Summary
Puzzle-solving, like several other everyday activities, appears in a more sophisticated and ramified form in the realm of natural science. Improving on Thomas Kuhn's rudimentary account of puzzles in science, this paper formulates logical and functional criteria for the occurrence of scientific puzzles, and examines the two-fold nature of their solutions. Then, with the aid of erotetic logic, puzzle-posing questions are identified, their presuppositional relations to scientific theory and explanations are explored, and a new tool for history of science research (sub-puzzle analysis) is developed.
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Literatur
E.g.,Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), vol. 8, p. 1660, ‘puzzle’ entry § 2, and etymology. Also cf. Webster'sNew International Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1960), p. 1925, ‘pose’ entry.
Thomas Kuhn,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), rev. ed. 1969, pp. 37, 36. [hereafter cited as SSR].
Webster'sNew International Dictionary, p. 2022, italics added, and OED, vol. 8, p. 1660, ‘puzzle’ entry § 3.
Kuhn, SSR, pp. 35–42.
Kuhn, “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?” in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds.,Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 5, n. 1, some italics added. [hereafter as CGK].
Kuhn, SSR, pp. 34, 38.
“Statement of Editorial Policy”,American Journal of Physics, 39 (January, 1971), 1.
“Preface” to Stephan Barr,A Miscellany of Puzzles (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1965).
Kuhn, SSR, p. 38.
Kuhn, SSR, p. 39.
Kuhn, SSR, p. 42.
Kuhn, SSR, p. 46, cf. p. 192.
For an amusing concrete case, see Lewis Carroll,Through the Looking Glass [1896] in Martin Gardner, ed.,The Annotated Alice (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1960), pp. 170–172.
See Robert Boyle,A Defense of the Doctrine Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air [1662] in Thomas Birch, ed.,The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London: 1772), vol. I, pp. 178–179. Also see Boyle,New Experiments Physio-Mechanical Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air [1660] in Birch,Works, vol. I, p. 11, and Edme Mariotte,Discours de la Nature de l'Air [1676?], inŒuvres de Mariotte (Paris: 1740), vol. I, pp. 151, 173ff.
See Boyle,Defense, pp. 160–162, and section 9 below.
Cf. D. Belnap, jr., “Questions, Answers, and Presuppositions”,Journal of Philosophy, 63 (October 27, 1966), 609–611, and David Harrah,Communication: a logical model (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1963).
Cf. Scott Kleiner, “Erotetic Logic and the Structure of Scientific Revolution”,British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 21 (May, 1970), 149–165.
See John E. Llewelyn, “What is a Question”,Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 42 (1964), 69–85, for a survey of the pros and cons, with references.
Rudolf Carnap,The Logical Syntax of Language (Patterson, N. J.: Littlefield Adams Co., 1959 [orig. 1937]), p. 296.
Ernest Rutherford, “The Magnetic and Electric Deviation of the easily absorbed Rays from Radium”,Philosophical Magazine, 5 (February, 1903), 184–185.
Antoine Lavoisier,Traité Elémentaire de Chimie (1789) inŒuvres de Lavoisier (Paris: 1862), vol. I, p. 55.
Announced as early as his fragmentaryDe Aere et Aethere [ca. 1673–1675] in A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall, eds.,Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 217, 223–224.
E. G., see Kuhn, SSR, p. 39.
E.g., Carl Hempel,Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965), p. 246–247, and 334–335.
Kuhn, SSR, p. 39.
Sometimes this is presented in explanatory form, as e.g. in Newton's theoretical derivation—explanation of the velocity of sound in air as 979 ft/sec,Principia [Motte-Cajori trans.], vol. I, p. 378.
Robert Millikan, “The Isolation of an Ion”,Physical Review, 32 (April, 1911), 351ff.
Boyle,Defense, p. 160.
Cf. Charles Webster, “The Discovery of Boyle's Law”,Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 2 (1965), 474ff.
Boyle,Defense, p. 161.
Boyle,New Experiments, p. 36.
Boyle,New Experiments, p. 16.
Boyle,Defense, p. 161.
For a preliminary application to this problem see T. R. Girill, “The First Law of Elasticity”,American Journal of Physics, 40 (January, 1972), 16–20.
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Girill, T.R. The logic of scientific puzzles. Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 4, 25–40 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01801063
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01801063