Philosophy of Science 

About: Philosophy of Science is an academic journal published by University of Chicago Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Philosophy of science & Argument. It has an ISSN identifier of 0031-8248. Over the lifetime, 4448 publications have been published receiving 117970 citations.

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge

Abstract: Preface Note on the third impression 1. Logic of discovery of psychology of research? T. S. Kuhn 2. Against 'Normal Science' J. W. N. Watkins 3. Does the distinction between normal and revolutionary science hold water? S. E. Toulmin 4. Normal science, scientific revolutions and the history of science L. Pearce Williams 5. Normal science and its dangers K. R. Popper 6. The nature of a paradigm Margaret Masterman 7. Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes I. Lakatos 8. Consolations for the specialist P. K. Feyerabend 9. Reflections on my critics T. S. Kuhn Index.

Studies in the Logic of Explanation

Abstract: To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question \"why?\" rather than only the question \"what?\", is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates. While there is rather general agreement about this chief objective of science, there exists considerable difference of opinion as to the function and the essential characteristics of scientific explanation. In the present essay, an attempt will be made to shed some light on these issues by means of an elementary survey of the basic pattern of scientific explanation and a subsequent more rigorous analysis of the concept of law and of the logical structure of explanatory arguments. The elementary survey is presented in Part I of this article; Part II contains an analysis of the concept of emergence; in Part III, an attempt is made to exhibit and to clarify in a more rigorous manner some of the peculiar and perplexing logical problems to which the familiar elementary analysis of explanation gives rise. Part IV, finally, is devoted to an examination of the idea of explanatory power of a theory; an explicit definition, and, based on it, a formal theory of this concept are developed for the case of a scientific language of simple logical structure.

Thinking about Mechanisms

Abstract: The concept of mechanism is analyzed in terms of entities and activities, organized such that they are productive of regular changes. Examples show how mechanisms work in neurobiology and molecular biology. Thinking in terms of mechanisms provides a new framework for addressing many traditional philosophical issues: causality, laws, explanation, reduction, and scientific change.

The essential tension : selected studies in scientific tradition and change

Abstract: "The Essential Tension" is a collection of previously published essays by Thomas Kuhn to which the author has added two hitherto unpublished articles and a splendid, partly autobiographical preface. These assembled studies shed much light on the early evolution and subsequent reformulations of Kuhn's provocative "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962; revised edition 1970). Read as a group, they reveal a profound and subtle mind struggling to articulate and to resolve tensions between different modes of knowing and experiencing

Behavior, purpose and teleology

Abstract: This essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.