Single Review on past events

We invited you to our Jour fixe on Tuesday, 24 May.

Senior Fellow Giora Hon (Dept. of Philosophy / University of Haifa, Israel) gave a presentation (virtually) entitled "Universal aspects of scientific practice: Commitment, methodology, and technique".

Abstract:

The thesis proposed in this talk is a contribution to philosophy of science from the perspective of the practice of science. We seek general and indeed universal features which characterize scientific practice, that is, features that are inherent to the practice of science. We discern three salient universal features of scientific practice: commitment, methodology, and technique. We claim that these three features can invariably be found in any scientific practice, be it in constructing a theory, conducting an experiment, or exploring a new scientific domain. In most general terms, commitment plays the role of presupposition, methodology constitutes the inferential mode, and technique facilitates the transition from the general to the specific. Our claim is that scientific practice is essentially a judicious engagement with these three components where the goal is to draw conclusions and thereby to contribute to the corpus of scientific knowledge. We illustrate the thesis with the case of Maxwell’s contribution to electromagnetism, whose theory of electrodynamics changed fundamentally the perception of reality since the time of Newton. (Giora Hon and Bernard R. Goldstein)

Literature:

Giora Hon and Bernard R. Goldstein. 2020. Reflections on The Practice of Physics: James Clerk Maxwell’s Methodological Odyssey in Electromagnetism. London and New York: Routledge.