Very Incomplete Notes for 
The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science
Edited by Peter Machamer and Michael Silberstein

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Machamer, "A Brief Historical Introduction ot the Philosophy of Science"

Logical positivism and empiricism (1918-50s): physics as paradigmatic
science, science as best method for knowing the world, deductive logic,
science as grounded in observation and experiment, bridge sentences.

New paradigms and scientific change (1950s-70s):  focus on history of
science, actual episodes of science observation as theory-laden, the problem
of scientific change (revolutions), language and incommensurability.

Contemporary: philosophy of special sciences, chemistry, evolutionary
biology medical ethics economics, cognitive studies, social dimensions of
science.                                                

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Worrall, "Classic Debates, Standard Problems Future Prospects"

The demarcation problem: why is science special, Popper and falsifiability,
Duhem's holism (observations can disconfirm whole bodies of theories but not
any single theory, Duhem p 187), confirmation, Bayesianism.

The problem of revolutions: pessimistic meta-induction, Poincare and 
instrumentalism, van Fraassen's constructive empiricism.

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Woodward, "Explanation"

Hempel's DN model: explanandum deduced from explanans of laws and
circumstances, laws vs other generalizations (exceptionless, purely
qualitative, counterfactual-supporting, confirmable, and/or unifying),
Scriven and causal explanations.   

Salmon: early Salmon and the probability-based statistical relevance model, 
later Salmon and the causal mechanical model (causal marks).

Unification: Friedman, Kitcher, unifying range of diverse phenomena (Newton, 
Maxwell), small set of argument patterns (explanatory store) leading to
descriptions of many phenomena.

Counterfactual dependence: Lewis, Pearl, Woodward.

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Silberstein, "Reduction, Emergence and Explanation"

The question: Can everything be reduced to the fundamental constituents of
the world or are there non-reducible emergent entities, properties, and
laws?

Rough characterizations first: Silberstein surveys both ontological and
epistemological varieties of reduction and emergence.  Ontological -- Can
everything in the world be nothing but (or determined by) fundamental
constituents of reality?  Epistemological -- Can all our scientific theories
be identified with theories about the most fundamental features of the  
world?  Reductionism -- the best understanding of a complex system is at the
leverl of structure, behavior, and laws of its component parts (and
relations).  Emergentism -- the whole is something more than the sum of its
parts and has properties that cannot be understood in terms of the
properties of the parts.

4 varieties of ontological reductionism: Elimination (recognition that what    
we thought were Xs are really just Ys and can be eliminated, demonic
possession). Identity (we continue to accept Xs but see that they are
identical with or special sorts of Ys, heat is just kinetic molecular
energy, genes are just funcionally active DNA sequences, see Kemeny and
Oppenheim). Mereological/Humean supervenience (properties of the whole are
determined by the intrinsic properties of the parts such as mass, charge,
and spin). Nomological supervenience/determination (fundamental laws of
physics, rather than properties, necessitate/determine special science
laws).

4 varieties of epistemological reduction: Replacement (prior way of
describing the world drops out in favor of a newer more adequate way of
representing reality). Theoretical-derivational (derivation of one theory,
or approximation thereof, to another constitutes an explanation,
thermodynamics reduces to statistical mechanics, see Nagel for and
Feyerabend against). Semantic/model-theoretic (theories are not linguistic
entities but families of mathematical models, reduction is an isomorphism  
between models). Pragmatic (reduction is a pragmatic matter, if a lower
level theory is more explanatory and predictive than a higher level theory
of the same domain, it is an intertheoretic reduction, see Van Fraassen).

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