Description
Book SynopsisIn Exceeding Our Grasp , Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise.
Trade ReviewThe argument is extremely clear, detailed, and thorough. It doesn't try to be a textbook, and is aimed squarely at professional philosophers and advanced students in philosophy of science. * Metaphilosophy *
Table of Contents1. Realism, Pessimism, and Underdetermination ; 1.1 Scientific Realism: What's at Stake? ; 1.2 Problems for Pessimism and Underdetermination ; 1.3 Recurrent, Transient Underdetermination, and a New Induction over the History of Science ; 2. Chasing Duhem: The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives ; 2.1 Duhem's Worry: Eliminative Inferences and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives ; 2.2 Confirmation: Holism, Eliminative Induction, and Bayesianism ; 2.3 Pessimism Revisited ; 3. Darwin and Pangenesis: The Search for the Material Basis of Generation and Heredity ; 3.1 Preliminary Worries ; 3.2 Pangenesis: Darwin's "Mad Dream" and "Beloved Child" ; 3.3 Darwin's Failure to Grasp Galton's Common Cause Mechanism for Inheritance ; 4. Galton and the Strip Theory ; 4.1 The Transfusion Experiments: "A Dreadful Disappointment to Them Both" ; 4.2 Galton's Strip Theory and Its Maturational, Invariant Conception of Inheritance ; 4.3 Galton's Understanding of "Correlation" and "Variable Influences" in Development ; 5. August Weismann's Theory of the Germ-Plasm ; 5.1 German Biology at the End of the Nineteenth Century and Weismann's Theory of the Germ-Plasm ; 5.2 Germinal Specificity, the Search for a Mechanism of Cellular Differentiation and the Reservation of the Germ-Plasm ; 5.4 Productive and Expendable Germinal Resources ; 5.5 Conclusion: Lessons from History ; 6. History Revisited: Pyrrhic Victories for Scientific Realism ; 6.1 Realist Responses to the Historical Record ; 6.2 Once More into the Breach: The Pessimistic Induction ; 6.3 Reference without Descriptive Accuracy ; 6.4 Diluting Approximate Truth ; 7. Selective Confirmation and the Historical Record: "Another Such Victory over the Romans"? ; 7.1 Realism, Selective Confirmation, and Retrospective Judgments of Idleness ; 7.2 Theoretical Posits: They Work Hard for the Money ; 7.3 Trust and Betrayal ; 7.4 Structural Realism and Retention ; 7.5 Selective Confirmation: No Refuge for Realism ; 8. Science without Realism? ; References ; Index
