In this bold work of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard W.
Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science. By
questioning both positivism and its leading critics, he develops
new solutions to the most urgent problems about justification,
explanation and truth. Using a wealth of examples from the the
natural and the social sciences, "Fact and Method" applies the new
account of scientific reason to specific questions of method in
virtually every field of inquiry including biology, physics,
history, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology and
literary theory.
For the past quarter-century, the philosophy of science has been
in a crisis brought on by the failure of the positivist project of
resolving all basic methodological questions by applying absolutely
general rules, valid for all fields at all times. "Fact and Method"
presents a new view of science in which what counts as an
explanation, a cause, a confirming test or a compelling case for
the existence of an unobservable is determined by frameworks of
specific substantive principles, rationally adopted in light of the
actual history of inquiry. Although the history of science has
usually been the material for relativism, Professor Miller uses
arguments of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Galileo and others both to
undermine positivist conceptions of rationality and to support the
positivists' optimism that important theoretical findings are often
justifiable from all reasonable perspectives.
"Fact and Method" includes new accounts of causation,
explanatory adequacy, approximate truth and confirmation, together
with a defense of scientific realism freed from the positivist
assumptions that Professor Miller locates on both sides of the
realism controversy. Throughout, the new philosophical ideas are
applied to specific topics confronting social scientists or natural
scientists, for example: value-freedom, methodological
individualism, functional explanation, the nature of evolutionary
theory, and the scope of statistical inference. In a long final
chapter, Miller uses the new notions of causation, confirmation and
meaning to defend a realist, yet radically anti-classical,
interpretation of quantum physics.
The explicit and up-to-date analysis of the leading alternative
views, the clear explanations of technical and historical issues,
and the wealth of examples makes "Fact and Method" an ideal
introduction to the philosophy of science, as well as a powerful
attempt to change the field. Like the works of Hempel, Reichenbach,
and Nagel in an earlier generation, "Fact and Method" will
challenge, instruct, and help anyone with an interest in science
and its limits.
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