Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science [Hardcover]

Norwood Russell Hanson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521051975 | ISBN-13: 978-0521051972 | Publication Date: January 1, 1958 | Edition: First Printing

Philosophers of science have given considerable attention to the logic of completed scientific systems. In this 1958 book, Professor Hanson turns to an equally important but comparatively neglected subject, the philosophical aspects of research and discovery. He shows that there is a logical pattern in finding theories as much as in using established theories to make deductions and predictions, and he sets out the features of this pattern with the help of striking examples in the history of science.

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Book Description

Philosophers of science have given considerable attention to the logic of completed scientific systems. In this book Professor Hanson turns to an equally important but comparatively neglected subject, the philosophical aspects of research and discovery.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 252 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Printing edition (January 1, 1958)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521051975
• ISBN-13: 978-0521051972
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,123,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seminal Monograph by a Pioneering Pragmatist, December 20, 2005

By 

Thomas J. Hickey (River Forest, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science (Paperback)

A cornerstone of positivism is that scientific observation language is independent of scientific theory language, such that in even the most revolutionary developments, only theory language is revised and observational description remains unchanged. Hanson is one of the early critics of positivism and a pioneer of the contemporary pragmatism, which prevails in academic philosophy of science today. His more memorable and remembered refrains are that "there is more to seeing than meets the eye" and that scientific observation is "theory-laden".

Hanson was not the first to recognize the conceptual component in observation. Heisenberg reported that in 1926 Einstein had told him that it is the theory that decides what the physicist can observe. And in 1959 Popper wrote in his book, Logic of Scientific Discovery that scientific observation is always in the light of theories, and in his book Objective Knowledge (1972) Popper said that observation is "theory-impregnated".

But Hanson furthermore saw that the conceptual component in observation has historically operated as an impediment to the development and acceptance of new scientific theories. He recognized it in the wave-particle duality thesis of the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum theory. And in his original historical investigations in his book, The Concept of the Positron: A Philosophical Analysis (1963) he reported that physicists' identification of the particle with its charge was a conceptual impediment to recognition of the positron - the electron with a positive charge.

Hanson's ambition, however, was to explain the development of new theories. His search for a logic of discovery never got beyond Peirce's logic of abduction. He invoked the radically nonprocedural gestalt switch idea, an approach soon afterwards taken up by Kuhn in the latter's book, Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The proceduralization of discovery had to await the computer systems approach, such as may be found in the works of Simon, Hickey and Thagard.

See my History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science, my other reviews, and my com web site philsci on the Internet. Also see my ebook Philosophy of Science: An Introduction

5.0 out of 5 stars The creator of the term "Theory-ladden", December 21, 2011

By 

Knut I. Toensberg (Norway) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Patterns of Discovery. An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science. (Paperback)

Norwood Russel Hanson wrote about how Kepler tried for 10 years to describe the orbit of March using the danish Brahes protocolls, observations over many years. It took him so long to leave the circle behind and try other figures, finaly finding the eclipse. Hanson also writes about Galileos 34 years work to describe the falling bodies acceleration. He said nature was written in "the language of Geometry", but the solution included a term outside that vocabulary: time.
Hansson writes how theory-finding, not theory-testing, is the crucial question. The question Reichenback had left for the pscycologists to deal with, context of discovery. But Hansson definitely mean the question should not only be handled by them.
The word pattern-recognition describes the process. The terms induction and deduction do not, as Hanson writes on page 85. Neither induction nor deduction describe fully the work of Kepler and Galileo, and others creativity.