Introduction to basic ideas about epistemology and the distinction between science and pseudoscience.

1. WHAT IS SCIENCE?
HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SINCE 1750
JASON M. KELLY PHD FSA
JASKELLY@IUPUI.EDU | @JASON_M_KELLY

2. EPISTEMOLOGY
HOW DO WE KNOW THE
WORLD?
Dave Coverly. Speed Bump. Used according to the
educational fair use guidelines provided by the
Cartoonist Group. This image is copyright
protected. The copyright owner reserves all rights.

3. RATIONALISM
AND
EMPIRICISM
A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI
KNOWLEDGE

4. 2+2=4
a priori = knowledge
independent from
sensory experience
(e.g. mathematics or
logic)
a posteriori =
knowledge derived
from sensory
experience
All bachelors are unmarried.
If A is greater than B, and B is
greater than C, then A is greater
than C.
There are four apples in the bag.
Some bachelors are unhappy.
The Boeing 747 is larger than the
Boeing 727.

5. Rationalist Variants
(derived from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/)
1. The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: Some propositions in a
particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition
alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from
intuited propositions.
2. The Innate Knowledge Thesis: We have knowledge of some
truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational
nature.
3. The Innate Concept Thesis: We have some of the concepts
we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our
rational nature.
• The Indispensability of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we
gain in subject area, S, by intuition and deduction, as well as
the ideas and instances of knowledge in S that are innate to
us, could not have been gained by us through sense
experience.
• The Superiority of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in
subject area S by intuition and deduction or have innately is
superior to any knowledge gained by sense experience.
All rationalist
arguments
are one of
these three
types

6. CAUSATION
COINCIDENCE,
CORRELATION, CONSTANT
CONJUNCTION

7. CAUSATION
DAVID HUME ON CAUSE AND
EFFECT
The mind can never possibly find the
effect in the supposed cause, by the
most accurate scrutiny and examination.
For the effect is totally different from the
cause, and consequently can never be
discovered in it. Motion in the second
billiard ball is a quite distinct event from
the motion in the first. Nor is there
anything in the one to suggest the
smallest hint of the other. A stone or
piece of metal raised into the air, and
left without any support immediately
falls: but to consider the matter a priori,
is there anything we discover in this
situation which can beget the idea of a
downward, rather than an upward, or
any other motion, in the stone or metal?
David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding (1772)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tZ6L7QNFws

8. As Bertrand Russell explained
more succinctly:
CAUSATION
DAVID HUME ON CAUSE AND
EFFECT
“The man who has fed the
chicken every day throughout its
life at last wrings its neck instead,
showing that more refined views
as to the uniformity of nature
would have been useful to the
chicken.”
Bertand Russell, “On Induction” in The Problems of
Philosophy (1912)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tZ6L7QNFws

9. Correlation does not
imply causation
CAUSATION
COINCIDENCE,
CORRELATION, CONSTANT
CONJUNCTION
Stephen R. Johnson, “The Trouble with QSAR (or How I Learned
To Stop Worrying and Embrace Fallacy),” Journal of Chemical
Information and Modelling 48:1 (2008): 25–26.

10. IS AND OUGHT
STATEMENTS OF FACT AND
VALUE
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met
with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds
for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and
establishes the being of a God, or makes observations
concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am
surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations
of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no
proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an
ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however,
of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought
not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis
necessary that it should be observed and explained;
and at the same time that a reason should be given; for
what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new
relation can be a deduction from others, which are
entirely different from it. But as authors do not
commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to
recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that
this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems
of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice
and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of
objects, nor is perceived by reason.
David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). Book
2, Part 1, Section 1.

11. THE VIENNA
CIRCLE
STATEMENTS OF TRUTH
Theodor Bauer. Moritz Schlick (1882-1936). ca. 1930. Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek. Austria. Inventarnummer: Pf 29.355:E(1)

12. There are only two types of valid
philosophical/scientific
statements:
THE VIENNA
CIRCLE
STATEMENTS OF TRUTH
1. Statements and inferences
that are logically true or false
(e.g. 2+2=4; “All bachelors
are unmarried men”; or “All
men are mortal; Socrates is a
man; therefore, Socrates is
mortal.)
2. Statements that are empirical
and can be verified (e.g. Water
boils at 100 degrees Celsius.)

13. • Derived from the work of
There are only two types of valid
philosophical/scientific
statements:
1. Statements and inferences
that are logically true or false
(e.g. 2+2=4; “All bachelors
are unmarried men”; or “All
men are mortal; Socrates is a
man; therefore, Socrates is
mortal.)
2. Statements that are empirical
and can be verified (e.g. Water
boils at 100 degrees Celsius.)
Bertrand Russell and
Ludwig Wittgenstein
• These statements are
tautologies and give no
facts about the external
world
• Their significance is in the
order that they bring to
language or mathematics
(e.g. their internal logic
and consistency)

14. • Some of the logical
There are only two types of valid
philosophical/scientific
statements:
1. Statements and inferences
that are logically true or false
(e.g. 2+2=4; “All bachelors
are unmarried men”; or “All
men are mortal; Socrates is a
man; therefore, Socrates is
mortal.)
2. Statements that are empirical
and can be verified (e.g. Water
boils at 100 degrees Celsius.)
positivists, as this school
became known, argued
that even mathematics
was an inconsistent and
often paradoxical system.
• Kurt Gödel’s
“Incompleteness
Theorems” of 1931
• Strong influence of the
Copenhagen school of
physics, dominated by
Neils Bohr and Werner
Heisenberg, which in the
1920s developed
quantum mechanics (e.g.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle)

15. There are only two types of valid
philosophical/scientific
statements:
1. Statements and inferences
that are logically true or false
(e.g. 2+2=4; “All bachelors
are unmarried men”; or “All
men are mortal; Socrates is a
man; therefore, Socrates is
mortal.)
2. Statements that are empirical
and can be verified (e.g. Water
boils at 100 degrees Celsius.)
• This excludes substantial
categories of philosophy,
such as ethics, which are
unable to be verified.

16. The criterion that
THE VIENNA
CIRCLE
KARL POPPER’S CRITICISM
meaningful=analytic or
verifiable
is neither logically true or false
nor empirically verifiable.
Therefore, according to the
logical positivist’s position, it is
a meaningless principle.

17. THE VIENNA
CIRCLE
KARL POPPER’S CRITICISM
We should focus our attention
on things that are empirically
meaningful, such as the truth of
scientific ideas.
However, to do this, we need to
distinguish between those
things that are science and
those things that are not
science.

18. SCIENCE AND
PSEUDOSCIENCE
KARL POPPER ON MARX,
FREUD, AND EINSTEIN
Karl Popper. ca. 1980. Archives of the London School of Economics.
http://archives.lse.ac.uk/record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=IMAGELIBRARY%2f5

19. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN ASTRONOMY AND
ASTROLOGY?

20. Possible areas of
demarcation
• disciplinarity (structure of
DEMARCATION
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN ASTRONOMY AND
ASTROLOGY?
knowledge and
professionalization)
• theory
• practice
• scientific problems or
questions
• ethos
• historical context

21. FALSIFICATION
POPPER AND FALSIFICATION
“Insofar as a scientific
statement speaks about
reality, it must be
falsifiable; and insofar
as it is not falsifiable, it
does not speak about
reality.”
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific
Discovery,1959 edition, appendix 1.

22. • Edmonds, David and John Eidinow,
Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a
Ten-Minute Argument Between Two
Great Philosophers (Harper Collins,
2001).
FURTHER
READING
SCIENCE AND
PSEUDOSCIENCE
• Hansson, Sven Ove, "Science and
Pseudo-Science", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter
2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta
(ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives
/win2012/entries/pseudoscience/>.
• Pigliucci, Massimo and Maarten
Boudry, eds., Philosophy of
Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the
Demarcation Problem (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2013)