display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 6800 | Many philosophers rate justification as a more important concept than knowledge [Bird] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers take the notion of justification to be more important or more basic than the concept of knowledge. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Philosophy of Science [1998], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. Given the obvious social and conventional element in 'knowledge' ("do we agree that the candidate really knows the answer?"), justification may well be closer to where the real action is. 'Logos', after all, is at the heart of philosophy. |
| 6786 | As science investigates more phenomena, the theories it needs decreases [Bird] |
| Full Idea: A remarkable fact about modern science is that as the number of phenomena which science has investigated has grown, the number of theories needed to explain them has decreased. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Philosophy of Science [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This rebuts the idea that theories are probably false because we are unlikely to have thought of the right one (Idea 6784). More data suggests more theories, yet we end up with fewer theories. Why is simplification of theories possible? |