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On Wed, 5/27/09, Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> wrote in philos-l:
> There has been an alarming lack of activity in philosophy
> of science (more precisely, philosophy of physics) circles
> lately. Sometimes radical explanations can be found:
>
> http://itisonlyatheory.blogspot.com/2009/04/cult-of-contingency-and-future-of.html
> "History and philosophy of science (HPS) is dead."
>
> http://itisonlyatheory.blogspot.com/2009/02/on-decline-of-general-science.html
> "On the decline of general philosophy of
> science....Professional philosophy of science (with its own
> journals and professionals) was born around the turn of the
> twentieth century. It arose from debates within
> neo-Kantianism in which epistemology was the first science.
> In this climate the philosophy of science had a very crucial
> purpose: if the results of science are the ideal of
> rationality then philosophy of science is the core of the
> first science (epistemology or in its Carnapian guise, the
> logic of science). This project intensified after the shock
> of the Einsteinian revolution. (It probably died somewhere
> early in the cold war.)"
>
> I think May's discussions on chora could clarify (if not
> partially solve) the problem:
>
> http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0905&L=chora

The coexistence of the following two texts, without any philosopher of
science being able to see (or being allowed to call the attention to)
the contradiction, proves that philosophy of science has been dead for
quite a long time:

http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/relativity_worldbook.html
NASA: "Michelson and Morley conducted their experiment to measure
expected differences in the speed of light relative to their
laboratory. Although light travels extremely rapidly, their experiment
could measure tiny differences in speed. Surprisingly, Michelson and
Morley found no difference at all. This result was a great puzzle.
Physicists tried without success to determine how light could act in a
manner consistent with both Galilean relativity and the Michelson-
Morley experiment."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as
evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost
universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

If some day philosophers of science somehow come to see (or are
allowed to call the attention to) the contradiction, philosophy of
science will be resurrected, a conference will be organized and the
rallying cry will be:

"Philosophers of science are trying without success to realize why,
although light acted in a manner consistent with both Galilean
relativity and the Michelson-Morley experiment, a protective belt
(Lakatos' terminology) for the ether theory was built by FitzGerald,
Lorentz, Poincare, a protective belt that later successfully shielded
Einstein's 1905 false light postulate. The fact that the fraudulent
protective belt was almost explicit in the writings of Banesh
Hoffmann, Einstein's apostle, makes the mystery even more painful:
http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC "Relativity and Its
Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann, p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of
particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just
thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A
stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one
thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not
independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take
light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey
Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus
automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley
experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or
Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the
temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of
light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his
second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought
of in terms of waves in an ether."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com