Scientific Revolutions Reconsidered


dan2100

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This originally appeared in Full Context. By the way, if you like this book, check out his How Scientists Explain Disease. Thanks to Stephen Boydstun for his many helpful comments.

One of the most fascinating topics in the philosophy of science is scientific revolutions -- major shifts in the ideas of the sciences. These shifts, such as the change from seeing the earth as the center of the universe, are a challenge to any view that sees science as cumulative -- as adding steadily to our knowledge of the world. Scientific revolutions show science as growing in spurts. If this view of science is closer to the truth than the cumulative -- the view of science as growing by steady progress -- view, a question that arises for Objectivists is whether their epistemology can account for or accommodate it.

The Objectivist view of context is often cited as a way of dealing with this phenomenon. Via context, many shifts in concepts can be accounted for. For example, both the layperson and the botanist can have a related concept of flower. The botanist's concept of flower is, ceterus paribus, much richer -- covering more examples and involving more integrations and subdivisions -- than the layperson's. Yet no one should claim that one contradicts the other. One could look at it as if the botanist has a more detailed road map than the layperson. The botanist's "road map" has all the city streets and parks and even landmarks on it, while the layperson's only has major roads and highways. One map doesn't contradict the other.

Are scientific revolutions similar? Are Newton's physics merely a more detailed account of Galileo's? Are Quantum Mechanics a more elaborate theory which fill in details missing in Classical Mechanics? To some extent, the answer is yes. Some of the old views do fit into the new ones. Galilean physics do fit well into much of daily experience, where things are close to the earth's surface and changes in forces are small. Newtonian physics give more detail by separating these forces and showing how they affect objects, and how Galileo's views only apply to a small part of reality. Likewise, Quantum Mechanics, to some extent, contain Classical Mechanics as a limit case, as when objects are big enough to hold in one's hands.

However, isn't there more to it than this? Yes. Classical Mechanics did not claim to apply to a small bit of reality. Its proponents claimed it was the theory of physics. Nor are all of its concepts contained in Quantum Physics. Some are, but many have been rejected because they contradict the tenets of the latter.

The first problem -- overgeneralizing -- can be chalked up to an error of knowledge or overconfidence. The means to avoid this appears clear enough. One must be vigilant not to extend one's concepts and theories too far. A bit of error needn't topple all of science as long as it can be corrected or minimized. The fact that scientists critique each other in journals and elsewhere is often enough to eliminate this problem.

But the second problem is different. One would need a way of testing which parts of a given theory are valid or salvageable. Paul Thagard's Conceptual Revolutions provides such a means of testing rival scientific theories. Though Thagard's main concern is explaining previous episodes of scientific revolutions, his theory can also be used to test current rivals. Of course, this must be used cautiously. The benefit of using examples which are removed by a few decades or more is that one can look at them dispassionately and, hopefully, one will have much more evidence.

He call his theory the Theory of Explanatory Coherence (TEC). TEC basically states that the theory which is more coherent is the better one, though TEC also applies to parts of theories and his notion of coherence is different from the usual one in philosophy. On the former qualification, TEC actually compares individual postulates of a given theory. In this way, it can identify those aspects of a given theory are more important and cohere with more. On the latter qualification, his notion of coherence doesn't only apply to the internal consistency of theories, but also to their correspondence to the facts. The latter is coherence with the evidence.

The most basic part of a theory, of course, is its concepts. Thagard goes over the many types of conceptual change -- addition, deletion, and changes in relations between concepts. The last needs to be expanded since it is the bread and butter of scientific revolutions. He breaks the relations between concepts into two general types. One type is "kind" relations, e.g., "whales are a kind of mammal." The other is "part" relations, e.g., "lungs are a part of whales." From the example of "whales" one can see how changes in relations can shift concepts in a big way. I'm sure most people first see whales as big fish, when in fact they are more closely related to dogs or humans than fish. In a similar way, scientific revolutions usually involve huge shifts in conceptual relations, as well as addition or deletion of other concepts. TEC to a large extent is able to plot these changes and he uses many diagrams and table to make it all clear just how they come about.

He applies TEC to many historical examples which are interesting because they are far from the usual fare in philosophy of science. The usual fare is astronomy and physics, with some meanderings in biology. Thagard starts off with chemistry, specifically Lavoisier's oxygen hypothesis which overcame the Phlogiston Theory. He also takes a detailed look at Wegener's theory of continental drift, which with many modifications, is now the main theory of geology, plate tectonics. This large and diverse pool of examples gives one a much broader perspective on science and on scientific change.

During these applications, he is able to show just how the seven principles of his theory work. The seven principles -- symmetry, explanation, analogy, data priority, contradiction, competition, acceptability -- all seem to make sense. Let's briefly state each one. The symmetry principle means that if a given proposition coheres (or does not cohere) with another, then the other proposition coheres (or does not) with it. The explanation principle states that if a statement explains another, then they cohere. Also, the more statements it takes to explain a given proposition, the less each individual one coheres with it. This means a simpler explanation is usualy more coherent, which fits in with Rand's notion of unit-economy.

The analogy principle states that analogous relations cohere. This adds weight -- how much is arguable -- to a given hypothesis' overall coherence. Data priority is another way of stating correspondence, i.e., that the hypothesis that corresponds to the facts is more coherent than one that doesn't.

Contradiction should be straightforward. If two hypotheses contradict each other, then obviously they cannot cohere with each other. It should be noted that Thagard doesn't believe a few minor contradictions should damn a theory. Some might beg to differ, but from a comparative perspective, a theory with fewer contradictions might be better than one with more. One should also remember that contradictions can and should always be worked on. They may later be found to have not be real contradictions or to be areas where the theory must be revised.

When two or more hypothesis which are not connected explain a given piece of evidence or another hypothesis they are said to compete. This is the gist of the competition principle. It would be interesting to see how TEC would handle two explanations which are really equivalent but only seem competitive, though no nontrivial examples come readily to mind.

The acceptability principle has to do with the relation of a given hypothesis with background information and data. This avoids there being a hypothesis for each piece of data which is unrelated to other hypotheses and data. The more hypotheses it meshes with and the more data it covers, the more acceptable a given hypothesis is.

Note context is implied by several of Thagard's principles, especially explanation and acceptability. He is not a logical atomist, considering each concept or proposition as if it was unrelated to the others. TEC looks for the best total theory -- the one which best fits the evidence, explains more evidence, is simpler and more interrelated with itself and the rest of our knowledge.

Most of these principles are not original with Thagard. Data priority is perhaps the oldest, dating back at least to Aristotle, as does his Contradiction Principle. Analogy has been used as long and was one of the major arguments by Charles Darwin for his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. (Darwin used an analogy between animal breeding by people and animal breeding in the wild. This is his analogy between artificial and natural selection.) Acceptability seems very close to the coherence theory of truth championed by the British Hegelians and Brand Blanshard.

Thagard has designed a program, ECHO, which implements these principles in LISP, a programming language. Through the modeling of TEC in different scientific revolutions, one is able to see how various hypothesis of a given theory interrelate. Naturally, the more propositions and evidence in a given theory and its rival, the harder it is for one to recognize how the pieces fit together. ECHO takes care of some of this problem, by showing just which theory will win out and, almost as importantly, how the parts of rival theories score. For example, let's look at the rivalry between Wegener's theory of continental drift and the Contractionist theory. Both theories sought to explain the evidence, including the mountain ranges, the similarity of distant shorelines and fossil deposits, separate continents, and sedimentary rocks at high elevations. Wegener explained such things via hypothesizing that the continents move. Contractionists explained these phenomena by postulating that as the earth cooled, the crust settled unevenly, with some parts rising higher than others and others falling lower.

Wegener's theory might seem superior, given what we now know, but in fact, some of its tenets were wrong. Wegener did not plausibly explain how the continents drifted. Wegener postulated that tidal force (which would move the continents westward) and Polflucht force (which would move the continents toward the equator) made the continents move. In his own time, it was shown that such forces were tiny and unable to achieve what the evidence demanded. However, the drift hypothesis itself is still better than the Contractionist alternative. TEC shows that while some aspects of Wegener's theory are wrong, others are much more acceptable. (Plate tectonics accepts the notion that continents move but explains such movement via seafloor spreading which is in turn explained by convection currents in the Earth's mantle. See Claude Allegre's The Behavior of the Earth: Continental and Seafloor Mobility.)

TEC's ability to separate out the good from the bad in a theory seems a antidote to what Rand called package-dealing. Package-dealing is slapping together ideas which aren't necessary connected, such as, in this nation, the conservatives packaging Judeo-Christian ethics with capitalism. Obviously, Wegener's theory shouldn't be accepted as a package. That continents move seems incontrovertible today, yet the cause of this movement is now thought to be, with much more plausibility, convection currents inside the earth and not the tidal or Polflucht forces.

From this, Thagard goes on to posit four possible relations between theories in scientific revolutions. One theory could be said to incorporate the other, wherein most if not all its tenets are absorbed into the wider more detailed theory. One theory could sublate another. this is where much of the old is saved, but some of it is rejected. The third relation is where a theory supplants another, as when almost all the rival's tenets are thrown out. Finally, there is the relation of ignoring the other theory, which Thagard claims does not happen much in the "natural" sciences, but all too often in the humanities and soft sciences, such as, sadly, psychology, economics and anthropology. Of these, sublation seems very common. Einstein's relativity theories sublated Classical Physics. However, supplanting does take place. Lavoisier's Oxygen Theory rejected most parts of the Phlogiston Theory, but it retained much of the evidence and the methods.

This is important, as Thagard points out, because science usually proceeds by accumulating evidence and methods but sometimes rejecting or radically modifying concepts. Thus, Lavoisier did not attack the evidence of the Phlogiston Theory, he merely argued with the interpretation of that theory and added new evidence to show where it failed and the Oxygen Theory succeeded. The same goes for Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. It was able to better explain anomalies in Mercury's orbit, but the methods of observing the orbit were pretty much the same as in Newton's time -- though much more accurate.

Thagard does devote some space to discussing psychology which he believes is not yet at the theory stage -- in the sense of having a unifying theory as biology does with Darwin's theory of evolution. Instead, he sees it composed of frameworks in which, hopefully, future theories will arise. He passes over the other soft sciences. It would be a great exercise to use Thagard's TEC and his program ECHO to code up Austrian and Keynesian economics to see which would be the better theory. Both theories are very sophisticated, but I'm sure they can be boiled down to a few dozen hypotheses and perhaps as many or more pieces of evidence.

TEC might mesh with the Objectivist view of context, but there are several areas that need to be further explored. One of these is how one can avoid adopting theoretical concepts, such as phlogiston, that do not later turn out to be invalid. Phlogiston was believed to be a substance emitted by burning objects or during respiration or rusting. Further, things which we would think of as elemental -- i.e., composed of one atomic substance -- today were thought of as compounded by phlogiston theorists. Thus, iron was thought to be composed of phlogiston and another substance, the phlogiston being released when the iron rusted. Ditto for substances burning.

Prior to Lavoisier's Oxygen Theory, phlogiston could have been thought of as a useful concept -- it explained combustion, respiration and rust. Lavoisier didn't incorporate phlogiston into his theory as a botanist can incorporate the common idea of a flower into her understanding. Lavoisier rejected it completely. There is nothing like phlogiston in his theory. In his theory, oxygen combines with substances during combustion, respiration and rust. Armed with his theory, chemists could go on to discover which substances are elemental (such as iron), which are compounds (such as iron oxide), and explain why a piece of iron becomes heavier when it rusts.

Perhaps theoretical concepts need to be separated from others because they posit causes which can't be confirmed otherwise. This especially applies to concepts which cover things, such as oxygen, or processes, such as gravitational attraction. One must be very careful when applying them. Phlogiston, it turned out, was not a real thing. There is no way to reduce it back to evidence. The best method of using such concepts might be to use them sparingly and only when they explain a wide variety of phenomena. This way, several lines of evidence lead to them. However, prior to Lavoisier, many lines of evidence seemed consistent with the existence of phlogiston. Is it necessary to avoid such concepts, especially when they prove initially fruitful, or should they be avoided at all costs? Where the solution lies at this juncture I do not know.

Thagard also compares his theory to data on child development. Though he admits much work needs to be done, it does not seem that young children go through conceptual revolutions in the same way the scientific community does. It would seem that children ignore previous beliefs they have of the world as they learn more. For example, there is nothing, according to Thagard, in a child's intellectual growth when she discovers the earth is round like a scientific revolution. The old system (flat earth) does not compete with the new system (round earth) in a battle for explanatory coherence. This does not necessarily obviate the Objectivist view, as many concepts do change by extension or intension, but many -- such as "goblin" or "unicorn" -- just seem to be deleted.

Conceptual Revolutions presents both a promise and a challenge. It promises, and this writer believes, delivers a theory which explains why science undergoes massive conceptual changes without ditching reason or making science into a domain of relativism and subjectivism. TEC also holds another promise, that of testing current rival theories, such as the various theories of economics, to see which is really the better one. The challenge, for the Objectivist, is to discover what the relationship between context, powerful explanatory concepts, and scientific change.

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One could look at it as if the botanist has a more detailed road map than the layperson. The botanist's "road map" has all the city streets and parks and even landmarks on it, while the layperson's only has major roads and highways. One map doesn't contradict the other.

Interesting. This part is very similar to Korzybski's analogy of language as a "map". His view was that our maps became more detailed as knowledge progressed, much as in this example. Is there any way of seeing how this computer program works?

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One could look at it as if the botanist has a more detailed road map than the layperson. The botanist's "road map" has all the city streets and parks and even landmarks on it, while the layperson's only has major roads and highways. One map doesn't contradict the other.

Interesting. This part is very similar to Korzybski's analogy of language as a "map". His view was that our maps became more detailed as knowledge progressed, much as in this example. Is there any way of seeing how this computer program works?

He describes it in the book, but I think if you understand his theory, you'd be able to develop it in whatever language you're familiar. The tougher part is that he also adds weightings to various factors and these would, in my opinion, be pure guesses. In other words, I doubt any two episodes of scientific theory change are going to have similar weightings. However, there might be some qualitative similarities, such as data priority always having a higher weighting than most other factors.

When I read the book, too, I wanted to write a similar program and try to place some more recent, controversial areas of inquiry into it. For example, think of the current economic crisis. Maybe rival explanations -- Austrian, Keynesian, Monetarist, New Classical, Rational Expectations, etc. -- could be fleshed out in Thagard's fashion and compared to see which best fits. (My guess would be the Austrians would win out here.)

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Thanks for posting the review.

I like that book a lot. A way I have contrasted it with Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions like this -- Kuhn's perspective is sociological, whereas Thagard's perspective is epistemological.

Edited by Merlin Jetton
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Thanks for posting the review.

I like that book a lot. A way I have contrasted it with Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that Kuhn's perspective is sociological, whereas Thagard's perspective is epistemological.

I believe Thagard's How Scientists Explain Disease takes a more sociological turn. Have you read that one -- or any of his other works?

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I believe Thagard's How Scientists Explain Disease takes a more sociological turn. Have you read that one -- or any of his other works?

I have not read How Scientists Explain Disease.

I have read these:

Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition

Coherence in Thought and Action

Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought

Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery

Computational Philosophy of Science

Looking him up at Amazon I saw a book I was not aware of and sounds interesting -- Philosophy of Mathematics (Handbook of the Philosophy of Science) It is co-written and expensive, so I will check libraries first.

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Thagard's book sound's interesting; I will have to get a copy.

Yesterday, quite by coincidence, I posted these remarks about a book on a similar topic, by Stephen Toulmin:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8426&view=findpost&p=96247

Toulmin's book contains a lengthy criticism of Kuhn, and it emphasizes the evolutionary rather than the revolutionary developments of science. For example, while discussing Kuhn's notion of radical discontinuities between competing paradigms during a scientific revolution, Toulmin writes (p. 103):

"It is a caricature, for instance, to depict the changeover from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics as a complete rational discontinuity. Even a cursory consideration of Einstein's influence on physics will show how little his achievement exemplifies a full-scale scientific revolution [in Kuhn's sense]. In a highly organized science like physics, every proposed modification -- however profoundly it threatens to change the conceptual structure of the subject -- is discussed, argued over, reasoned about, and criticized at great length, before being accredited and incorporated into the established body of the discipline. So far from physicists committed to rival paradigms reaching a state of complete mutual incomprehension -- the state of affairs supposedly characteristic of a fully-fledged 'revolutionary crisis' in science -- changes as profound as Einstein's must be justified by stronger reasons than are needed where less is intellectually at stake."

Ghs

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A particular subject that I'm a bit vague on has always interested me: the boom in aeronautic advancement. I was discussing this at a weekly get-together.

I gather that most scientific advancements come as a necessity, some by accident. But if you look at the span of years from the flight at Kittyhawk to landing a man on the moon, you're looking at 66 years. Quite a leap if you ask me.

Do any of these books explain this out?

~ Shane

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Thagard's book sound's interesting; I will have to get a copy.

Yesterday, quite by coincidence, I posted these remarks about a book on a similar topic, by Stephen Toulmin:

http://www.objectivi...indpost&p=96247

Toulmin's book contains a lengthy criticism of Kuhn, and it emphasizes the evolutionary rather than the revolutionary developments of science. For example, while discussing Kuhn's notion of radical discontinuities between competing paradigms during a scientific revolution, Toulmin writes (p. 103):

"It is a caricature, for instance, to depict the changeover from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics as a complete rational discontinuity. Even a cursory consideration of Einstein's influence on physics will show how little his achievement exemplifies a full-scale scientific revolution [in Kuhn's sense]. In a highly organized science like physics, every proposed modification -- however profoundly it threatens to change the conceptual structure of the subject -- is discussed, argued over, reasoned about, and criticized at great length, before being accredited and incorporated into the established body of the discipline. So far from physicists committed to rival paradigms reaching a state of complete mutual incomprehension -- the state of affairs supposedly characteristic of a fully-fledged 'revolutionary crisis' in science -- changes as profound as Einstein's must be justified by stronger reasons than are needed where less is intellectually at stake."

Ghs

Both the Theory of Special Relativity and the Theory of General Relativity are classical theories in the sense that the laws are deterministic and all of the functions are smooth (differentiable). The main discontinuity between the Relativity Theories as that the laws are not invariant under a Galilean transformation. Also time (especially simultaneity) is not absolute.

A much bigger jump is from classical theories to quantum physical theories where the laws are no longer deterministic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Thagard's book sound's interesting; I will have to get a copy.

Yesterday, quite by coincidence, I posted these remarks about a book on a similar topic, by Stephen Toulmin:

http://www.objectivi...indpost&p=96247

Toulmin's book contains a lengthy criticism of Kuhn, and it emphasizes the evolutionary rather than the revolutionary developments of science. For example, while discussing Kuhn's notion of radical discontinuities between competing paradigms during a scientific revolution, Toulmin writes (p. 103):

"It is a caricature, for instance, to depict the changeover from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics as a complete rational discontinuity. Even a cursory consideration of Einstein's influence on physics will show how little his achievement exemplifies a full-scale scientific revolution [in Kuhn's sense]. In a highly organized science like physics, every proposed modification -- however profoundly it threatens to change the conceptual structure of the subject -- is discussed, argued over, reasoned about, and criticized at great length, before being accredited and incorporated into the established body of the discipline. So far from physicists committed to rival paradigms reaching a state of complete mutual incomprehension -- the state of affairs supposedly characteristic of a fully-fledged 'revolutionary crisis' in science -- changes as profound as Einstein's must be justified by stronger reasons than are needed where less is intellectually at stake."

Ghs

Both the Theory of Special Relativity and the Theory of General Relativity are classical theories in the sense that the laws are deterministic and all of the functions are smooth (differentiable). The main discontinuity between the Relativity Theories as that the laws are not invariant under a Galilean transformation. Also time (especially simultaneity) is not absolute.

A much bigger jump is from classical theories to quantum physical theories where the laws are no longer deterministic.

That, of course, is usually how quantum physics is sold -- as the more radical theory. I won't argue against that, though I think Relativistic physics paved the way for quantum theory -- in terms of making it easier to accept seemingly counterintuitive ideas.

Also, there were, from my readings, two phases in the beginning of quantum physical theories: the early period ushered in by the work of Planck, Einstein, and others that culminated in the Bohr model and the later period from the mid-1920s culminating in quantum mechanics. (Of course, one could keep going to QFT and beyond, but I think there's a real watershed between these periods.) At least, this is my reading of the history.

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He passes over the other soft sciences. It would be a great exercise to use Thagard's TEC and his program ECHO to code up Austrian and Keynesian economics to see which would be the better theory. Both theories are very sophisticated, but I'm sure they can be boiled down to a few dozen hypotheses and perhaps as many or more pieces of evidence.

Dan,

I'd read your article back when Full Context was still going. Thank you for re-posting it.

A few thoughts about the effort described in the book:

Paul Thagard does a lot of interesting work.

There's a big difference, however, between using a computer program like ECHO to size up theories on which the relevant scientific community has had plenty of time to return a verdict, and theories that are in live contention today.

One reason is contained in that little phrase "to code up." ECHO doesn't study books and journal articles and such, in order to extract or infer from them what the tenets of each theory were. A programmer (Thagard himself, or someone working with him) has to analyze the theories and predigest them for the program.

Robert Campbell

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He passes over the other soft sciences. It would be a great exercise to use Thagard's TEC and his program ECHO to code up Austrian and Keynesian economics to see which would be the better theory. Both theories are very sophisticated, but I'm sure they can be boiled down to a few dozen hypotheses and perhaps as many or more pieces of evidence.

Dan,

I'd read your article back when Full Context was still going. Thank you for re-posting it.

A few thoughts about the effort described in the book:

Paul Thagard does a lot of interesting work.

There's a big difference, however, between using a computer program like ECHO to size up theories on which the relevant scientific community has had plenty of time to return a verdict, and theories that are in live contention today.

One reason is contained in that little phrase "to code up." ECHO doesn't study books and journal articles and such, in order to extract or infer from them what the tenets of each theory were. A programmer (Thagard himself, or someone working with him) has to analyze the theories and predigest them for the program.

Robert Campbell

I agree. Of course, I wasn't hoping that use of ECHO or similar programs would completely mechanize the process here, but I do think it might illuminate some important differences and help to focus debates over rival theories. And, yes, someone or some group would have to whittle out the supposed concepts and relations of a given theory. But my guess is such an undertaking would be open and could be transparent. This would allow for people to debate whether the models of the various theories were correct. And there's no reason to think, say, that different individuals or groups might encode theories in different ways. However, this should be no problem if the approach is to examine each one to see if one or more (or none) are relevant and accurate.

Also, I wouldn't make Thagard's TEC or a particular application of it sacrosanct. I wouldn't want to end up with people substituting one of these for thinking. Finally, I wouldn't want to have something like the alleged Euler-Diderot incident become the norm -- where someone declares a theory is right or wrong based on something no one else understands and that is, in fact, invalid to determining this.

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He passes over the other soft sciences. It would be a great exercise to use Thagard's TEC and his program ECHO to code up Austrian and Keynesian economics to see which would be the better theory. Both theories are very sophisticated, but I'm sure they can be boiled down to a few dozen hypotheses and perhaps as many or more pieces of evidence.

Dan,

I'd read your article back when Full Context was still going. Thank you for re-posting it.

A few thoughts about the effort described in the book:

Paul Thagard does a lot of interesting work.

There's a big difference, however, between using a computer program like ECHO to size up theories on which the relevant scientific community has had plenty of time to return a verdict, and theories that are in live contention today.

One reason is contained in that little phrase "to code up." ECHO doesn't study books and journal articles and such, in order to extract or infer from them what the tenets of each theory were. A programmer (Thagard himself, or someone working with him) has to analyze the theories and predigest them for the program.

Robert Campbell

I agree. Of course, I wasn't hoping that use of ECHO or similar programs would completely mechanize the process here, but I do think it might illuminate some important differences and help to focus debates over rival theories. And, yes, someone or some group would have to whittle out the supposed concepts and relations of a given theory. But my guess is such an undertaking would be open and could be transparent. This would allow for people to debate whether the models of the various theories were correct. And there's no reason to think, say, that different individuals or groups might encode theories in different ways. However, this should be no problem if the approach is to examine each one to see if one or more (or none) are relevant and accurate.

Also, I wouldn't make Thagard's TEC or a particular application of it sacrosanct. I wouldn't want to end up with people substituting one of these for thinking. Finally, I wouldn't want to have something like the alleged Euler-Diderot incident become the norm -- where someone declares a theory is right or wrong based on something no one else understands and that is, in fact, invalid to determining this.

Yes - wouldn't want this turning into a 'climategate' <_<

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I agree. Of course, I wasn't hoping that use of ECHO or similar programs would completely mechanize the process here, but I do think it might illuminate some important differences and help to focus debates over rival theories. And, yes, someone or some group would have to whittle out the supposed concepts and relations of a given theory. But my guess is such an undertaking would be open and could be transparent. This would allow for people to debate whether the models of the various theories were correct. And there's no reason to think, say, that different individuals or groups might encode theories in different ways. However, this should be no problem if the approach is to examine each one to see if one or more (or none) are relevant and accurate.

Also, I wouldn't make Thagard's TEC or a particular application of it sacrosanct. I wouldn't want to end up with people substituting one of these for thinking. Finally, I wouldn't want to have something like the alleged Euler-Diderot incident become the norm -- where someone declares a theory is right or wrong based on something no one else understands and that is, in fact, invalid to determining this.

Yes - wouldn't want this turning into a 'climategate' dry.gif

No doubt, but Climategate is, I hope, one of those rare instances of such tampering. Let's it's not merely one of those instances where people got caught.

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  • 2 years later...

But the second problem is different. One would need a way of testing which parts of a given theory are valid or salvageable. Paul Thagard's Conceptual Revolutions provides such a means of testing rival scientific theories. Though Thagard's main concern is explaining previous episodes of scientific revolutions, his theory can also be used to test current rivals.

Hot thought: mechanisms and applications of emotional cognition

Thagard, Paul

MIT Press, 2006.Pages:: xii, 301 p. :

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