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What Scientists Know and How They Know It Thursday, May 1st, 2008 |
Modern science began as a method to gain knowledge of nature, but soon promoted itself as the exclusive rational path to acquiring knowledge of the true causes of experience. |
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| Dr. Steven Goldman Lehigh University Steven Goldman is the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Lehigh University, where he has taught for 30 years. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics at the Polytechnic University of New York and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston University. Before taking his position at Lehigh, Professor Goldman taught at Pennsylvania State University, where he was a cofounder of one of the first U.S. academic programs in science, technology, and society studies. A prolific author, Dr. Goldman has written or edited eight books, including Science, Technology, and Human Progress, and has an impressive list of scholarly articles and reviews to his credit. He has been a national lecturer for the scientific research society Sigma Xi and a national program consultant for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Goldman has received the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award from Lehigh University. |
Are scientific theories true because they correspond to reality? How can we know that they do, given that we have no access to reality except through experience, which scientists themselves tell us is profoundly different from the the way things "really" are? |