Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud: Revolutions in the History and Philosophy of Science / Edition 1

by Friedel Weinert

Overview

Copernicus, Darwin, & Freud

“Why is Darwin less the Copernicus than the Kepler of biology? What are good criteria for scientific revolutions? Shift of perspective? Replacement of paradigms? Reweaving conceptual networks? Explanatory gain? Restructuring the constraint space? Threatening worldviews? Whoever wants to learn more about these and many other important issues of history and philosophy of science will have to read on!”
Klaus Hentschel, University of Stuttgart

“Friedel Weinert has done a rare and excellent thing in this book: he has shown how the philosophy of science is intimately connected with the development of physical, biological, and social sciences and that argument concerning the foundations of these sciences cannot be advanced without reference to philosophy. It is a clearly written and engaging book that will be informative for teachers, students, and the lay public alike.”
Robert Nola, University of Auckland

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405181839
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	11/10/2008
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Friedel Weinert is Professor of Philosophy at Bradford University and a former Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard University and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the LSE in London. He holds a PhD in Philosophy, a BA in Sociology, and a BSc in Physics. Dr. Weinert is the editor of Laws of Nature (1995), the author of The Scientist as Philosopher (2004) and chief editor of the forthcoming Compendium of Quantum Physics: Concepts, Experiments, History and Philosophy.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments x

Introduction 1

I Nicolaus Copernicus: The Loss of Centrality 3

1 Ptolemy and Copernicus 3

2 A Clash of Two Worldviews 4

2.1 The geocentric worldview 5

2.2 Aristotle’s cosmology 5

2.3 Ptolemy’s geocentrism 9

2.4 A philosophical aside: Outlook 14

2.5 Shaking the presuppositions: Some medieval developments 17

3 The Heliocentric Worldview 20

3.1 Nicolaus Copernicus 21

3.2 The explanation of the seasons 25

3.3 Copernicus and the Copernican turn 28

3.3.1 A philosophical aside: From empirical adequacy to theoretical validity 32

3.4 Copernicus consolidated: Kepler and Galileo 32

4 Copernicus was not a Scientific Revolutionary 37

4.1 The Copernican method 39

4.2 The relativity of motion 42

5 The Transition to Newton 43

5.1 On hypotheses 45

6 Some Philosophical Lessons 47

6.1 The loss of centrality 48

6.2 Was Copernicus a realist? 51

6.2.1 Lessons for instrumentalism and realism 52

6.3 Modern realism 55

6.4 The underdetermination of theories by evidence 58

6.4.1 The Duhem–Quine thesis 59

6.4.2 The power of constraints 61

6.5 Theories, models, and laws 64

6.5.1 Theories and models 64

6.5.2 Laws of nature, laws of science 68

6.5.3 Philosophical views of laws 69

6.5.3.1 The inference view 69

6.5.3.2 The regularity view 70

6.5.3.3 The necessitarian view 73

6.5.3.4 The structural view 75

7 Copernicus and Scientific Revolutions 77

8 The Anthropic Principle: A Reversal of the Copernican Turn? 83

Reading List 87

Essay Questions 91

II Charles Darwin: The Loss of Rational Design 93

1 Darwin and Copernicus 93

2 Views of Organic Life 94

2.1 Teleology 94

2.1.1 The Great Chain of Being 97

2.1.2 Design arguments 99

2.1.3 Jean Baptiste Lamarck 104

3 Fossil Discoveries 106

3.1 Of bones and skeletons 108

3.2 The antiquity of man 110

4 Darwin’s Revolution 112

4.1 The Darwinian view of life 114

4.1.1 Principles of evolution 116

4.2 The descent of man 119

5 Philosophical Matters 124

5.1 Philosophical presuppositions: Mechanical worldview, determinism, materialism 125

5.2 From biology to the philosophy of mind 129

5.2.1 Empiricism 129

5.2.2 Philosophy of mind 132

5.2.3 Emergent minds 134

5.3 The loss of rational design 136

5.4 Intelligent design (ID) 139

6 A Question of Method 143

6.1 Darwinian inferences 143

6.2 Philosophical empiricism 147

6.3 Some principles of elimination 149

6.4 Essential features of eliminative induction 150

6.5 Falsifiability or testability? 155

6.6 Explanation and prediction 157

6.7 Some models of scientific explanation 159

6.7.1 Hempel’s models 160

6.7.2 Functional models 161

6.7.3 Causal models 163

6.7.3.1 A counterfactual-interventionist account 163

6.7.3.2 A conditional model of causation 165

6.7.4 Structural explanations 169

6.8 A brief return to realism 172

6.9 Darwin and scientific revolutions 174

6.9.1 Philosophical consequences 176

Reading List 177

Essay Questions 183

III Sigmund Freud: The Loss of Transparency 185

1 Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud 185

2 Some Views of Humankind 187

2.1 Enlightenment views of human nature 188

2.2 Nietzsche’s view of human nature 190

3 Scientism and the Freudian Model of Personality 191

3.1 Freud’s model of the mind 192

3.1.1 A summary of psychoanalytic theory 192

3.1.2 Analogy with physics 195

3.1.3 Freud as an Enlightenment thinker 200

3.1.4 The scientific status of the Freudian model 202

3.1.4.1 Freud’s methods 202

3.1.4.2 The method of eliminative induction, again 205

3.1.5 Freud stands between the empirical and the hermeneutic models 208

3.1.6 The role of mind in the social world 209

4 The Social Sciences beyond Freud 210

4.1 Two standard models of the social sciences – some history 210

4.1.1 The naturalistic model 211

4.1.2 The hermeneutic model 213

4.2 Essential features of social science models 218

4.2.1 Essential features of the naturalistic model 218

4.2.2 Essential features of the hermeneutic model 221

4.3 Questions of methodology 224

4.3.1 What is Verstehen? 225

4.3.2 Weber’s methodology of ideal types 229

4.3.3 Verstehen and objectivity 234

4.4 Causation in the social sciences 236

4.4.1 Weber on causation 236

4.4.2 On the existence of social laws 239

4.4.3 Explanation and prediction in the social sciences 242

4.4.4 Underdetermination 243

4.4.5 Realism and relativism 244

4.4.6 Reductionism and functionalism 248

5 Evolution and the Social Sciences 253

5.1 Sociobiology – the fourth revolution? 254

5.2 Evolutionary psychology 257

6 Freud and Revolutions in Thought 261

6.1 Revolutions in thought vs. revolutions in science 263

Reading List 263

Essay Questions 269

Name Index 271

Subject Index 274

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Why is Darwin less the Copernicus than the Kepler of biology—What are good criteria for scientific revolutions? Shift of perspective? Replacement of paradigms? Reweaving conceptual networks? Explanatory gain? Restructuring the constraint space? Threatening worldviews? Whoever wants to learn more about these and many other important issues of history & philosophy of science will have to read on!"
–Klaus Hentschel, full professor for history of science & technology, University of Stuttgart

"Friedel Weinert has done a rare and excellent thing in this book: he has shown how the philosophy of science is intimately connected with the development of physical, biological and social sciences and that argument concerning the foundations of these sciences cannot be advanced with out reference to philosophy. It is a clearly written and engaging book that will be informative for teachers, students and the lay public alike."
–Robert Nola, Dept of Philosophy, the University of Auckland

Editorial Reviews

"Whether used as a textbook or as a review of issues concerning scientific revolutions and theory change in their historical context, Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud may be strongly recommended." (The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, 2011)

"Those seeking a more conventional approach to the history and philosophy of science may well find Weinert's book informative...there is much to be learned from Weinert's comparison of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud." (Science & Education, January 2011)

From the Publisher