Penn Philosophy is pleased to announce: 

Isaac Newton’s Scientific Method 

William Harper

(Rotman Institute of Philosophy

University of Western Ontario)

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

12:00noon to 1:30pm

A light lunch will be served.

IGERT Seminar Room in IRCS (3401 Walnut Street, Ste. 400)

Newton employs theory-mediated measurements to turn data into far more informative evidence than can be achieved by hypothetico-deductive confirmation alone.

This is exemplified in the classical response to Mercury’s perihelion problem. Contrary to a famous quotation from Kuhn, Newton’s method endorses the radical transition from his theory to Einstein’s. Newton’s method is strikingly realized in the response to a challenge to general relativity from a later problem posed by Mercury’s perihelion.

We can also see Newton’s method at work in cosmology today in the support afforded to the (dark energy) cosmic expansion from agreeing measurements from supernovae and cosmic microwave background radiation.

William L. Harper received the American Philosophical Society’s 2014 Patrick Suppes Prize in Philosophy of Science for his book Isaac Newton's Scientific Method: Turning Data into Evidence about Gravity and Cosmology.