{"title":"Four Challenges to Epistemic Scientific Realism—and the Socratic Alternative.","authors":"T. Lyons","doi":"10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.26993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.26993","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42538754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Melinda Baldwin. Making Nature: The History of a Scientific Journal","authors":"Andrew Oakes","doi":"10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.29358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.29358","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47518161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Dilemma for the Scientific Realist","authors":"H. Sankey","doi":"10.4245/sponge.v9i1.26352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/sponge.v9i1.26352","url":null,"abstract":"This note poses a dilemma for scientific realism which stems from the apparent conflict between science and common sense. On the one hand, we may accept scientific realism and agree that there is a conflict between science and common sense. If we do this, we remove the evidential basis for science and have no reason to accept science in the first place. On the other hand, we may accept scientific realism and endorse common sense. If we do this, we must reject the conflict between science and common sense. The dilemma is to be resolved by distinguishing between basic common sense and widely held beliefs. Basic common sense survives the advance of science and may serve as the evidential basis for science.","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48523037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rebecca Lemov. Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity. 354pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.","authors":"Jennifer Fraser","doi":"10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.27204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.27204","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45200385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Quo Vadis Selective Scientific Realism","authors":"P. Vickers","doi":"10.4245/sponge.v9i1.28056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/sponge.v9i1.28056","url":null,"abstract":"My current opinion is that the selective realist is in a strong position vis-a-vis the historical challenges. Certainly the realist needs to invoke some careful criteria for realist commitment, and various nuances concerning the nature of her epistemic commitment, and this may raise the ‘death by a thousand qualifications’ question mark. But the concern is unfounded: the qualifications are all independently motivated, and indeed necessary given the philosophical complexity. Qualifications are to be welcomed here; often the truth is far from simple!","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48791434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Motives for Research","authors":"A. Fine","doi":"10.4245/sponge.v9i1.27048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/sponge.v9i1.27048","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43059257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Deployment Realism withstands Doppelt's Criticisms","authors":"Mario Alai","doi":"10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.27046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.27046","url":null,"abstract":"Gerald Doppelt claims that Deployment Realism cannot withstand the antirealist objections based on the “pessimistic meta-induction” and Laudan’s historical counterexamples. Moreover it is incomplete, as it purports to explain the predictive success of theories, but overlooks the necessity to explain also their explanatory success. Accordingly, he proposes a new version of realism, presented as the best explanation of both predictive and explanatory success, and committed only to the truth of best current theories, not of the discarded ones (Doppelt (2007, 2011, 2013, 2014). \u0000 Elsewhere I criticized his new brand of realism. Here instead I argue that (a) Doppelt has not shown that Deployment Realism cannot solve the problems raised by the history of science, (b) explaining explanatory success does not add much to explaining novel predictive success, and (c) Doppelt is right that truth is not a sufficient explanans, but for different reasons, and this does not refute Deployment Realism, but helps to detail it better. In a more explicit formulation, the realist IBE concludes not only to the truth of theories, but also to the reliability of scientists and scientific method, the order and simplicity of nature, and the approximate truth of background theories.","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46369046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tolstoy’s argument: realism and the history of science","authors":"S. Psillos","doi":"10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.28059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.28059","url":null,"abstract":"In his intervention to the ‘bankruptcy of science debate’, which raged in Paris in the turn of the twentieth century, Leo Tolstoy was one of the first to use the past record of science as a weapon against current science. It is not inductive. It does not conclude that all current scientific theories will be abandoned; nor that most of them will be abandoned; not even that it is more likely than not that all or most of them will be abandoned. Its conclusion is modest: some of presently accepted theories will have the fate of those past theories that once dominated the scene but subsequently were abandoned.","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41473532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Referential and Perspectival Realism","authors":"P. Teller","doi":"10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.26990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.26990","url":null,"abstract":"Ronald Giere (2006) has argued that at its best science gives us knowledge only from different “perspectives,” but that this knowledge still counts as scientific realism. Others have noted that his “perspectival realism” is in tension with scientific realism as traditionally understood: How can different, even conflicting, perspectives give us what there is really? This essay outlines a program (some published, much forthcoming) that makes good on Giere’s idea with a fresh understanding of “realism” that eases this tension.","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47171479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scientific Realism and the History of Chemistry","authors":"R. Hendry","doi":"10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.28062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4245/SPONGE.V9I1.28062","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29732,"journal":{"name":"Spontaneous Generations-Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46490464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}