Modern Philosophy of Science

I suspect that the philosophy of science that is discussed now, with its emphasis on explanation and theory formation and laws, and stuff like that is a result of its positivist legacy. One really only thinks in terms of laws and explanations and other such generalities in a time when, as Kuhn put it, you have a revolution in progress and there is lots of talk of new laws and new theories. In times of "normal science" these are all non-issues, and that part of philosophy of science is really irrelevant. During the positivist era there was the Einsteinian revolution in progress, and Einstein himself as well as all the Quantum Mechanic people were thinking in terms of these grandiose paradigms that were all about fundamental laws and comprehensive explanation of all this phenomena. This does not happen now.

That is not to say that all of Philosophy of science is useless. Even those questions are not useless. Rather there is a rift between what does and does not apply to a scientist in the lab anymore. The question of what a law of nature is bothers ONLY philosophers. It no longer interests a biologist who is not really in need of new laws to understand. Your average scientist is perfectly happy with the laws he has. When there is a period of crisis there will likely be a renewed interest in all of this.

You can see this by the examples that are used by the philosophers of science. Everyone from Kuhn, to Fayerabend, to Lakatos, to anyone writing now only talks about the big paradigm shifters. The stuff that happens during periods of normal science is hardly applicable to normal philosophy of science. There ought to be a philosophy of normal science, as opposed to the philosophy that we get as a result of analyses of those pivotal moments in the history of science that are anomolous (although they are the profoundest moments).

Most philosophical questions about science are really questions that just concern philosophers - like the question of realism versus anti-realism, and what is the interpretation of a probability statement. These are good questions, but it is important to keep the philosophy of science accessible to scientists.