sky, he was convinced that Copernicus was right; the earth was not at the center of
the universe

In 1615, he wrote to a letter to explaining that the Bible and nature did not disagree: One was God’s word to
the masses—a story about how to behave and why. The other was God’s work—the physical reality that He
created.So science, he said, was simply the uncovering of God’s work.

In 1623, Galileo published a pamphlet called the Assayer that basically said scientists should be free to do
their work. Pope Urban VIII, Galileo’s personal friend, was a fan.

He said that God could move the heavens in numberless ways, so the ultimate source of truth would always
be faith.

picking a fight with Urban’s plea to treat different astronomical systems fairly, The Dialogue made a clear
argument for Copernicanism, comparing it point by point with the Aristotelian–Ptolemaic system.

He brought new data to the battle: he described the phases of Venus, which appears to grow larger and
smaller like earth’s moon. This phasing did not fit with a geocentric model.

An even stronger argument came from the tides, whose movements seemed to prove that the earth
moves.

Galileo’s last text was also perhaps his most relevant to the idea of methods in science: His Two New
Sciences of 1638 was a mathematical treatise about how bodies fall through the air, and how wooden beams
break. It was also a record of the process by which he discovered these physical laws. He called for

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 specific tests that would let experimenters confirm his laws with their own senses. This, in his words,
was the mark of a “true scientist”: independent confirmation

Bacon (practical, instrumental, and supported by the state); (statesman); (experiment and social norms
promoting scientific research)

Bacon wanted to create a whole replacement system of natural philosophy—that meant philosophy,
mathematics, physics, biology, all wrapped up together. He rejected the Aristotelian way of doing science—
arguing rationally using logic. Instead, he believed that natural philosophers should help improve the
wellbeing of humanity through technological advances.

Bacon expressed this within a Christian framework, casting Aristotle’s philosophy as a dereliction of the
Christian duty of charity toward others.

Improving wellbeing meant understanding and controlling the chaos of the natural.

Bacon described nature as female and passive, and humanity as male and active. So, science was
supposed to be a masculine activity: it allowed humans to exploit nature.

Bacon’s new system of natural philosophy:

control over nature meant deriving useful arts—or technē—like gunpowder, silk, and the printing press,
from basic knowledge.

and in order to make use of this knowledge, we needed first-hand experiences (means testing answers to
important questions, without relying on the words of long dead Greek and Arabic philosophers)

science also required central planning and state support. Natural philosophy should not be the domain of
a few random nobles, he thought. It should be a program, or system, that worked for the public good. He
outlined a vision of a utopian science bureaucracy in his book called New Atlantis, published in 1626

Bacon proposed creating a hub for intellectual work, a kind of super-university called Salomon’s
House. Here, the personnel—all male, of course—would be strictly segregated into specific roles:

1. Travel to gather facts

2. conduct experiments to generate new facts

3. extract potential facts from book and test these proto-facts experimentally

4. in the hierarchy: others would analyze all of the different natural facts and experimental outcomes
and direct the next round of research

5. at the very top were the Interpreters of Nature - three men who would take all facts and use them to
produce axioms

6. Working along with them were “dowry men” who drew conclusions from these axioms to yield specific
practical benefits.

Descartes (always ask yourself how sure you are that you know stuff); (Systematic doubting)

Founding father of mathematics and modern philosophy

in math he is known as the dude that bridged geometry and algebra

the cartesian bullshit

He came up with a whole new cosmology based on Copernicus that featured a chaotic rapidly moving
aetherial fluid in which the planets and stars were suspended instead of perfect crystalline spheres

PhiloSci: Module 1-2 12

 Descartes was a pure philosopher

he redefined epistemology

two arguments against Plato;

a. knowledge obtained through senses lacks absolute certainty because the sense often deceive us

b. logical conclusions from false premises will lead you to the wrong answers

So he described the world reductionistically, meaning using math to represent physical phenomena. Only
math, which is either right or wrong, could found a total system of natural philosophy

He thought that philosophers should be able to provide causal explanations for all observed phenomena,
showing the or the mechanical principles behind the things that happen in the universe.

The Modern Earth Science of Geology and the Role of Deep Time
despite gathering a lot of new data about the Earth in this way, natural philosophers kept banging their heads
against one question: how can we reconstruct the earth’s history, or geohistory? No one could confidently know
the age of the earth before the discovery of radioactivity and the development of radiometric dating in the early
twentieth century.

In seventeenth-century Europe, it was commonplace to believe that the age of the earth and the age of human
species were about the same. So to know the age of the earth, historians tried to create a quantitative chronology
of human history.

e.g., This meant comparing all known ancient sources—such as texts from China, Greece, or Babylonia—as
well as things like the records of eclipses and comets.

By the late seventeenth century, some European naturalists, such as polymath Robert Hooke, argued that
natural objects, like fossils, should also be used like historical texts to shed light on early human environments.
For example, many believed that the biblical Flood had scattered organic remains globally, which explained why
we can find seashells on the tops of mountains. This attention to fossils would set the stage for new theories of
organic development, such as those of Charles Darwin.

Transformists: natural historians who developed proto-evolutionay theories

Comte de Buffon

argued that the earth was progressively cooling. According to Buffon, during this cooling process, the earth
underwent phases or “epochs,” which were roughly parallel with the six Biblical days of Creation from the
book of Genesis. And since humans appeared only in the seventh and final epoch, Buffon’s history of the
earth was mostly pre-human—which was a totally new idea

Conducted cooling experiments that would supposedly time the rate at which heated ball of different
sizes and materials cooled down.

He publicly declared that the earth was at least 75,000 years old, but privately based on his experiments he
speculated that it was up to ten million years old

e.g., although most European geologists in the 1700s were devout Christians, they found—like Buffon—that
the Genesis narrative could be read as more of a metaphor that complemented, rather than contradicted,
scientific evidence. This allowed Christian thinkers to come to terms with a vast, pre-human history. Still,
fossils remained a questionable form of evidence for understanding the history of Earth.

PhiloSci: Module 1-2 13

 George Cuvier

argued that each epoch of earth history had its own distinctive flora and fauna. And these epochs were
separated by global catastrophes such as tsunamis, meteorites, or earthquakes

Life forms did not persist after the catastrophes, he thought. They went extinct with the end of their worlds.

Catastrophism: a theory that changes in the earth’s crust during geological history have resulted chiefly from
sudden violent and unusual events

e.g., Though not entirely a new idea as Whiston published “A New Theory of the Earth from its Original to
the Consummation of All Things”, where he attempts to explain the history of earth in terms of
catastrophes (that a comet hitting the earth caused the flood of Noah)

Studying the geology of central France, Cuvier noticed gaps where the fossils would simply disappear,
only for new kinds of fossils to appear a little bit higher up, in new layers of rock. He recognized these
gaps as extinction events.

Charles Lyell

argued for a slow, “steady state” theory of geological change known as Uniformitarianism

He argued that observable geological processes—like erosion and deposition caused by wind, rivers,
rain, or the occasional volcanic eruption—were the only explanations that geologists should consider
reasonable or scientific

Lyell argued that extinctions were spread evenly across geological time—not clustered together in mass-
extinction events. (This steady extinction rate was balanced, he thought, by the steady creation of new
species, according to global climate conditions)

geohistory isn’t linear in contrast to Cuvier but rather cyclical and uniform

In 'Principles of Geography" he argued that the earth is immensely old, and that, as he put it, “the present
is the key to the past.”

Albeit, Lyell’s positions on extinctions was dismissed by older generations as too extreme, his emphasis on
gradual change inspired many younger scientists like Charles Darwin

William Buckland and Mary Aning

the reptilian past was separated from the modern world by the Flood, after which humans were created.

Deep Time or Geological Time: implies that geohistory can be reconstructed in the same way that historians
reconstruct the human past. Except, instead of relying on vases, ruins, and letters, geo-historians rely on fossils,
volcanoes, and rocks. This epistemic mode of thinking about the earth’s history emerged thanks to the technē of
industrializing Europe

New visual technologies for geological mapping, and a new system for tracking rock groupings across vast
distances, emerged from the works of Abraham Gottlob Werner and his students at the mining academy in
Freiberg, Germany, in the 1770s.

In Britain, mineral surveyors and civil engineers, such as William Smith and John Farey, started using fossils to
improve the accuracy of their geological maps. This technique soon became standard practice. Smith was also
one of the first people to use a thematic map, a map showing something about the earth other than its shape, to
classify different rocks across Britain. And he was one of the first to use fossils to map rock formations for
practical ends, like civil engineering and mineral prospecting.

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 The Darwinian Revolution
Natural Theology: (written by William Paley) the living world was created by a kindly but hands-off God

Four aspects of creation;

a. There was a divine Creator: albeit simply believing in God didn’t prevent you from asking how life works

b. there were species that didn’t change: known as the fixity of species

c. Short creation (the world was only about 6k years old)

d. a Perfect design for each species

Natural Selection:

Darwin reasoned that living beings compete over resources, and only the most fit for a given region survive.
It’s as if nature selects them.

e.g. After reading the essay of the Principle of Population by a reverend named Thomas Robert Malthus
(where Malthus argued that population increases geometrically, but food only increases arithmetically)

In 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or just “the Origin: explained how “descent
with modification” or “transformism” actually works. In any population of the same species, you can see a
natural variation in traits: some finches have longer beaks; some have shorter beaks. Over time, small
changes in the environment add up, favoring some traits over others. Natural selection modifies the
population: the fittest survive and reproduce, passing on their traits.

In fact, Origin marks a kind of evolution of natural history, which was focused on observation and description,
into biology, which is more focused on testing theories about living things.

Self Acting-Process: the fittest would survive

Alfred Wallace: Wallace invented the discipline of biogeography, or the study of plants, animals, and
geological formations together.

The Einsteinian Revolution

Einstein didn’t just add some new ideas to physics. And he didn’t just add a unifying framework for doing physics,
like Newton. Einstein took what people thought was physics, turned it upside down, then turned it inside out. In
the same way Darwin’s work made people see life itself differently, Einstein’s work made humanity reexamine
time and space.

Special relativity, especially made Einstein a scientific rock star. He proved that nothing can move faster than
light. This explained why Michelson and Morley hadn’t observed light slowing in ether. And a lot of other things.
Einstein got rid of all reference frames for space and time. There was no longer some universal space in which
physics happened All measurements became relative to the position and speed of the observer. Space and time
became one mathematically continuous spacetime. So an event at one time for observer A could take place at a
completely different time for observer B.

In 1915, Einstein published the theory of general relativity. Special relativity was all about comparing physical
effects from different observer positions in terms of velocity, or speed in a particular direction. General relativity
provided all of the complicated math regarding relativity and acceleration, or speeding up or down. General
relativity explains the physics of all situations. Special relativity is one specific case of general relativity. General
relativity nailed the coffin shut on the classical, Euclidean worldview: now gravity itself was shown not to be a
force like light, but an effect, a distortion in the shape of space due to mass…

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 So the planets didn’t follow certain paths because of the attraction of the sun’s gravity, but because the space
before them was curved by the sun’s mass.

The second major act of science Einstein did around World War One was to contribute to the birth of modern
particle physics.

Einstein hated this. He believed in a universe ordered by ultimate rationality, and he famously quipped, “God
doesn’t play dice with the world.” But Al, who had contributed in lots of ways to the emerging model of atoms and
particles of energy, was wrong about uncertainty.

Einstein always regretted that his work was used for violent ends. In fact, he was generally skeptical of modernity.
Way back during World War One, he wrote: “Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization
generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.” And yet, in the end, even the
horrors of two world wars never shook his faith that there was great meaning in the universe—a code to be
deciphered by science. He died never quite accepting quantum randomness, and believing that, one day,
humans would crack the code.

Genetics and Evolutionary Biology

Medicine changed a lot after 1900 due to the discovery of different therapies like antibiotics. Likewise, biology
changed a lot as scientists combined different ideas, from natural selection to statistics, in new ways. The result
is a framework called the Modern Synthesis, or “neo-Darwinism.” And even today, biologists mostly work within it.
Basically, the Modern Synthesis uses Mendelian inheritance—Mendel’s rules—to explain how Darwinian natural
selection works in real-time.

What did the Modern Synthesis look like as it happened? From 1928 to 1942, different people applied one theory
across a bunch of forms of empirical science, gluing them together. Hence, “synthesis!”

Module 2.1: Francis Bacon and the New Inductive Method

The Inductive Method
The history of science or natural philosophy moved from the ancient Greco-Roman worldview which also shaped
the European, Middle Eastern and North African Middle Ages to the beginnings of the so-called modern era in the
European Renaissance

To the mind of the scientist-philosopher Francis Bacon

 (1561-1626, England) in the 16th century, a novum organum (or a “new method”) must be developed in order for
"science" (back then, in its original meaning of scientia, or "knowledge" in general) to fortify its claim to genuine
knowledge

His major contribution to the history of thought is his insistence on the method of thinking known as induction
as the only rightful way to think scientifically (i.e., with the aim of true knowledge), contrasted to
the deduction (which he also called "dialectic") that ancient and medieval thought relied upon.

Francis Bacon’s Inductive Method Reading

Bacon believed that man is nature’s agent and interpreter but can only understand only as much as we have
observed in the order of nature in fact or by inference

Work is done by tools and assistance, and the intellect needs them as much as the hand, as the hand’s tools
either prompt or guide its motions, so the mind’s tools either prompt or warn the intellect

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 Human knowledge and human power come to the same thing, because ignorance of cause frustrates the effect

Even results which have been discovered already are due more to chance and experience than to sciences, for
the sciences we have now are no more than elegant arrangements of things previously discovered, not methods
of discovery or pointers to new result (Ouch bro)

“The cause and root of nearly all deficiencies of the sciences is that while we mistakenly admire and praise the
powers of the human mind, we do not seek its true supporters”

Even with intellect and patience, one needs proper guidance and assistance

It is futile to expect a great advancement in the sciences from overlaying and implanting new things on the old; a
new beginning has to be made from the lowest foundations, unless one is content to go round in circles for ever,
with meagre, almost negligible, progress

Bacon’s solution: introduce men to actual particulars and their sequences and orders and for men to
abstain for a while from notions and begin to get used to actual things

Sense is weak and prone to error, nor do instruments for amplifying and sharpening the senses do very much.
Sense only give judgment on the experiment, while the experiment gives a judgement on nature and the
thing itself

In drawing a straight line or a perfect circle, a good deal depends on the steadiness and practice of the hand,
but little or nothing if the ruler or a compass is used

More or less equalizes talents and intellects

Induction
the elimination of faulty rival explanations until only the true are left - that will render individual talent unimportant

elicits axioms from sense and particulars > rising in gradual and unbroken ascent to arrive at the most general
conclusion

deals fully and properly with the senses and rises to step to what is truly known by nature

Deductive (dialectic)
The most general axioms > settled truth > determines and discovers intermediate axioms

merely brushes through experiences and particulars and passing, forms useless and abstract generalizations

Four idols/Four Illusions

1. Idols of the Tribe: seeking evidence that support their own conclusions

Founded in human nature and in the very tribe or race of mankind

This asserts that the human senses are the measure of things

Bacon’s response: all perceptions, both senses and mind, are relative to man, and not to the universe. The
human understanding is like an uneven mirror receiving rays from things and merging its own nature with the
nature of things, which thus distorts and corrupts it

if a man will begin in certainties he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin in doubts he shall
end in certainties

2. Idols of the Cave

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 Stemming from the illusions of the individual man; each man has a kind of individual cave or cavern which
fragments and distorts the light of nature

Bacon’s response: the human spirit is a variable thing, quite irregular and almost haphazard

3. Idols of the Marketplace

Stemming from human exchange arising from agreement from men’s association with each other

Bacon’s response: a poor and unskillful code of words incredibly obstructs the understanding. Words do
violence to the understanding, and confuse everything; and betray men into countless empty disputes and
fictions

4. Idols of the Theatre

mistaken rules of proof (fairytale theories)

Bacon’s response: there is no possibility of argument, since we do not agree either about the principles about
the proofs

Intellectual discoveries should not be held by the old discoveries

The Philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon

took the same inspiration from an earlier english philosopher known as Roger Bacon

Bacon places emphasis on carefully recording experiments so that later generations would have reliable and
repeatable conclusions

His method combined the process of carefully observing nature with systematic accumulation of data.

Three steps:

a. Accumulate specific empirical observations about the characteristic being investigated

PhiloSci: Module 1-2 18

 b. Classify these facts into three categories

When the characteristic is Present

When it is absent

When it is present in varying degrees

c. Through careful examination of the results, reject notions that do not seem responsible for the occurrence
and identify possible causes responsible for the occurrence

He believed that the goal of human progress through scientific invention was handicapped by the blind following
of the works of Aristotle (which was inhibiting independent though and the ability to acquire new knowledge about
nature

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