PHIL/HPS 588
History of the Philosophy of Science, from the Scientific
Revolution to 1900
Anja Jauernig
Course Description
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the History of the Philosophy
of Science from Descartes to Poincare. We will be looking at contributions in
the area of general philosophy of science, e.g., concerning scientific
methodology or epistemology, but also at writings concerning foundational
questions in different specific sciences, most prominently in physics.
A course reader is available at LaFortune copy center.
Schedule
Week I
Introduction, Logistics
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy; Principles of
Philosophy, Part II, Principles 1-42.
Week II
Descartes continued
Week III
Isaac Newton, Selections from
De Gravitatione et Æquipondio Fluidorum, the Principia, the Optics, and the correspondence.
Week IV
John Locke, Selections from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., Book II, Chs. 1-8, 13, and 27.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
selections from the correspondence with Huygens and the Dynamica, “On the
Principle of Indiscernibles,” and selections from the Nouveaux Essais and
the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence.
Week V
Leibniz continued
David Hume, Selections from A Treatise of Human Nature.
Week VI
Thomas Reid, Selections from Essays on the Intellectual Powers of
Immanuel Kant, “On the First
Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space,” selections from the Inaugural Dissertation and
the Prolegomena, the “Transcendental Aesthetic,” “Analogies of Experience,” and
the first and second antinomies from the first Critique, and the
Preface and “Phenomenology” chapter from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.
Week VII
Kant continued
Week IX
William Whewell, “On The
Nature of the Truth of the Laws of Motion"; John Herschel, Selections from
A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of
Natural Philosophy
John Stuart Mill, Selections
from A System of Logic.
Week X
Break
Week XI
Auguste Comte, “The Nature
and Importance of the Po sitive Philosophy.”
Richard Olson, “Culmination
of the Tradition: Metaphysics and Method in the W orks of James Clerk Maxwell.”
Week XII
Hermann von Helmholtz, “The
Facts of Perception” and “On the Origins and Significance of the Axioms of
Geometry.”
Week XIII
Ernst Mach, “Introductory
Remarks: Antimetaphysical,” from The Analysis of Sensations, and “"The Guiding Principles of My Scientific Theory of
Knowledge and Its Reception by M y Contemporaries.”
Week XIV
Heinrich Hertz, Preface to
the Principles of
Mechanics; Ludwig Boltzmann, “On the
Question of the Objective Existence of Processes in Inanimate Nature” and “On
the Development of the Methods of
Theoretical Physics in Recent
Times.”
Week XV
Pierre Duhem, “Physical
Theory and Experiment,” from The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory.
Henri Poincaré, Introduction,
Preface, “Non-Euclidean Geometries”, “Space and Geometry,” and “Experiment and
Geometry,” from Science and
Hypothesis.
Week VII
Leftovers