KEY CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY SCIENCE Key Concepts in Philosophy Copyright.:! 8IIIrIaI Key Concepts in Philosophy Series Editors: John Mullarkey (University of Dundee) and Caroline Williams (Queen Mary, University of London) Erhics: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Dwight Furrow Epistemology: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Christopher Norris Language: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Jose Medina Law: Key Concepts in Philosophy, David Ingram Genda' Key Concepts in Philosophy, Tina Chanter Religion: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Brendan Sweetman Logic: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Lawrence Goldstein, Andrew Brennan, Max Deutsche and Joe Y. F. Lau Mind: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Eric Matthews Copyrighted material Science Key Concepts in Philosophy Steven French • continuum Copyrighted material Continuum 80 Maiden Lane The Tower Building Suite 704 II York Road New York London SEI 7NX NY 10038 coni inllwnbooks. com WlI'W. © Steven French 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 0-8264-8654-1 9780826486547 PB: 0-8264-8655-X 9780826486554 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data French, Steven. Science: key concepts in philosophy / Steven French. p. cm. (Key concepts in philosophy) ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-8654-7 rSBN -10: 0-8264-8654-1 ISBN -13: 978-0-8264-8655-4 (pbk.) [SBN-IO: 0-8264-8655-X (pbk.) I. Science Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series Q 175. F826 2007 501 dc22 2007002295 Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd , Bodmin. Cornwall Copyrighted material CONTENTS A cknow/edgn/en! s •• VII I Introduction I 2 Discove ry 8 24 3 H e uristics 4 Justificatio n 43 Study Exercise I : Scientific Method 60 5 Observation 62 6 Experiment 72 Study Exercise 2: Explanation and Causality 88 90 7 Rea li sm 8 Anti-realism 104 Study Exercise 3: Truth and Existence 122 r 124 9 nd e pen d e nce 140 10 Gender Bias Study Exercise 4: Science and Genders 152 154 Appendix: Where jve 'l'e been and where to go.for more Notes 156 Further reading 160 Index 163 v Copyrighted material This page intentionally left blank Copyrighted material ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This poor book has suffered in its gestation: hampered and curtailed by departmental administration, set on the back burner as other projects took priority and wounded by a near catastrophic memory stick failure. -!"hat it made it into the catalogue at all is testament to the support and nagging powers of a series of editors at Continuum, the most recent being Adam Green. That I kept at it , despite all the obstacles - some self-erected - is due to the love and support and tol erance of my family, D ena and Morgan. And that it has the form and content that it does is due to the many Leed s first-year students I have inflicted this material on over the years. I'd like to thank all of them , together with my colleagues and office staff, especially Kate, who have made it possible for me to write this. I'd especially like to give a big thank yo u to all the postgraduates who covered the tutor ial s and my former students and colleagues who also taught on the module 'How Science Works ' at various times: Otavio Bueno, Angelo Cei, Anjan Chakravartty and Grant Fisher. lowe you all a huge debt (and no, I'm not going to pay it off with a share of the royalties!). • • VII Copyrighted material This page intentionally left blank Copyrighted material CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION It is always good to begin a book like this with a statement that surely everyone will agree with: as a cultural phenomenon, science has had more of an impact on our lives than any other. We could just list the technological spin-offs alone: genetic engineering, nuclear weapons, a cure for ovarian cancer, the laptop I'm writing this on, the microwave oven I cooked my dinner in, the iPod llisten to my (unfashionable) music on .... And of course the way in which such technologies are spun off from science is an interesting issue in itself, one which we do not have space here to tackle. But over and beyond the practical benefits, there is the profound way in which science has shaped and changed our view of the world and of our place in it: think of the theory of evolution and the way it has changed our understanding of our origins. Consider the further, related development of the theory of genetics and how that has transformed , not only our understand ing of a range of diseases and disorders, but also our view of our behaviour, our attitudes, and of ourselves. Or think of quantum physics and the claim that reality is somehow fundamentally random; or Einstein's theory of relativity, according to which time runs slower the faster we move, and space and time are replaced by space-time, which is curved and distorted by the presence of matter. Science is an amazing phenomenon, and has had a huge impact on human society over hundreds of years - so how does it work? How do scientists do the things they do? How do they come up with the theories? How do they test them? How do they draw conclusions from these theories about how the world might be? These are the sorts of questions we'll be looking at here. How should we go about answering them? How should we go about discovering how science works? 1 Copyrighted material