Texts, articles and reviews with label: 'Philosophy of science'.
Recent
Reasonable certainty in science and philosophy
summaryMathematics and experimental science are based on postulates that cannot be justified by themselves. Their acceptance implies the adoption of philosophical postulates. Some of these postulates, which lead to the possibility of a reasonable certainty in science, are shown.
Author: Fernando Sols
Mechanistic philosophy and theology: from conflict to integration?
summaryThe mechanicism of the 19th century has been enriched by accepting philosophical approaches to causality that are not strictly mechanical, and by raising epistemological problems about the scientific explanation of reality, which open the door to a certain dialogue with theology.
Author: Michał Oleksowicz
The problematic neutrality of the scientific method
summaryIt is generally accepted that the scientific method is neutral with respect to metaphysics and theology. But accepting this neutrality entails faulty metaphysical and theological presuppositions: the indifference of nature with respect to God and the merely extrinsic relation of God to nature.
Author: David Alcalde.
Faith and science: no more reasons for conflict
summaryReview of the alleged problems between faith and science (the supposed obscurantism of the Middle Ages, the Galileo case, evolutionism, the big bang and the existence of God, neuroscience and the spiritual, etc.). The conclusion is that these are avoidable misunderstandings.
Author: Gabriel Zanotti.
Expertise as a methodological and ethical problem 
summaryThe assumption is that scientific expertise transforms knowledge into "capacity to act". The lecture analyses two problems in expert opinions: the use of data and the possibility of a recommendation for action without naturalistic fallacy.
Author: Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik
Proposals on the language of Science and its relationship with Nature
summaryThe scientific method uncovers aspects of reality that are not obvious and that fill us with wonder. These hidden underlying laws seem to refer to a Logos common to all reality. Its finding is a spiritual experience comparable to certain religious experiences.
Author: Gustavo Aucar.
Lesson 2015: Can we talk about God in the context of contemporary science?
summaryScience, by its method, cannot directly study God as an object. However, the activity of the scientist has some fields which, although they are not scientific, are open to God: references to the absolute, the contingency of the physical, the intelligibility of the world and its dialogical otherness.
Author: Prof. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti
C. S. Peirce: Science, Religion and the Abduction of God
summaryThe belief in God in Peirce is not only a natural product of abduction or "rational instinct", but the scientific development and the belief in God are interrelated: the belief in God is capable of changing the believer's behaviour: the reality of God gives meaning to the whole scientific business .
Author: Jaime Nubiola
Introduction to the special issue of Scientia & Fides on Mariano Artigas
summary: Spanish version of the presentation to the special issue of Scientia et Fides dedicated to Mariano Artigas, in which the coordinator briefly summarises the contents of the magazine while presenting a semblance of the interests and intellectual achievements of Mariano Artigas.
Author: Santiago Collado
summaryFilm clips from the CRYF Workshop with a team of Argentinean researchers, in which various aspects of the Philosophy of science are analysed in relation to their impact on the relationship between science and religion.
Author: Christián Carman, Santiago Collado, Ricard Casadesús, Daniel Blanco, Oscar Beltrán, Francisco Gallardo, Enrique Moros, Gonzalo Luis Recio, Jorge Martín Montoya, Ignacio del Carril, Rubén Herce, José Víctor Orón, Javier Sánchez-Cañizares and Antonio Pardo.
What is determinism in physics?
summary summary of the main positions that have been taken historically on determinism and indeterminism: within Aristotelian causality, within the Newtonian approach to the laws of nature, and within the formalist interpretation of the principle of indeterminacy and the physics of chaos, with some concluding reflections on the interpretation of science.
Author: Santiago Collado, Héctor Velázquez
How do the theory of evolution and the doctrine of creation fit together?
Author: Santiago Collado
Is the scientific revolution over?
summaryThe meaning of the scientific revolution, three images of nature, organicism and mechanicism, the systemic perspective, scientific truth, the scope of the scientific perspective.
Author: Mariano Artigas
summaryA work that develops philosophical reflections on science and its meaning through the analysis of selected moments in the history of science.
Author: Héctor Velázquez
Are the sciences really autonomous?
summaryAn exposition of the reasons why scientists reject interdisciplinary approaches involving philosophy and theology.
Author: José Ignacio Murillo
Articulating science and theology: presuppositions and implications of science
summaryIn this article we study the presuppositions of science that allow a theoretical connection with theology: consistency of the natural world that allows its systematic study, the ordered nature of the world and the contingency of the natural world, which refers to causes superior to nature itself.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Science and Faith in Systematic Perspective: The Oracles of Science
summaryspeech at the in memoriam ceremony for Professor Mariano Artigas, November 23, 2007. review from the book Karl Giberson, Mariano Artigas, Oracles of Science. Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion, Oxford, University Press, 2007. 273 pp.
Author: Juan Arana Cañedo-Argüelles
Comments on the new faith of materialism
summaryMaterialism, a) Naive realism, b) Consumerism, c) Dialectical materialism, d) Problems of the scientific method, the creation of hypotheses, the scope of the method, e) Superstitions, natural selection, the appearance of life, artificial intelligence, additional comments, 2. Sterility of materialism, 3.
Author: Atilio González Hernández. Telecommunications engineer
How to become a millionaire by talking about God. Paul Davies, award Templeton 1995
summaryA brief commentary on award Templeton, on Paul Davies, and a detailed description of his intellectual trajectory and his difficulties in admitting a creator God.
Author: Mariano Artigas
From Thales to Newton: Science for smart people
summarySummary of the book: review of milestones in the history of science, to see how the problems were originally posed and how the solutions that have made up later science were arrived at, with final reflections on the scientific method.
Author: Santiago Collado
The Galileo case. Myth and reality
summary: review by Mariano Artigas, William R. Shea. The Galileo Case. Mito y realidad. meeting. Madrid (2009). 400 pp. Spanish translation of Galileo Observed. Science and the Politics of Belief. It analyses the comments that have been made on the case, taking the opportunity to delve into the alleged opposition between science and faith.
Author: review de Mariano Artigas, William R. Shea. The Galileo Case. Mito y realidad. meeting. Madrid (2009). 400 pp. Spanish translation of Galileo Observed. Science and the Politics of Belief. Published by Santiago Collado.
The science-faith dialogue in the Encyclical "Fides et ratio".
summaryScientific realism, science, reason and faith, reflective capacity, science and truth, modalities of truth, truth and belief, the unity of knowledge, science and wisdom, scientism, the Galileo case, the reverse, the assumptions of science and the impact of its progress, three concluding considerations.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The end of an endless search. Karl Popper discusses death
summaryThe evolutionary explanations, conjectures and refutations, the open society, the self and its brain, science and spirit, are there ultimate answers, bibliography of Popper and about Popper.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The Vatican and evolution. The reception of Darwinism on the file of the Table of Contents
summaryThe opening of file of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1988, has given access to the existing documentation on the first reaction of the Vatican authorities to the theory of evolution. This article presents the research initiated by Mariano Artigas in 1999 to determine the attitude of the Congregation of the Index towards Catholic authors who defended the compatibility between evolution and Christian doctrine, and its main results. Despite the fact that Catholic theology severely criticised evolutionism, the authorities of the Holy See maintained a certain prudence, which avoided a frontal meeting between evolution and Catholic doctrine.
Author: Rafael A. Martínez
E. Mach and P. Duhem: The Philosophical Significance of the History of Science
summaryErnst Mach (1838-1916) and Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) can be considered as parallel figures. Both lived at the same time, died in the same year, were prominent physicists, conducted research on the history of science, and related that work to their ideas on the philosophy of science. As if this were not enough, both asserted that scientific theories are neither true nor false. It is not surprising, therefore, that their names are commonly associated in the epistemological literature and that they are presented as prominent representatives of conventionalism. However, there are important differences between them. Mach's ideas are closely related to an evolutionary and empiricist perspective, where science represents a useful tool for survival and there is no place for metaphysics; Mach's influence was naturally prolonged in the neo-positivism of the Vienna Circle. In contrast, Duhem harmonised his epistemology with a realist philosophical perspective, emphasised in his historical research the importance of Christianity in the birth of modern science, and affirmed the coherence between science, philosophy and Christianity.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Emergence and reduction in morphogenetic theories
summaryThe origin of the universe and of man are the limit cases of the evolutionary worldview, whose main task consists in the formulation of morphogenetic theories explaining how new levels emerge from more basic ones. In this context, the problems of emergence and reduction occupy a central place. The following reflections first allude to the difficulties of classical analyses of reductionism and suggest that the problem of reduction finds its proper place within the analysis of relations between levels. These considerations are applied, secondly, to the examination of certain morphogenetic theories. And they are also applied, finally, to the problem of ontological emergence, including the evaluation of some proposals about the origin of the universe and of man.
Author: Mariano Artigas
summaryCommentary on "Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge", edited by Gerard Radnitzky and W.W. Bartley III. Bartley III. Open Court, La Salle (Illinois) 1987, which proposes new epistemological approaches in Philosophy of science.
Author: Mariano Artigas
summaryArticle on the compatibility between evolution and belief in God, with references to the 'Schömborg affair' and the Magisterium of the Church.
Author: Cardinal Avery Dulles
The concept of nature between science and theology. The need for epistemological mediation.
summaryVorrei in queste pagine riflettere su alcune questioni epistemologiche riguardo all'uso del concetto di natura nel dialogo scienza-teologia. I will consider in particular what is the epistemological content and value of the concept of nature in scientific and theological research. The question is articulated in three points: 1. What methodological role does the concept of nature play in science and theology? 2. What particular concept of nature is in Degree able to assume these roles? 3. Sarà la nozione di natura risultante, una nozione ammissibile dalla scienza (oltre che dalla filosofia e dalla teologia), e in particolare, risulta una realtà conoscibile?
Author: Rafael Martínez
The articulation of science and philosophy
summaryCommentary on Crick's physicalist naturalism, and approach to the three types of presuppositions of science: anthropological, epistemological and ontological.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The Search for Truth: Philosophy and Science in Carlos Vaz Ferreira
summaryTools for grasping reality: the instrumental character of the sciences and the clarifying role of philosophy. 2. Philosophy and sciences as levels of knowledge: the human knowledge as a sea. 3. The continuity of science and philosophy: science as a floating iceberg. 4. The search for truth: science and philosophy as aspects of human knowledge.
Author: Paloma Pérez-Ilzarbe
Science from the perspective of faith. Scientific knowledge does not question the existence of God.
Author: Alister McGrath
The faith of the wise: scientific activity and religious belief
summaryA study of scientists' views on God and religion, with an analysis of the view that radically separates the two spheres, and which concludes the mutual influence between the two, as well as the inescapability of a 'belief in science' also among the most disbelieving scientists, which ends up giving historically regrettable results.
Author: Juan Arana
The intelligibility of the natural world
summaryThree images of nature, intelligibility and causality, scientific truth, science and realism, the systemic perspective, the processual perspective, the dynamism of nature, physics and philosophy, cosmological categories, nature and transcendence.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The invasion of pseudo-science
summaryThe proliferation of pseudoscience is one of the most striking and at the same time most worrying phenomena of the present day, the demarcation criterion, Popper a convinced sceptic, parapsychology and magic, UFOs and extraterrestrials, scientists and pseudoscience.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Metadisciplinarity. Science, philosophy and theology
summary: Un riferimento iniziale a "Fides et ratio", la consapevolezza della frammentazione del sapere, la soluzione dell'interdisciplinarità, dall'interdisciplinarità alle questioni metadisciplinari, la sapienza metafisica ed antropologica, il contributo della teologia all'unità del sapere.
Author: Prof. Lluís Clavell
summaryThe problem of scientific truth lies at the heart of our culture. The enormous progress of the sciences and the reliability of the knowledge they provide has led to serious perplexities. For some, experimental science would be the only valid access to reality or, at least, the paradigm to be imitated by any pretension of knowledge rigorous. For others, experimental science would be a second-rate knowledge limited to discovering rather superficial aspects of reality.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The laws of nature and the immanence of God in the evolving universe
summaryIn this article, after critically studying some new models of God's intervention in nature at the microcosmic level, I attempt to defend the thesis that God's immanence in nature is expressed in cosmic order and evolutionary novelty. Among many physical forms of manifestation of divine immanence we must note in particular: 1. the very existence of the laws of nature in an otherwise lawless disordered world; 2. the emergence of new attributes that constituted the realm of pure possibilities at earlier stages of the evolution of the cosmos; 3. the emergence of new attributes that constituted the realm of pure possibilities at earlier stages of the evolution of the cosmos.
Author: Msgr. Józef Zycinski
summaryI propose to analyse the place of God in our relationship with nature. My reflections are articulated in three parts: in the first I will analyse some aspects of the problem at present, in the second I will present some personal proposals that refer to the bridge that communicates the sciences and natural theology, and in the third I will allude to some particular characteristics of this bridge.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The limits of scientific language
summarySince its systematic birth in the 17th century, modern science has become a source of perplexities. Kepler and Galileo were convinced that nature is like a book written in mathematical language. But the establishment of the new physics rightly led to doubts that it could be properly understood in this way: how to explain that highly abstract and sophisticated theoretical constructs could be successfully applied in the real world? This question became a source of questions that persist to this day.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Mechanics, science and principles. An interpretation from Polo
summaryArticle on the Newtonian interpretation of the world and its insufficiency for a complete cosmovision, following philosophical approaches by Leonardo Polo.
Author: Santiago Collado González
My vision of the multidisciplinarity
summarydissertation in the seminar of the group of programs of study Peirceanos of the University of Navarra. Pamplona, May 17, 2001.
Author: Mariano Artigas
summary: Desire to be understood, to guess or to abduct, the inferred nature of knowledge, inference and truth.
Author: Juan Pablo Serra
summaryReview of Penrose's work 'The Road to Reality', with reflections on the mathematical and philosophical vision it provides.
Author: Javier Sánchez Cañizares
summaryA description of the scientific method and the subject of truth it arrives at, which is compatible with a gnoseological realism and with the acceptance of an authentic scientific truth.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Rescher and Gadamer: two complementary views on the limits of science
summaryAnalysis of Rescher's and Gadamer's views on the limits of science: the former studies the internal limits and the latter the external ones.
Author: Alfredo Marcos. University of Valladolid (Spain)
Science and Philosophy: A Love-Hate Relationship
summaryIn this paper I review the problematic relationship between science and philosophy; in particular, I will address the question of whether science needs philosophy, and I will offer some positive (if incomplete) perspectives that should be helpful in developing a synergetic relationship between the two. I will review three lines of reasoning often employed in arguing that philosophy is useless for science: a) philosophy's death diagnosis ('philosophy is dead') and what follows from it; b) the historic-agnostic argument/challenge "show me examples where philosophy has been useful for science, for I don't know of any"; c) the division of property argument (or: philosophy and science have different subject matters, therefore philosophy is useless for science). These arguments will be countered with three contentions to the effect that the natural sciences need philosophy. I will: a) point to the fallacy of anti-philosophicalism (or: 'in order to deny the need for philosophy, one must do philosophy') and examine the role of paradigms and presuppositions (or: why science can't live without philosophy); b) point out why the historical argument fails (in an example from quantum mechanics, alive and kicking); c) briefly sketch some domains of intersection of science and philosophy and how the two can have mutual synergy. I will conclude with some implications of this synergetic relationship between science and philosophy for the liberal arts and sciences.
Author: Sebastian de Haro
Scientific creativity and human singularity
summaryInformation sciences have contributed to clarify the meaning of models in scientific research, and this, in its turn, has made it easier to understand in which sense we can speak about scientific truth. Using stipulations we reach a contextual and partial, but also authentical scientific truth. And our creativity allows us to handle theoretical constructs and experimental devices in such a way that we can grasp how nature really is. As the alleged disconnections and even oppositions between science and theology depend in a great extent from the way of understanding scientific truth, the epistemological analysis of the relationships between creativity and truth may help us to advance towards a unifying perspective of knowledge in which, although the differences among science and theology are carefully respected, it is also possible to understand their mutual harmony and complementarity.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Working session on the origin of man
summarySpeeches by Daniel Turbón on paleoanthropology, José Ignacio Murillo on gnoseology, Antonio Pardo on synthetic theory and Luis Echarte on mental phenomena and evolution.
Assumptions and implications of scientific progress
summaryThe methods and results of experimental science play a very important role in shaping contemporary culture. They are sometimes used to support naturalistic doctrines that dispense with divine action because they consider it impossible or useless in the light of scientific progress. In the reflections that follow I suggest that the analysis goal of that progress rather leads to the opposite conclusion. More specifically, I argue that the analysis of the assumptions and implications of scientific progress leads to a perspective that is fully consistent with the affirmation of a personal creator God, with the recognition of the spiritual dimensions of the human person, and with the existence of ethical values related to the objective search for truth and service to humanity.
Author: Mariano Artigas
The Ethical Roots of Karl Popper's Epistemology
summaryEpistemology and metaphysics. The origins of Popper's epistemology, the 1919 experiences, the circumstances, the crisis, the consequences. The meaning and scope of fallibilism, fallibilism and conjecturalism, fallibilism and skepticism, the reasons for fallibilism, critical rationalism. A realist epistemology, some qualifications of fallibilism, the ethical meaning of fallibilism, faith in reason, realism: metaphysical and epistemological.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Three levels of interaction between science and philosophy
summaryThe epistemological level, the ontological level, the anthropological level.
Author: Mariano Artigas
Time Reborn. From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe
summary: review of Smolin Lee, Time Reborn. From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe. The work reviews physical theories, and relates them to a philosophical reflection on the validity of science.
Author: Javier Sánchez Cañizares
Tradition and finding in Michael Polanyi's epistemology
summaryBook chapter summarising Michael Polanyi's view on the role of tradition in the progress of scientific theses.
Author: Francisco Gallardo