STUDY QUESTIONS FOR  M.A. EXAMINATION IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
MAY 2004


1. What is a law of science?  How do laws of science differ from other
types of generalizations?  How does science go about determining whether
a generalization is a law?

2. One often speaks of the laws of physics, but less often of the laws
of geology or physiology.  What role do laws play in the various
sciences?  Are the so-called laws of economics or psychology the same
sort of thing as the laws of physics?

3. In a passage that has provoked centuries of controversy, Newton
remarks, "I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the
reasons for these properties of gravity, and I do not feign hypotheses.
For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a
hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based
on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental
philosophy."  What is Newton claiming here?  Is his claim tenable?

4. "The principal task of the philosophy of science is the rational
reconstruction of the history of science."  What are the implications of
this view for the relationship between philosophy of science and history
of science?  Is this what the relationship between the two disciplines
ought to be?

5. "The more carefully they [historians] study, say, Aristotelian
dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more
certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a
whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human
idiosyncrasy than those current today."  Do scientific views current
today have any claim to being more scientific or less the product of
human idiosyncrasy than those Kuhn singles out from the past?  If none,
can science legitimately claim epistemic authority?

6. One might say that colors have been explained, but ghosts have been
explained away.  Aristotle considered telos ("final cause") or purpose
as one of the four fundamental aitia or causes.  Darwin's theory of
evolution by natural selection is often said to provide a reduction of
the apparent purpose in nature to purposeless mechanism.  Is this
explanation like the explanation of color or ghosts?  Has Darwin shown
that there is no purpose, or has he shown how to explain real purpose?

7. Atomic theory, quantum theory, Einstein's theory of general
relativity, Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, the "big bang" theory,
and elasticity theory are just a handful of the logical structures which
are called "theories".  What exactly is a scientific theory?

8. Philosophers have come to view inductive reasoning as raising two
worries, the classic "problem of induction" posed by Hume and the
so-called "new riddle of induction" posed by Goodman.  What precisely
are these two problems?  How, if at all, is each of them germane to
doing science and to giving a philosophic account of what science
accomplishes?

9. "Reductionism" is a pejorative term often applied by self-styled
"holists" and "anti-reductionists" to various schools of scientific
thought; yet, the "reduction" of cellular biology to chemistry, or
chemistry to physics, is at the same time held up as a triumph of modern
science.  Describe varieties of reductionism, and evaluate some of the
main arguments for and against reductionism.

10. Duhem provides a classic statement of a widely held thesis of holism
in the philosophy of science: "hypotheses shall be chosen in such a
manner that from them taken as a whole mathematical deduction may draw
consequences representing with a sufficient degree of approximation the
totality of experimental laws."  What is to be said in favor of this
thesis?  What is to be said against it?  Why is it important to the
philosophy of science?

11. "Experimental evidence can at most show that a theory holds to a
certain level of approximation.  But any number of disparate theories
can conform to all experimental evidence within any given level of
approximation.  Therefore, experimental evidence alone can never even
justify the adoption of any one theory from the myriad of comparably
accurate alternatives to it, much less establish its truth."  Of what
significance is this contention to the philosophy of science?  Is it
correct?

12. "Because every measurement is a physical process, physics cannot
help but contain within its scope its own theory of measurement.  This,
more than anything else, has set physics off from other sciences,
historically as well as logically."  What are the ramifications of this
claim for the philosophy of science?  Do these ramifications, or any
other considerations, provide grounds for rejecting it?