Scientific Progress, Understanding and Unification

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

2016

What is scientific progress? On Alexander Bird's epistemic account of scientific progress, an episode in science is progressive precisely when there is more scientific knowledge at the end of the episode than at the beginning. Using Bird's epistemic account as a foil, this paper develops an alternative understanding-based account on which an episode in science is progressive precisely when scientists grasp how to correctly explain or predict more aspects of the world at the end of the episode than at the beginning. This account is shown to be superior to the epistemic account by examining cases in which knowledge and understanding come apart. In these cases, it is argued that scientific progress matches increases in scientific understanding rather than accumulations of knowledge. In addition, considerations having to do with minimalist idealizations, pragmatic virtues, and epistemic value all favor this understanding-based account over its epistemic counterpart.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific progress: Knowledge versus understanding

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

2016

“…I also lack the space to discuss the functional account (Kuhn 1970 ; Laudan 1977 , 1981b ; Shan 2019 ), non-standard versions of the truthlikeness and epistemic accounts (e.g., Aronson et al. 1994 ; Barnes 1991 ; Northcott 2013 ; Park 2017 ), hybrid accounts (e.g., Bangu 2015 ; Goebel 2019 ), and various other accounts that have been proposed (e.g., Douglas 2014 ; Rowbottom 2019 ; Saatsi 2019 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Understanding scientific progress: the noetic account

2021

Synthese

What is scientific progress? This paper advances an interpretation of this question, and an account that serves to answer it (thus interpreted). Roughly, the question is here understood to concern what type of cognitive change with respect to a topic X constitutes a scientific improvement (to a greater or lesser extent) with respect to X. The answer explored in the paper is that the requisite type of cognitive change occurs when scientific results are made publicly available so as to make it possible for anyone to increase their understanding of X. This account is briefly compared to two rival accounts of scientific progress, based respectively on increasing truthlikeness and accumulating knowledge, and is argued to be preferable to both.

“…Elgin, 2006;Kvanvig, 2009;Riggs, 2009;Pritchard, 2010;Grimm, 2012;Ahlstrom-Vij and Grimm, 2013) and its distinctive role in science (e.g. Bangu, 2015;Potochnik, 2015;Dellsén, 2016;Elgin, 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, understanding is arguably an important cognitive aim of science(Potochnik, 2015(Potochnik, , 2017 de Regt, 2017), and scientic progress at least sometimes consists in increasing understanding of natural phenomena(Bangu, 2015;Dellsén, 2016;Stuart, 2016). 5 Here I am roughly following Weisberg (2013) in thinking of models as interpreted structures.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Explanation: Understanding as Dependency Modelling

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

2020

This paper presents and argues for an account of objectual understanding that aims to do justice to the full range of cases of scientic understanding, including cases in which one does not have an explanation of the understood phenomenon. According to the proposed account, one understands a phenomenon just in case one grasps a suciently accurate and comprehensive model of the ways in which it or its features are situated within a network of dependence relations; one's degree of understanding is proportional to the comprehensiveness and accuracy of such a model. I compare this account with accounts of scientic understanding that explicate understanding in terms of having an explanation of the understood phenomenon. I discuss three distinct types of cases in which scientic understanding does not amount to possessing an explanation of any kind, and argue that the proposed model-based account can accommodate these cases while still retaining a strong link between understanding and explanation.