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What Is the Basic Unit of Scientific Progress? A Quantitative, Corpus-Based Study

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of an empirical study following up on Mizrahi (2021). Using the same methods of text mining and corpus analysis used by Mizrahi (2021), we test empirically a philosophical account of scientific progress that Mizrahi (2021) left out of his empirical study, namely, the so-called functional-internalist account of scientific progress according to which the aim or goal or scientific research is to solve problems. In general, our results do not lend much empirical evidence in support of the problem-solving model of scientific progress over the other philosophical accounts of scientific progress (namely, the epistemic, noetic, and semantic accounts of scientific progress) tested in Mizrahi (2021) and in this follow-up study. Of all the subjects in the JSTOR database we have tested in this study, however, Mathematics is an interesting exception as far as the problem-solving model of scientific progress is concerned. For, in Mathematics alone, we have found that there is significantly more talk of the aims and/or goals of research in terms of solutions than in terms of truth, knowledge, or understanding.

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Notes

  1. See also Bird (2007), Park (2017; 2020). Cf. Dellsén (2018a).

  2. See also Rowbottom (2008; 2010; 2015), Cevolani and Tambolo (2013; 2019). Cf. Mizrahi (2017).

  3. See also Dellsén (2016; 2018a). Cf. Park (2020).

  4. Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing on this point.

  5. The phrase “basic unit of scientific progress” is Laudan’s phrase. According to Laudan’s (1977, 66) problem-solving model, “the solved problem–empirical or conceptual–is the basic unit of scientific progress.” This phrase is not to be confused with Chang’s (2012, 1) use of the phrase “unit of analysis.” Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing on this point.

  6. As an anonymous reviewer rightly points out, however, there are non-axiological accounts of scientific progress. See, e.g., Shan (2020). See also Mizrahi (2020, 148–151) on evolutionary (and hence, non-directional) accounts of progress in science. For an argument against talk of the “aim of science” in philosophy of science, see Rowbottom (2014).

  7. Cf. Rosen (1994).

  8. The corpus-based methods used in this empirical study are not the only way to test philosophical accounts of scientific progress empirically. Another way to test such accounts empirically is the questionnaire-based methods of experimental philosophy. See, e.g., Mizrahi and Buckwalter (2014). In that respect, it should be noted that some parties to the scientific progress debate in philosophy of science would object to testing philosophical accounts of scientific progress empirically. For example, according to Niiniluoto (2019), “Mizrahi’s (2013) empirical observation that scientists talk about the aim of science in terms of knowledge rather than merely truth cannot settle the philosophical debate about scientific progress”.

  9. For a more detailed discussion of this methodology, see Mizrahi (2021).

  10. Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for raising this question.

  11. For a detailed discussion of Kuhn’s argument, see Mizrahi (2020, 115–119).

  12. As we discussed in Sect. 1, Laudan (1977) developed Kuhn’s (1962/1996, 36–38) discussion of “puzzle-solving” in science into “a problem-solving model of progress” (Laudan 1977, 66). In that respect, then, it is worth mentioning Aberdein’s (2018) discussion of Kuhnian revolutions in Mathematics. It should also be noted, however, that some might think of the question of scientific progress in philosophy of science as a question about the empirical sciences primarily. Since Mathematics is not an empirical science, one could argue that progress in Mathematics would be very different from progress in the empirical sciences. This is indeed what the results of this empirical study suggest. That is, only in Mathematics, we find that there is significantly more talk of the aims and/or goals of research in terms of solutions than in terms of truth, knowledge, or understanding. Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing on this point.

  13. According to Hamami and Morris (2020, 1121), mathematicians want “their proofs to be explanatory or beautiful and their solutions pure” (italics added). As Detlefsen and Arana (2011, 1) explain, “a pure proof or solution is one which uses only such means as are in some sense intrinsic to (a proper understanding of) a theorem proved or a problem solved” (italics in original).

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to two anonymous reviewers of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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  1. School of Arts and Communication, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W. University Blvd, Melbourne, FL, 32901, USA

    Moti Mizrahi

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Mizrahi, M. What Is the Basic Unit of Scientific Progress? A Quantitative, Corpus-Based Study. J Gen Philos Sci 53, 441–458 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-021-09576-0

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