The Structure of Science

The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation

Cover of the first edition
Author Ernest Nagel
Country United States
Language English
Subject Philosophy of science
Published 1961
Publisher Harcourt, Brace & World
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
ISBN 978-0915144716

The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation is a 1961 book about the philosophy of science by the philosopher Ernest Nagel.[1] The book is a well-known classic in its field, though Nagel's approach has been seen as outdated.

Summary

Nagel takes an ahistorical, prescriptive approach to the philosophy of science.[1] He argues that most scientific hypotheses can be tested only indirectly. It is necessary to derive observable consequences from a hypothesis and then test them, thus providing second-hand proof for or against the hypothesis. Theory reduction has a deductive inference at its heart. Nagel believes that morality, since it is about the way the world should be, is irrelevant to scientific inquiry, which is concerned with the way the world is. To entangle morality with science is to commit numerous fallacies.[2]

Nagel criticizes Isaiah Berlin's paper "Historical Inevitability." The Structure of Science ends with the words, "However acute our awareness may be of the rich variety of human experience, and however great our concern over the dangers of using the fruits of science to science to obstruct the development of human individuality, it is not likely that our best interests would be served by stopping objective inquiry into the various conditions determining the existence of human traits and actions, and thus shutting the door to the progressive liberation from illusion that comes from the knowledge achieved by such inquiry."[3]

Scholarly reception

Seen as Nagel's definitive work,[1] The Structure of Science is described as a well-known classic in its field by Isaac Levi.[4] Philosopher Adolf Grünbaum, writing in Philosophical Problems of Space and Time (1963), criticized Nagel for misinterpreting the philosopher of science Henri Poincaré.[5] Historian Peter Gay described The Structure of Science as a book on which "many of us grew up", and writes that it "remains valuable". Gay noted that while Nagel was "no Freudian", the book's closing sentence paraphrases the famous last paragraph of Sigmund Freud's The Future of an Illusion (1927).[6]

Philosopher Michael Ruse wrote that Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) discredited the ahistorical, prescriptive approach to the philosophy of science Nagel took in The Structure of Science.[1]

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Ruse 2005. p. 637.
  2. ↑ Ruse 1988. pp. 19, 41, 157.
  3. ↑ Gay 1990. pp. 186-187.
  4. ↑ Levi 1999. p. 595.
  5. ↑ Grünbaum 1974. p. 91.
  6. ↑ Gay 1990. p. 187.

Bibliography

Books
  • Gay, Peter (1990). Reading Freud: Explorations & Entertainments. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05127-1. 
  • Grünbaum, Adolf (1974). Philosophical Problems of Space and Time. Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company. ISBN 90 277 0358 2. 
  • Levi, Isaac (1999). Audi, Robert, ed. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-63722-8. 
  • Ruse, Michael (1988). Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0 631 15275 X. 
  • Ruse, Michael (2005). Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926479-1. 
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