Are Unconceived Alternatives a Problem for Scientific Realism?
نویسندگان
چکیده
منابع مشابه
Darwin's Pangenesis and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives
In earlier work I have argued that the most substantial threat to scientific realism arises from the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scientifically se...
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When Galileo argued that the familiar patterns of light and shade on the face of the full moon cquld best be accounted for by supposing the moon to possess mountains and %as like those of earth, he was employing a joint mode of inference ind explanation that was by no means new to natural science but which since then has come to be recognized as central to scientific explanati&. In a'retroducti...
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Science aims to develop an accurate understanding of reality through a variety of rigorously empirical and formal methods. Ontologies are used to formalize the meaning of terms within a domain of discourse. The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is an ontology of particular importance in the biomedical domains, where it provides the top-level for numerous ontologies, including those admitted as part o...
متن کاملFrancis Galton’s theory of inheritance and the problem of unconceived alternatives
Elsewhere I have argued that the most significant threat to scientific realism arises from what I call the problem of unconceived alternatives: the repeated failure of past scientists and scientific communities to even conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when such alternatives were both (1) well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and (2) sufficiently scient...
متن کاملAugust Weismann's theory of the germ-plasm and the problem of unconceived alternatives.
I have argued elsewhere that scientific realism is most significantly challenged neither by traditional arguments from underdetermination of theories by the evidence, nor by the traditional pessimistic induction, but by a rather different historical pattern: our repeated failure to conceive of alternatives to extant scientific theories, even when those alternatives were both (1) well-confirmed ...
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Journal for General Philosophy of Science
سال: 2011
ISSN: 0925-4560,1572-8587
DOI: 10.1007/s10838-011-9166-9