1st Edition

Returning to Scientific Practice A New Reflection on Philosophy of Science

By Xu Zhu, Wu Tong Copyright 2019
346 Pages
by Routledge

346 Pages 29 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

346 Pages 29 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book is a result from a collective study on philosophy of scientific practice (PSP), which began around 2002 and still ongoing. There is an apparently increasing interest in scientific practice, influenced by the historicistic philosophy of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). Prof. WU Tong and his research group believe that it is necessary for PSP to turn from the... Read more


List of figures



List of tables



Postscript



Introduction: towards philosophy of scientific practice



1 The origin of the concept of practice



2 Scientific practice: significance, types, and scopes



3 The nature of scientific practice



4 The nature of knowledge: local knowledge



5 Knowledge and power



6 The contextual normativity of scientific practice



7 Philosophy of scientific practice and naturalism (I)



8 Philosophy of scientific practice and naturalism (II)



9 Philosophy of scientific practice and relativism



10 Partnering the philosophy of scientific practice: the philosophy of scientific experimentation



11 New empiricism: a close relative of the philosophy of scientific practice



12 The starting point of scientific research: opportunity, question, or observation?



13 A new solution for an old problem: the relationships of observation, experiment, and theory



14 New studies on replicability of scientific experiments



15 Local knowledge (I): traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)



16 Local knowledge (II): Chinese theory of Fengshui



17 Local knowledge (III): ethnobotany



18 Conclusion: scientific practice in ongoing and unlimited process



References



Index

Biography

XU Zhu, Associate Professor in Department of Philosophy, ECNU. Research interests includes Epistemology, Philosophy of Action, Wittgenstein, and Philosophy of Social Science. The author of Understanding the Social: from Normativity to Mechanism (monograph published in Chinese) and several papers published both in Chinese and in English.



WU Tong, Professor of Philosophy of Science and Technology (tenured) in the STS Centre, Tsinghua University. Research interests include philosophy of scientific practice, philosophy of system and complexity, and local knowledge. The author of The Melody of Growth: the Self-Organizing Evolution of Science (monograph published in Chinese) and many influential papers in Chinese philosophy of science and technology.