University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Doi
Abstract
Combining philosophical analysis with historical perspective, my dissertation aims to dispel what is, in my view, a harmful prejudice about the work accomplished by analogies in empirical investigations. This prejudice has drawn philosophers and scientists alike to a picture of scientific rationality that is not only unfaithful to the methods by which empirical knowledge is produced, but also isolates the scientific endeavor from all other human endeavors of knowledge-production employing analogy and comparison. Against the idea that analogies can only serve as ‘food for thought’, I defend the claim that there exists an inductive use of analogy in science: i.e., that analogies can sometimes be sources of defeasible support for hypotheses about the yet unknown. I propose to vindicate the inductive use of analogy in science by appeal to an expectation (which can be more or less reasonable depending on the context of investigation) of simplicity in the description of natural and social reality: i.e., with the idea that the same explanatory patterns employed in the analogy’s source are ‘on the right track’ to providing us with an understanding of a target system.Doctor of Philosoph
