Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences: The Critical Background to Modern Science, 1800-1905 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521211107 ISBN 13: 9780521211109

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1976

Synopsis

First published in 1976, this is a volume of studies on the problems of theory-appraisal in the physical sciences - how and why important theories are developed, changed and are replaced, and by what criteria we judge one theory an advance on another. The volume is introduced by a classic paper of Imre Lakatos's, which sets out a theory for tackling these problems - the methodology of scientific research programmes. Five contributors then test this theory against particular and celebrated case-studies in the history of the physical sciences (particularly in the nineteenth century). The volume ends with a characteristically forceful and original critique of the whole enterprise by Paul Feyerabend. the book is a companion volume to Method and Appraisal in Economics. Both are natural sequels to Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge and attempt to work out in particular cases the implications of some of the theories presented in that book.

About this title

Book Description:

First published in 1976, this is a volume of studies on the problems of theory-appraisal in the physical sciences - how and why important theories are developed, changed and are replaced, and by what criteria we judge one theory an advance on another.

About the Author:

Colin Howson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and Emeritus Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Hume's Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief (2000), Logic with Trees (1997) and, with Peter Urbach, Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach (3rd edition, 2006).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1976
• ISBN 10: 0521211107
• ISBN 13: 9780521211109
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 351
• Editor: Howson Colin