Post revised December 2024
This is one of the books in the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series (series editor Christina Hendricks). See the full project summary for the series (Project Summary - Introduction to Philosophy - Rebus Community)
This book focuses on foundational topics in the philosophy of science, and like the other books in the series, is designed to be used, in whole or in part, in introduction to philosophy courses.
Book summary
Philosophy of science can be seen as meta-science, in the sense that it focusses on meta-theoretic questions concerning scientific disciplines. In this book, we do not aim for comprehensiveness; we will rather selectively cover some important issues in philosophy of science. We will begin with varieties of empiricism, including logical empiricism, which has been highly influential in the 20th century philosophy of science. The book will then go through key figures during that time, including Karl Popper (1902-1994), Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), Imre Lakatos (1922-1974), Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994), and Larry Laudan (1941-2022). After letting the readers understand these different perspectives, the book will move on covering the sociology of scientific knowledge, feminism, induction, explanation, and the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. Towards the end, we will switch from general philosophy of science to philosophical issues concerning special sciences. We plan to cover philosophy of biology and philosophy of psychology for now, but the exact chapters to be included will depend on later arrangements.
Chapter Outline
We are seeking feedback on the draft chapter outline. If you have some background in philosophy of science and would be willing to provide some feedback on a 2-page document with a draft list of chapters, please email Christina Hendricks.
When the chapter outline is finalized, it will be posted here.
How to participate:
We will be seeking authors for chapters for this book, once the chapter outline has been finalized. A call for authors is coming soon!
Relevant Documents:
Author Guide – Read this guide to find out more about what committing to author a chapter involves.
Team: @clhendricksbc (series editor), @apurva … and you?