The aim of this dissertation is to explore the nature of scientific progress and to broaden
existing theories of what constitutes progress in science. I do this by means of a close
analysis of the main post-Kuhnian philosophical accounts of scientific progress, namely
those put forward by Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan and Philip Kitcher. I test these three
accounts by reconstructing a series of scientific episodes in evolutionary ecology in terms of
each account and then assessing the degree to which each account incorporates what is
progressive. The episodes I have selected concern the resource competition research of
Dolph Schluter on Galapagos finches and related work leading up to it. After distinguishing
between macroscopic and microscopic levels in science, I attend carefully to the
microscopic level of each episode as it relates to epistemic progress. This investigation
demonstrates that some important aspects of scientific progress have been overlooked.
I conclude that there are three main ways in which the philosophies of science
surveyed do not adequately represent instances of scientific progress. First, the accumulation
of factual knowledge is not well accommodated. Second, the role of evidence and argument
in scientific theories is not adequately captured. Third, the fine-grained level at which much
important epistemic progress in science occurs is often not accounted for. These criticisms
relate to a more general tendency of contemporary philosophical accounts to emphasize the
macroscopic level of entire research programmes and traditions while failing to attend to the
microscopic level of progress inherent in a detailed case study. I end by offering a positive
account of scientific progress in light of these criticisms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/12787 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Ogden, Athena Dawn |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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