迪昂问题及其解决

迪昂问题是当代科学哲学争论的主题之一。波普尔、拉卡托斯和库恩都曾经对此问题给予不同的对待或解决。本文对此背景给以扼要的介绍,然后着重介绍和评价一种新的解决方案——基于贝叶斯方法的解决。相比之下,后一方案较为令人满意。     

The History of Sexual Anatomy and Self-Referential Philosophy of Science

This essay is a case study of the self‐destruction that occurs in the work of a social‐constructionist historian of science who embraces a radical philosophy of science. It focuses on Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud in arguing that a history of science committed to the social construction of science and to the central theses of Kuhnian, Duhemian, and Quinean philosophy of science is incoherent through self‐reference. Laqueur's text is examined in detail in order to make the main point; a similar phenomenon in the work of the feminist historian of science Evelyn Fox Keller is then briefly discussed.     

MAN OF SCIENCE,MAN OF FAITH: PIERRE DUHEM'S “PHYSIQUE DE CROYANT”

The essay “Physique de croyant” is an important statement of Pierre Duhem's position on the relation between his science and his religion. Duhem trod a difficult path, some might say an impossible one, in Republican France because he was both a physicist and a devout Catholic. In this essay, using “Physique de croyant” as a touchstone, I explore the way in which he tried to reconcile his conflicting allegiances. There are several strands in Duhem's strategy that need to be teased out. First, Duhem sought to defend his science against the charge that it was materialist and atheist. He did this with his claim, usually called the autonomy thesis, that physics and metaphysics are fundamentally different enterprises—that physics, properly conducted, has no metaphysical implications and requires no metaphysical support. This did not deny metaphysics its rightful territory. Second, Duhem used his segregationist position to defend the Roman Catholic Church against the assaults of the positivist scientism then in favor with the Republicans. Third, he also sought to protect his science against fellow Catholics who wanted to use it for polemical purposes. I develop and evaluate these lines of defense.