
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.
Can we distinguish between scientific claims that are transient and those that are future-proof? Peter Vickers, a philosopher of science, investigates the historical and sociological patterns of scientific consensus to counter skepticism. He proposes a second-order evidence framework, arguing that claims supported by a large, diverse, and international scientific community—where at least 95% agree on the validity of the claim—are effectively immune to future overturning.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Experts in the philosophy of science recognize this work as a significant contribution to the debate on scientific realism and the nature of truth. Readers frequently note the clarity of the author's argument, though some scholars engage in rigorous debate regarding the threshold of consensus required to label a claim as future-proof.
Page Count:
288
Publication Date:
2023-02-28
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0192862731
ISBN-13:
9780192862730
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