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TASK 3:  Do you consider these principles of selection reasonable? Can you find any examples in your primary field of study of rival explanations which on the face of it are equally adequate to the data? Do these principles provide a useful basis for determining which one to prefer?

Reading for Week 7:
Rosenberg, op. cit. Chapters 3 and 4.

Week 7 Content
HUMR71-110 EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Week 7.

Reading:
Rosenberg, A., Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction. (Second edition). New York: Routledge, 2000. Chapter 4.

1. The Pervasiveness of Theories.

The word ‘theory’ is one that has wandered through our vocabulary giving us the false impression that a theory is something both important and elusive. Care is needed. One common use of ‘theory’ is to refer to something we do not yet regard as a fact. Critics of biological evolution, for example, are fond of saying that ‘evolution is a theory, not a fact’. The late Pope-John Paul II, in confirming in the 1990s that the Roman Catholic Church had no quarrel with the Darwinian theory of evolution, reportedly said that the theory of evolution is not a theory, it is a fact. In everyday speech the word ‘theory’ often refers to something that is no more than a speculation, or at best a hypothesis. Asked what you think of the latest mystery novel, you might observe that ‘my theory is the butler did it.’

Thus one use of the word ‘theory’ is to refer to something which is not yet established, and possibly never will be. Sometimes it is used dismissively. (‘It’s only a theory.’)

Yet there is another much grander use, as in the Ptolemaic Theory of the Universe, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Newton’s Theory of Motion, The Kinetic Theory of Gases, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious, and Marx’s Theory of History, for example. In this use, it functions as part of the proper name of a recognizable integrated (at least loosely) set of descriptive and explanatory propositions about a very general subject matter. It typically has a high degree of generality, under which there are local theories of more particular phenomena or events. In this use it is not dismissive, nor does it imply that what it describes as a theory is merely speculative. Perhaps it is, but this use is, as such, neutral as to whether what it describes as a theory is merely speculative, well-established, or something in between.

This use might lead one to think that a theory must always be something comprehensive or very general. Some theories certainly are that, but not all are. It is common these days for litigation lawyers to talk about their ‘theory of this particular case’, or for police investigators to talk about their ‘theory of this particular crime’. When a litigation lawyer talks of his or her theory of the particular case, it is framed around the strategy that is going to be used to maximize that side’s chance of winning. It will involve elements of interpretation of the factual issues which are the subject matter of the case, where each interpretative element is designed to attract a general principle of law which is favourable to the client, and exclude those principles of law which are favourable to the opposing side.

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