Identifying Future-Proof Science (eBook)

Peter Vickers (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022
240 Seiten
OUP Oxford (Verlag)
978-0-19-267721-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Is science getting at the truth? The sceptics - those who spread doubt about science - often employ a simple argument: scientists were 'sure' in the past, and then they ended up being wrong. Through a combination of historical investigation and philosophical-sociological analysis, Identifying Future-Proof Science defends science against this potentially dangerous scepticism. Indeed, we can confidently identify many scientific claims that are future-proof: they will last forever, so long as science continues. How do we identify future-proof claims? This appears to be a new question for science scholars, and not an unimportant one. Peter Vickers argues that the best way to identify future-proof science is to avoid any attempt to analyse the relevant first-order scientific evidence, instead focusing purely on second-order evidence. Specifically, a scientific claim is future-proof when the relevant scientific community is large, international, and diverse, and at least 95% of that community would describe the claim as a 'scientific fact'. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.10.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• ISBN-10: 0-19-267721-7 / 0192677217
• ISBN-13: 978-0-19-267721-1 / 9780192677211