Scientific Progress. A Study Concerning the Nature of the Relation Between Successive Scientific Theories

Kuhn and Feyerabend formulated the problem. Dilworth tries to provide the solution. In this highly original and insightful book, Craig Dilworth answers all the questions raised by the incommensurability thesis. Logical empiricism cannot account for theory conflict. Popperianism cannot account for how one theory is a progression beyond another. Dilworth’s Perspectivist conception of science does both. While remaining within the bounds of classical philosophy of science, Dilworth does away with the logicism of his competitors. On the Perspectivist view theory conflict is not contradiction, and theory superiority does not consist in deductive subsumption or set-theoretic inclusion. Here the relation between theories is analogous to the application of individual concepts, and the question of theory superiority becomes one of relative applicability. In this way Dilworth succeeds in providing a conception of science in which scientific progress is based on both rational and empirical considerations. – Table of contents : Acknowledgments. - Preface to the Second Edition. - Preface to the Third Edition. - Preface to the Fourth Edition. - Introduction. - 1. The Deductive Model. - 2. The Basis of the Logical Empiricist Conception of Science. - 3. The Basis of the Popperian Conception of Science. - 4. The Logical Empiricist Conception of Scientific Progress. - 5. The Popperian Conception of Scientific Progress. - 6. Popper, Lakatos, and the Transcendence of the Deductive Model. - 7. Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Incommensurability. - 8. The Gestalt Model. - 9. The Perspectivist Conception of Science. - 10. Development of the Perspectivist Conception in the Context of the Kinetic Theory of Gases. - 11. The Set-Theoretic Conception of Science. - 12. Application of the Perspectivist Conception to the Views of Newton, Kepler and Galileo. - Appendices. - I. On Theoretical Terms. - II. Reply to Criticism of the First Edition. - III. Perspectivism and Subatomic Physics. - IV. On the Nature of Scientific Laws and Theories. - V. Is the Transition from Absolute to Relative Space a Shift of Conceptual Perspective?. - VI. Two Perspectives on Sustainable Development. - VII. Modern Science and the Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities. - VIII. A Theory of Identity and Reference. M.-M. V.