Questions tagged [philosophy-of-science]
For questions about the branch of philosophy studying science, scientists, the scientific method and related topics.
103
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27 views
Does Heliocentrism predate Copernicus?
I have seen this mentioned on the interwebs a few times. people have mentioned that some Greek thinkers and Islamic astronomers came up with heliocentrism before Copernicus and that Copernicus copied ...
6
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1answer
197 views
When and how did the notion/idea of physical constant emerge?
Physical constants (e.g. c, h, G, alpha and so on) play a central role in our scientific theories and they have yet drawn much of controversial flavor into questions concerning the foundational status ...
4
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135 views
What are the principles of historiography of science?
Is there a consensus amongst historians as to the principles of the historiography of science or as to how to write/create/preserve/record history? If there is, then what are those principles? If ...
4
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1answer
82 views
Did Bohr comment on Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics?
Bohm published his interpretation of quantum mechanics in 1952. Comments on Bohm's work from Einstein, Heisenberg und Pauli are cited in the corresponding wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/...
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39 views
Does anyone know articles or books about what the notion of difficulty in science, especially physics?
In physics, many problems were known at their time to be very challenging, for example the notion of heat, or how to understand the ideal gaz law, or the phase transition criticial behaviors, etc. And ...
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1answer
110 views
Did the death of Archimedes mark the turning point of the golden age of Greek science [closed]
Western philosophy was founded by Socrates, and Greek science was blossomed by his students and descendants such as Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, and many others.
It seemed that after the ...
3
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0answers
65 views
Is there a name for the idea that the limitations on the accuracy of a model depend on the point of view of the observer?
Consider a mouse who lives its whole life in a maze in a lab. If you asked the mouse about its understanding of the universe, it might say "it's 3 inches high and 3 inches wide, has two left turns and ...
3
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2answers
226 views
Did the Idea of Universal Gravitation predate Newton?
"Baba wrote over 60 books, almost everyone on a different topic, writing on issues from astronomy, identified stars that European scientists technology could not discover until the late 1800s, ...
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2answers
112 views
What experiments led to the sign of the electron's charge?
The famous Millikan's oil drop experiment in 1908 determined the magnitude of charge of the electron to be 1.59*10^(-19) C. However, it was well known that electron has a negative charge. Although ...
2
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92 views
Is it a historical coincidence that relative atomic weights by chemical methods and mass spectrometry are very close?
The concept of relative atomic weight originated from measuring the combining weight of hydrogen with a certain element. In the simplification process H was taken as unity (18th, 19th and 20th century)...
3
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1answer
130 views
Who associated the sharp, principal, diffuse, fundamental spectral terms with electron's momentum?
It is well documented that the notation for the electronic configuration (s,p,d,f) of atoms as used today originates from the words sharp, principal, diffuse, fundamental from alkali metal spectra (...
2
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1answer
161 views
How did the early chemists determine the atomic weight of hydrogen?
In early history, the relative atomic weight of hydrogen was assigned as 1 (exactly) and all other elements were compared against hydrogen. What is difficult to find who determined the absolute atomic ...
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2answers
114 views
Why is the problem of demarcation important in the history of science?
Historically, why has it been important to have a clear distinction between science and other forms of knowledge? The only thing I have come across so far is the debate between evolution and creation, ...
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35 views
Science about population interaction with ecosystems?
I am curious in the lack of scientific field/perceived research of ecosystems and their developments, or maybe I never encountered it. Is there any such field, investigating ecosystems "start" to end ...
4
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2answers
260 views
How did the early chemists make a connection between gram formula weight with 1 mole and Avogadro's number?
According to one historian Mustafa Sarikaya's article in Foundations of Chemistry DOI 10.1007/s10698-011-9128-7, the mole concept was introduced to chemistry earlier than Avogadro’s number. The mole ...
4
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1answer
72 views
General Relativity, General Covariance and Equivalence Principle
Einstein realized that uniform acceleration is indistinguishable from a homogeneous gravitational field (the principle of equivalence) through the Einstein Elevator thought experiment.
From the ...
3
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1answer
100 views
How close was Hooke to developing a comprehensive system of gravity?
Was Hooke close to developing a physical system of gravity on the same level as Newton. looking at Luka Trkanjec's post on Quora, he insists that Newton was quite overrated in this regard, and that ...
2
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2answers
139 views
If John Michell was more well known, would he rank above Isaac Newton in the history of science? [closed]
John Michell proposed black holes in the 18th century, hundreds of years before Schwarzschild and Einstein.
His ideas were said to to be away head of his time, that he died in obscurity. I assume ...
0
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1answer
62 views
Real effects long thought to be coincidences
What examples are there of scientific effects or correlations that we now know to be real, and were known about for a long time but thought to be coincidences?
To give an example of the kind of thing ...
5
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2answers
217 views
What is the origin of “normal” in normal coordinates and normal modes?
I am trying to understand why vibrational modes of polyatomic molecules are called "normal" mode of vibrations and with corresponding normal coordinates. What is the origin of the term normal here? I ...
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67 views
Example of: Two researchers working on the same question but get opposite conclusions [closed]
I wish to know about whether such example exists, could someone please help and tell me some stories about this?
p.s: Also I wonder why such thing can happen. I wish the two main characters in the ...
0
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1answer
61 views
Who first came up with the idea that heavenly laws and earthly laws should be the same?
At least Newton realized that the motion of the Moon on the heaven and the motion of an apple on the earth are governed by the same law.
But who first proposed that the same laws should hold ...
2
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1answer
114 views
Popper on Marx, Freud and Darwin
I've encountered the following claim: If we, as Popper apparantly did, view Marx and Freud's body of work as non-scientific because core tenets are not falsifiable and we apply the same rubic to ...
3
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279 views
historical examples of “pseudoscience” becoming “science”
What are some historical examples of theories/ideas that were initially labeled "pseudoscience" and later considered legitimate "science"? I don't mean theories or ideas that were initially not ...
6
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4answers
244 views
Why statistical moments are called moments?
According to the Jeff Miller's Earliest Known Uses of the Words of Mathematics "Moment was taken into Statistics from Mechanics by Karl Pearson when he treated the frequency-curve (or observation ...
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33 views
What are some good metrics for intellectual progress (of all sorts)?
My thinking about this topic is vague, and I'm looking to clarify it.
I'm not sure what "intellectual progress" is or if that's even a useful abstraction, but it seems like it should include things ...
5
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3answers
202 views
The Greeks did not discover “a single scientific law”
The title is drawn from a sentence in a Jim Holt article,
"The Dangerous Idea of the Infinitesimal,"
now a chapter in his book collection.1
I found this a striking claim, and perhaps true, as
the ...
4
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1answer
197 views
Can we identify Paul Benacerraf in these photos
This question is about Paul Benacerraf, who worked on the philosophy of mathematics, and wrote the 1965 essay What numbers could not be (see: Benacerraf's identification problem). He was at Princeton ...
4
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2answers
128 views
Reference Request: Books on the work of Imre Lakatos
What are the best works summarizing, discussing or criticizing the work of Imre Lakatos? What are the pros and cons of said works? Which would you recommend picking up first if one has read some but ...
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4answers
265 views
Mathematics PhD dissertations that opened a new field of research
I propose this as a companion wiki page to the one about PhD dissertations which contain a solution to an open problem in the style of big-list questions, thinking ...
7
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1answer
354 views
How did Wittgenstein fulfill eligibility requirements for a PhD in philosophy without having a Bachelor's degree in philosophy?
The Wikipedia article about Wittgenstein says:
In Norway it was clear that Moore was expected to act as Wittgenstein's secretary, taking down his notes, with Wittgenstein falling into a rage when ...
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1answer
57 views
Suggestions for hosting a Scientific Salon of Paris in Émilie du Châtelet's time
My students just learned about Émilie du Châtelet's Salon with Voltaire in her husband's residence in Paris and in their country estates.
I want to give them a homework assignment for extra credit of ...
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1answer
94 views
Who invented the term “Kuhn loss”?
This term has been discussed on this forum, e.g. under Examples of Kuhn loss?, and has been attributed to Kuhn himself. The term refers to the loss of explanations and predictions of the prior ...
4
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1answer
177 views
Who influenced Gauss in his abstract approach to mathematics?
I have studied that Gauss was one of the firsts mathematicians to defend this idea, about the Abstract Math and the conception of number, claiming that "What is calculated (in the sense of things ...
4
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1answer
147 views
Does Lakatos' argument in favour of 'informal mathematics' hold up in most cases?
Lakatos, in his Proofs and Refutations, rejects the Euclidean methodology and exposition of mathematics: where axioms and definitions precede the proofs. In other words, a Euclidean mathematician ...
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65 views
Gentzen and computer science
This is a cross-post from mathstack:
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2584003/gentzen-and-computer-science?noredirect=1#comment5333947_2584003
I would like to learn a bit about the ...
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35 views
Are there any undergraduate research/internship opportunities in math/science education/history?
(Apologies if this isn't the right place for such a post. I see lots of information out there for math/science students wanting to do research, but haven't seen anything about doing things on the "...
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2answers
73 views
Canonical examples of successful scientists giving detailed advice about doing science/mathematics?
I've read this long transcript of a speech given by Richard Hamming:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
It was an amazingly good speech in my view, and extremely interesting. ...
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7answers
1k views
Why was modern science and mathematics a European phenomenon?
Of course much of this can be debated on what you mean by the word “modern”
But most of us would agree that the Arabic World and places like India were the leading mathematical and ...
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2answers
220 views
Books on scientific method for laymen
Could anyone recommend books that introduce to a layman science and its method/spirit? In particular, it should talk about what is science, what is the scientific method and why it works. After ...
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2answers
124 views
Does the word 'science' mean what's been found so far, or the way that human discovers unknown?
I'm writing a piece of paper and trying to understand, the meaning of word 'science' in the context of history. I'm not a native English speaker and I know I could look up in the dictionary, but my ...
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45 views
Did Turing ever mention Protagoras regarding the Imitation Game?
Based on the period when Turing went to school, it is fairly inconceivable he was not well familiar with Protagoras, and the statement that:
"Man is the measure of all things"
*I asked a question ...
5
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1answer
101 views
To constructivists, is “mind” more than a convenient synonym for “algorithm”?
I could give (but, not being a professional historian, nor a native Dutch speaker, only few) references and background-remarks, but I will keep this short, to make more use of what a Q&A-sites ...
3
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2answers
674 views
Did Karl Popper argue against Bayesian inference?
I am somewhat familiar with the works of Karl Popper and his opposition to using past data to induce prospects of future events, however disclaimed as uncertain, AKA historicism. He contributed to ...
4
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3answers
351 views
“Tension” between Electromagnetism and Newton's laws
When talking about the inconsistencies in physics that led up to Einstein's discovery of relativity today's professors always say that Maxwell's discovery of the constant speed of light $c$ created a ...
7
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1answer
2k views
What's the origin of the concept of the five senses?
It is commonly said (to children) that we have five senses: taste, sight, touch, smell, and hearing. The term "sixth sense" refers to something supernatural. But we do have more senses. Balance, for ...
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1answer
271 views
Has mathematicians read/reacted to speculative realism, specifically to philosophy of Quentin Meillassoux? [closed]
There has been a recent uprise in philosophy (and it seems to me to be a very popular topic there), which is called Speculative Realism or Object-Oriented Ontology. One of the founding texts there is ...
3
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2answers
756 views
Who is the philosopher Feynman cites as saying that existence of science requires the same conditions to produce the same results?
In part 6 of his lecture series "Character of Physical Law", Richard Feynman remarks:
A philosopher once said, "It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always ...
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0answers
55 views
Carnap's last theory Of probability
According to Bar-Hillel, Carnap's coauthor in a 1952 report on probability, Carnap had, as of 1956 an unpublished but circulated theory distinguishing "random" refers to methods of production of ...
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94 views
How important were serendipitous scientific discoveries (objectively)?
I'm interested in examining the efficiency of the scientific process. Part of this involves examining what actually goes into making a discovery. One common objection is:
Half of all important ...
