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Research paper
(1500-2000 words)
Due:
Friday, March 27th.
Be sure to consult
Writing
advice handouts!
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- Develop any of your
discussion papers into an essay.
- Evaluate Popper's
philosophy of science, discussing both its merits and the
difficulties with the criterion of falsifiablility
pointed out by Feyerabend and Chalmers,
- Is Kuhn a scientific
realist? Discuss.
- Compare and contrast the
role of incommensurability in the philosophies of Kuhn
and Feyerabend's.
- Evaluate Lakatos'
methodology of scientific research programmes. How
successful is it in overcoming perceived difficulties
with Popper's and Kuhn's philosophies of science?
- Discuss and evaluate van
Fraassen's "constructive empiricism" as an alternative to
scientific realism.
- Does the case of
craniometry show that science is not always objective,
and if so, in what sense?
- How best should we
understand scientific progress? Can it be understood
without a commitment to scientific realism?
- Is science
self-correcting? i.e. will bad science always get weeded
out eventually by its lack of objectivity? Discuss with
reference to cases discussed in this course -for example,
any of the case studies that Gould
investigates.
- Is "IQ" a social
construction? Evaluate its status, taking into account
Gould's critique and responses to that
critique.
- Evaluate Hacking's
"experimental realism" in the context of a defence of
scientific realism.
- WILDCARD: develop your own
topic --in consultation with me. I will not accept
papers on topics that you have not cleared with me
first.
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