Abstract In his Aquinas Lecture 1992 at Marquette University, Ernan McMullin discusses whether there is a pattern of inference that particularly characterizes the sciences of nature. He pursues this theme both on a historical and a systematic level. There is a continuity of concern across the ages that separate the Greek inquiry into nature from our own vastly more complex scientific enterprise. But there is also discontinuity, the abandonment of earlier ideals as unworkable. The natural sciences involve many (...) types of inference; three of these interlock in a special way to produce “retroductive inference,” the kind of complex inference that supports causal theory. (shrink)

Duhem attempted to find a middle way between two positions he regarded as extremes, the conventionalism of Poincaré and the scientific realism of the majority of his scientific colleagues. He argued that conventionalism exaggerated the arbitrariness of scientific formulations, but that belief in atoms and electrons erred in the opposite direction by attributing too much logical force to explanatory theories. The instrumentalist sympathies so apparent in Duhem's writings on the history of astronomy are only partially counterbalanced by his view that (...) science is progressing toward a natural classification of the world. (shrink)

This paper argues that the appraisal of theory is in important respects closer in structure to value-judgement than it is to the rule-governed inference that the classical tradition in philosophy of science took for granted.

The notion of imagination as a specific human capacity first took shape in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and was further developed by Latin writers like Cicero and Christian theologians like Augustine. It came to be associated in a special way with the activity of poets and was celebrated as such in Dante's Divine Comedy. By the 17th century Francis Bacon could contrast science as the work of reason with poetry, the work of imagination. Yet in that same century, (...) an enlargement began of the human grasp of things very distant, very small, and long past, i.e. of things, processes, and events, entirely remote from the testimony of direct perception. This enlargement depended in the first instance on human powers of imagination, though those engaged in its pursuit were slow to recognize this, so strong was the perceived opposition between reason and imagination. Only very gradually did that opposition break down; even today, when theoretical physics depends so crucially on the construction of categories altogether distant from the familiar realm of the senses (defined here as the work of „second imagination”), science is still too often seen as the domain of rigorous method by contrast with the free-ranging territory of the poet and the artist. (shrink)

As the seventeenth century progressed, there was a growing realization among those who reflected on the kind of knowledge the new sciences could afford (among them Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Boyle, Huygens) that hypothesis would have to be conceded a much more significant place in natural philosophy than the earlier ideal of demonstration allowed. Then came the mechanics of Newton's Principia, which seemed to manage quite well without appealing to hypothesis (though much would depend on how exactly terms like "force" and (...) "attraction" were construed). If the science of motion could dispense with causal hypothesis and the attendant uncertainty, why should this not serve as the goal of natural philosophy generally? The apparent absence of causal hypothesis from the highly successful new science of motion went far towards shaping, in different ways, the account of scientific knowledge given by many of the philosophers of the century following, notable among them Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Kant. This "Newtonian" interlude in the history of the philosophy of science would today be accounted on the whole a byway. The Principia, despite its enormous achievement in shaping subsequent work in mechanics, was from the beginning too idiosyncratic from an epistemic standpoint to serve as model for the natural sciences generally. (shrink)

The successes scored by the big bang model of cosmic evolution in the 1960’s led to an intensive application of quantum theory to the problem of how the expansion might have begun and what its likely first stages were. It seemed as though an incredibly precise setting of the initial conditions would have been needed in order that a long-lived galactic universe containing heavy elements might develop. One response was to suppose that the fine-tuning could somehow be explained by the (...) presence of humans in the universe. This ran quite counter to the traditional supposition, according to which an initial "chaos" was sufficient. This essay outlines the history of the two principles, argues that the so-called "weak" anthropic principle is banal, distinguishes between two sorts of anthropic explanation, and assesses the prospects of the anthropic turn in cosmology. (edited). (shrink)

The discrepancy between the Aristotelian and the Ptolemaic astronomies led many medievals to regard the latter (and mathematical astronomy generally) as no more than a calculational device. This was the challenge that Copernicus and Kepler had to meet: How was one to show that a mathematically expressed astronomy could indicate that the earth really moves? Copernicus pointed to features of the planetary motions that he could explain but that Ptolemy could not. Kepler went much further. His account of the planetary (...) system yields a passable theory of why the planets move as they do; the geocentric account (now without the support of carrier spheres) most certainly cannot. The basic hypothesis that the sun is really at the center and the earth really in motion, he claims, is thus likely to be true. (shrink)

Comment on A Fine: "Piecemeal Realism." Fine's critique of scientific realism derives its force from a selective focus on mechanics. But what does the antirealist have to say about evolutionary theory or astrophysics? Furthermore, the circularity objection to the "explanationist" defence of realism can be countered. Fine's own position (NOA) reduces either to instrumentalism or to an unargued-for realism, depending on where the stress is laid.

Additional Contributors Include V. C. Chappell, Leonard J. Eslick, Herbert Feigl, And Many Others.

This chapter contains section titled: Aristotelian Prelude Cartesian Ambition From Le Monde to the Discourse Discourse, Part Six The Principles of Philosophy Summing‐Up References and Further Reading.

Papers presented at a conference held at the University of Notre Dame in April 1986.

What is not often noted about Bas van Fraassen’s distinctive approach to the scientific realism issue is that constructive empiricism, as he defines it, seems to involve a distinctively realist stance in regard to large parts of natural science. This apparent defection from the ranks of his more uncompromisingly anti‐realist colleagues raises many questions. Is he really leaning to realism here? If he is, why is this not more widely noted? And, more important, if he is, is he entitled to (...) this shyly realist concession? Does his many‐pronged attack on what he sees as the main arguments in support of realism leave him with the wherewithal? (shrink)

We will consider two Christian responses to the enormous advances in recent years in the connected sciences of genetics, evolutionary biology, and biochemistry, a dualist one by Pope John Paul II and an “emergentist” one by Arthur Peacocke. These two could hardly be more different. It would be impossible within the scope of a brief comment to do justice to these differences. What I hope to do instead is more modest: to draw attention to troublesome ambiguities in some of the (...) key concepts on which discussions of human uniqueness depend, to recall very briefly some of the difficulties philosophers have encountered in their attempts to define the relation of the human powers of mind to the material capacities of body, and finally to ask what the theological significance of all this is. (shrink)

THIS ARTICLE IS A DISCUSSION OF THE VARIOUS ALTERNATIVE CRITERIA THAT HAVE BEEN OFFERED FOR MIRACLE. (EDITED).