Great post, Bryan! It's often just assumed that science makes progress, and this "fact" is used to contrast with philosophy, which supposedly never makes any progress at all (because we don't agree on everything, or something like that). I think you do an excellent job of turning that idea on its head.

Thanks! I find that students and even non-philosopher colleagues often assume a quasi-positivistic position, without appreciating the seemingly intractable problems of going from pure sense-data ("red, here, now") to actual scientific theory ("protons are composed of two Up quarks and one Down quark").

This is a painfully simplistic straw-man of the process, aims, and products of science.
首先，如果科学就像你在这里描述的那样，它将完全没有预测能力，而且作为了解宇宙的工具，它早就过时了。其次，你似乎在反对一个没有人提出的论点，通过哥白尼革命指出，按时间顺序往后的解释不一定是改进的解释。第三，你声称对可观察到的现象进行更精确和细致的解释是不进步的，只是因为你觉得它们“太复杂”，不对称地令人愉快。
And all this occurs just in the first two paragraphs. You go on to conflate early attempts at natural philosophy with modern science, equivocate theories with descriptions of observable phenomena, confuse interpretation with inference, and you conveniently ignore the fact that the content of a failed theory doesn't get discarded wholesale. The stuff that works gets brought forward. The stuff that doesn't gets discarded.
It seems your preference for really simple answers to complex problems extends to your understanding of the progress of science, and the progress of humanity that has in fact resulted from it. Rather than building up these cheap targets to fire at, why not instead make a positive case for philosophy as a discipline? If Stephen Hawking, et. al. are indeed so wrong, then it should be a matter of course to point to the things in philosophy that demonstrate just how wrong they are.
And in doing so, you could even be using a form of the scientific method. Which is perhaps the first thing you could put on that list of philosophical advancements.

Although interesting, and however tempting it is to say that scientists aren't talking about the same things as they 'progress,' it seems to me more that Galileo learned Aristotle's vocabulary, found it to be lacking in explanatory power, and so edited or improved upon the vocabulary. Newton then learned Galileo's vocabulary in some sense as well, and, again, edited or improved upon the vocabulary to increase its explanatory power. The same is done in the case of Einstein towards Newton, it would seem, in accomodating for special cases near the speed of light. So, it seems to me that the validity of the argument that scientists aren't even talking about the same things is contingent on an assumption that they developed these vocabularies independent of each other: Newton without Galileo, or Einstein without Newton. This is of course false, and so because their vocabularies evolve out of one another, they do seem to be in legitimate conversation with each other.

Isaac Newton:
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." [Translated into Modern English]
But if those scientific giants where looking the wrong Way then surely those standing on them looked the wrong Way too.
Thoreau and I:
If you are going to build a castle in the sky make certain the foundation is absolute.
As for the current state in physics of probable mechanics, there sure is a lot of smoke in their mirrors!. And sadly science continues to expound on it: ..News at 11: The god particle has been divided in a super duper collider and the holy ghost has been found. The scientist who predicted the ghost has named him Casper (after himself of course) the friendly ghost.
Thanks for the interesting subject,
Isn't science funny? =

Of course, there is the little matter of whether time is progressive at all. There is no mathematical model which necessitates this, and so it might seem to be largely a human perspective, or, if this kind of reasoning is permissible, it requires humanity as its proof. One commentator on progress, whose name I do not recall, made a distinction between invention and innovation. Invention, he explains, is true creation as if from nothing, whereas innovation takes the invention, the new idea, and develops and ramifies it. This distinction throws a rather different light on the issue of progress in science. Brilliant minds are often deeply conservative and cannot outstrip convention, but are past masters at exploring and filling in the possibilities of existing thought and methods. But true invention tends to buck the trends. Innovation, in this sense, is always very much of its time, invention untimely.

在每一种情况下，最近的解释都更普遍(适用于更多的现象)，也更简约(它们解释了更广泛的现象范围，而不是简单地添加多个特别的解释实体)。万有引力不仅适用于行星，还适用于抛射体和钟摆。相对论延伸到高速，正如在原始帖子中承认的，并增加了速度的上限。现代大分子生物化学解释了生物体的许多过程，而不仅仅是旧化学中处理的无生命物质。当然，不断增加的普遍性和节俭是否算“进步”一直存在争议，但我认为我们应该清楚，这是科学家们在他们的领域所希望看到的方向。例如，我相信正是这种增加普遍性和节俭的欲望导致了“衡量”质量的“意图”，而不仅仅是一些随机的文化相关的冲动。
With regard to philosophy, deniers of progress in that field may be using a particular idea of what philosophy is, like some of our students ("We all had papers to write and problem sets to finish, so after dinner we procrastinated for hours by sitting around philosophizing," by which they mean "Chewing the fat not about less-important things like whether Madonna or Lady Gaga is sexier, but rather about Big Questions like the Meaning of Life"). However, if we take philosophy to be the attempt to discover and clarify values and assumptions and to analyze how our beliefs depend on those values and assumptions, and if we accept that better-organized puzzlement is a big improvement over badly-organized puzzlement, then the denial of progress in philosophy is easily refuted.
- Steve George

Thanks to everyone for the many comments, each of which advances the dialogue in some way. Allow me to make a general observation, and then address some of the specific points that were made.
GENERAL
If you think later scientific theories incorporate (in some sense) the observations or theoretical claims of earlier theories, have you actually read the earlier scientists? In other words, have you actually read Newton's Principia, or Galileo's Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems, or Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres? If not, you really don't know whether science advances. Later textbooks misrepresent earlier theories in an unconscious effort to paint a picture of scientific advance.
Similarly, have you read works by the (ex-physicist) Thomas Kuhn on the history of science, most importantly The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? I have a guide to some of the chapters in this work here:http://faculty.vassar.edu/brvannor/Kuhnhelp.pdfIf you have not read Kuhn, or some of the work inspired by him, you do not have an informed opinion on the history of science.
Just as a sample, consider the following different views that have been held of atoms:
?Democritus (5th cent BCE) ? indivisible particles, with shapes that explain properties
?John Dalton (early 1800s) ? particles that differ in ?mass? and ?complexity?
?J.J. Thompson (1897) ? particles with electrons embedded in them: ?plum pudding model?
?Niels Bohr (1913) ? particles with electrons orbiting around nucleus: ?solar system model?
?Erwin Schrödinger (1926) ? particles with electrons in indeterminate orbital zones
?Otto Hahn (1938) ? particles which can be divided: nuclear fission is possible

The preceding descriptions transparently do not apply to the same entities. (An indivisible particle is obviously not the same as a divisible particle, for example.) Hence, the ontology of science is not converging on some one theory.
To Greg Gauthier
?Perhaps I am wrong, but you seem to take it for granted that there are observed phenomena that are neutral between theories. But this is precisely what several hundred years of research (in both philosophy and psychology) have shown to be highly implausible. What would a pure observation statement look like? Perhaps "red, here now"? How can we get from a statement so parsimonious to the actual content of real scientific theories like "protons are composed of two Up quarks and one Down quark"? Real science is conducted in statements that already embody theoretical comments, even at their most basic, like "the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points." (Notice that none of the terms in that sentence is a direct observation term.)
To Truman Chen
Later scientists certainly do engage with the vocabulary of their predecessors. However, the question is whether the content of the earlier vocabularies are preserved in the later vocabularies, and this seems false. "Mass" for Einstein simply does not mean what "mass" meant for Newtwon. The radical nature of the meaning-change is obscured by the fact that Einstein uses Newton's term. (See also my earlier example how "atom" has meant very different things in the history of science.)
To Steve George
"Generality" and "parsimony" are either too vague to be of use in theory choice, or they are routinely violated. Galileo's physics and Darwin's evolutionary theory are both much LESS general than their Aristotelian predecessors, because they drop problems that the earlier theories were intended to solve. (For example, Galileo had no plausible explanation for why the earth wasn't torn apart by the radical motion it was undergoing.) "Parsimony" is an aesthetic property, not a precise mathematical one. Do we prefer theories that are committed to fewer entities, or fewer KINDS of entities? Do we prefer fewer entities or fewer mathematical laws? Basically, "parsimony" is just a psuedo-precise way of saying, "This theory looks more plausible, given my tastes and those of the current community of scientists."

Thanks to Bryan Van Norden for this interesting initial post and responses to comments. In his response, he provides a substantial reading list and says that if participants haven?t done this reading, they ?really don?t know whether science advances,? and they ?do not have an informed opinion on the history of science.? Even if there is some truth to this, such a criterion for legitimacy in participating in the discussion seems out of place in a public forum like this one, which invites people to register and participate without stated academic prerequisites. Imagine if a working scientist reading this website were to post this: ?No one who hasn?t actually done science can really know what it is about. If someone hasn?t completed a multi-year scientific project working daily in the lab or in the field, he or she does not have an informed opinion on anything about science.? Even if there is some truth to it, it wouldn't seem appropriate here.
范诺登?我的原帖用通俗易懂的语言清晰简洁地陈述，没有任何引用或链接到其他作品，我认为这是一个优点。至少，如果发表合法评论有先决条件，这应该在原始帖子中陈述，所以人们不?不要浪费时间来制定那些根据标准而不是根据实际回复内容而被认为无效的回复。也许范诺登的用意是向那些对这个话题感兴趣的人推荐一些有用的读物，尽管事实并非如此。T从那边出来。
Much writing about science identifies parsimony as one characteristic of scientific explanations, and this rings true to most scientists. Certainly the notion of parsimony is not instantly clear and needs expansion. ?God wills it so? is supremely parsimonious in the number of words used, but doesn?t cut it as scientific explanation. From the fact that parsimony is a complex property that needs to be explicated in the context of science, however, it does not follow that it is necessarily only ?aesthetic? and just a matter of the ?tastes and those of the current community of scientists" as Van Norden claims. Perhaps the whole notion of what ?explanation? is could be the subject of another post on this very useful website.
- Steve George

如果你认为科学是消除怀疑的项目，那么你自然会认为它是进步的。但如果你认为这是一个提出质疑的过程，你可能会三思!至于哲学，如果你认为它是进步的，你就没有读到我所读的东西，我几乎读了所有的东西。弗雷格将哲学置于紧缩的轨道上，而不是启蒙的轨道上，这一轨道一直延续到今天。鲍勃·迪伦说你不能批评你不理解的东西，我想补充一点，你也不能对它充满热情。我同意布莱恩的看法。如果你认为哲学进步了，可以读读约翰·麦坎伯的《沟里的时间》、《反对方法》或保罗·费耶阿本德的《征服富足》。

Well. This blog post has truly generated voluminous opinion and utterly philosophical dynamic tension. It seems to me unassailable to say that science is a progressive discipline because it builds upon itself through both successes and failures. Development of thermonuclear weapons was an astounding success for science an a resounding failure for mankind--but, on the bright side, it led to peaceful applications such as power stations and nuclear medicine. The other commenters have said pretty much everything else worth saying. So, I'll sign off,

Cordially,
Neuman.

Unassailable? Is this a philosophy discussion or a knitting bee?
The question raised might just as well be phrased: "Does logical inference reference its antecedent term?"
那么问题就变成了，这个问题的针对性(如果有的话)是什么?如果对智慧的追求是倒退，如果只是从一种教条信仰的角度来看呢?
Modern manufacture required a whole array of machine tools. But before it could even get started it needed a way to make things perfectly round, easy enough, but also perfect flat, so as to use as a standard for creating all the other devices needed. This was a more difficult problem, delaying the modern world for some time. The Greeks found a solution, as can be seen in a cursory look at Greek columns still surviving. How? How do you mill a surface flatter than the human eye can judge? To close enough tolerances to become the basis of modern milling methods? Such breakthroughs are, of course, prerequisite to "progress", like clarifying the butter before making the roux, but this does not mean that there is an irreversible accumulation of capabilities. Sometimes we gain capabilities only at the cost of others we thought we had secured.

我想知道，到目前为止，是否有一个相对直接的口头问题构成了这次讨论的分歧。如果像“进步”、“进步”和“累积”这样的词被认为是“在单一的、单一的努力中始终朝着一个方向稳步变化”，那么它就会使科学(和哲学)被认为是没有进步、进步或累积的。然而，这并不是人们通常对这些词的理解。按照今天的评估，一个人的储蓄和投资在过去几十年里可能一直在增长，尽管在最近的经济衰退中经历了下降。从长远来看，一棵树可能会在高度上进步或进步，即使一些树枝失去了，即使主干折断，另一根树枝最终成为顶部优势。
在科学和哲学中，很多人在同一时间都在努力，把事情推向不同的方向，也许是相互不一致的方向。这些努力中的许多将永远不会在几个世纪后作为该领域当前知识状态的具体条目出现。然而，如果这些努力失败了，因为它们刺激了其他人成功地寻找他们的弱点，它们将对长期累积的进步作出很大的贡献。(我意识到有一种思想流派认为，“可证伪性”这一特征是衡量价值的唯一标准，我所知道的知识不足以支持或反对这种极端观点，但至少它似乎是这些领域发展的一个方面。)
Maybe Frege's work on developing systems of formal logic will be eventually be seen as a backward step in philosophy, as Gary Washburn provocatively argues, but set theory turns out to be a very important human intellectual tool, whether or not one defines it as being inside or outside of philosophy. It led to the efforts of Bertrand Russell and others to find flaws. Perhaps the resulting discovery of paradoxes in the system could be said to have invalidated the effort as judged by its initial goals. But all that intellectual ferment is surely related, if only indirectly and perhaps non-monotonically, to later attempts to formalize systems. From this came very significant results, such as showing that reasonably complex formal systems must necessarily be incomplete. To me this is great overall progress, individual reverses notwithstanding.
笛卡尔论证了理性和逻辑在证明我们所有的信仰时的首要地位。这一清晰而极端的陈述促使休谟和其他人寻找缺陷，他们似乎已经找到了一些。例如，如果我们相信过去的经验，即使被纳入成熟的科学规律，是对未来事物的预期的基础，这很好，但这样的信念显然不能建立在理性、证据或两者结合的基础上。我们可以随心所欲地写“笛卡尔的错误”等，但这丝毫不影响笛卡尔在这个领域的“进步”中的重要性。
同样的科学。人们可以从7月31日布莱恩·范诺登(Bryan Van Norden)的回复中翻看一遍关于原子的一系列不断变化的想法。对我来说，这个列表是我在这里所主张的科学进步和进步的一个很好的例子——它不是稳定的、单调的或单一的。批评是，这些人(从德谟克利特到哈恩，在2500年的时间里，并不是所有人都在谈论“相同的实体”。我相信他们问的是，“如果我们从明显均匀的材料开始，然后不断地把它分成越来越小的块，会发生什么?”我们是否可以无限地继续下去，或者我们是否会得到一个部分，如果进一步分割，就不再保留原始材料的重要特征?”(如果使用“不可分割性”这个词，事实证明，上述不可分割性的意义，而不是绝对不可分割性，证明是有效的。)观察和实验引出了混合物、化合物和元素的概念，每一种概念都有其特有的最小的部分——在元素中是“原子”。如果汤姆逊没有建立他的李子布丁模型(注:“模型!”1对，不是最终的绝对现实!)，卢瑟福就不会让一个大学生用金箔来测量α粒子的大角度散射。 Since some alpha particles did bounce almost straight back, the plum-pudding idea model doesn't work. (Not that Rutherford predicted that outcome, but the whole thing wouldn't have been tried without the provocation of Thomson's model.) The fact that Thomson's model isn't foremost in anyone's mind when planning experiments on atoms today doesn't negate its importance in stimulating progress in our understanding of atoms.
断断续续的不规则运动，大的跳跃，有时稳步前进，和暂时的逆转仍然可以导致真正的，全面的，长期的进步。
- Steve George

是进化“进步”?还是改变?没有“进化”的理由来解释为什么它应该不仅仅是一种滚动的改变，根本没有任何方向，而是在应对其他改变的条件时生存下来。然而，这其中有一个问题。一个有机体沿着某条线发展得越多，它就离原始形态越远。翅膀可能再也抓不住四肢了。四足动物不太可能像它们早期的形态那样有六条或八条腿。专门用于支持组织的细胞不太可能成为生殖细胞，或者像细菌那样独立复制的细胞。我怀疑，事实上，一些细胞确实在这种意义上恢复了。我们称之为“癌症”。 But is the analogy useful? Is the alternative to progressive knowledge cancerous?
以板块构造为例。它的发现者被嘲笑了几十年。许多“发现”不都是通过与传统智慧的斗争而来的吗?传统智慧名义上致力于知识的渐进性。这种保守主义是否阻碍了这种讨论，甚至阻碍了这种讨论?弗雷格如果不把实证主义的信念强加于哲学，我是不会反对他的。哲学的工作不是建立财富储备，而是为另一种变化和发展扫清障碍。弗雷格的逻辑不成立的原因是，思想，和头脑，根本没有按照他的前提为真所需要的那样构成。前提，即命题的条件是封闭的，这样反过来就可以作为真理的衡量标准。逻辑学家一直(固执地?)弄错的一件事是，逻辑是关于真理的。它不是。 Logic is the science of validity of inference, not truth. Just a science is about fact, not the founding conditions of knowledge. Immodesty has no excuse in either. I suppose facts are cumulative, if they do not denature themselves as we accumulate them. But the terms logic famously do alter as we progress from a premise. So much so that a long enough sequence of inference can yield a term contrary to its premise. Rather like a message that gets garbled when passed down a line by whispers. This does not mean that the method is corrupted the theory, it might just as well mean the theory itself is corrupt. If so, the difference might be resolved by the explanatory power of the one over the other. That is, the presumption of progress does not explain what its inverse needs and does explain. For instance, the terms of the proposition must be hermetically independent for the system of inference to control the validity of inference, and all inference must simply restate the premise to be valid. But these prerequisites invalidate the linguistic content of the terms comprising the original proposition. If meaning doesn't leak a little, or isn't "labile" (as the existentialists like to put it) language would be impossible, either as a matter of human development or as one of formal necessity. But this would seem to suggest that every logical term is anomalous to logical form. However, what if this is not the initial condition of the proposition, but the most exquisite rigor in the sequential inference from it? Then what? How much in variance to its original term does it take to convince us that the change is the most real and most rigorous origin of the ability to reason? And if the least term of that change is the most conclusive proof of the corrupted state of the conviction in reasoning from a premise or antecedent term, then the conviction in the constancy of terms reveals that corrupted origin, not as the corruption of its methods, but as the inconstancy of its conviction. Hence all too human moods. Evidence, empirical fact, demonstrating the supremacy of human frailty over the progressivity of the accumulation of knowledge.