We argue here that one common myth regarding Darwin’s influence - namely, that it led to an “immediate” change in the life sciences - is false. Darwin’s ideas regarding natural selection were not immediately and widely accepted by the scientific community. We document challenges to natural selection, alternatives considered and endorsed, and show that, rather than a rapid, “revolutionary” change, this eventual embrace of “Darwinism” was gradual, drawing in part on Kuhn’s ideas regarding revolutionary science.

The distinction between philosophical theology and philosophy of religion is examined in relation to the role of faith commitments in each, and the notion of doctrinal statements as ‘truth claims’ is examined in terms whether ‘natural theology’ can legitimately be pursued. It is argued that the praeambula fidei version of this pursuit is illegitimate, partly because of the way in which ‘design’ arguments have often been overturned and partly because of the kinds of theological considerations put forward by Thomas Torrance and Alister McGrath. The relevance of Thomas Kuhn’s understanding of the scientific enterprise is also noted, especially in relation to his notion of paradigms.

Philosophical arguments for religious pluralism – including that of John Hick – are outlined. It is noted, however, that the question of ontology, as explored within the philosophy of science, has not been included in these arguments. The views of ontology in scientific description that are associated with the work of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn are outlined, but a deeper insight, it is argued, may be developed through the work of Mary Hesse and of Rom which suggests insurmountable limitations to our grasp of the ontology of created things. This understanding may be extended, it is argued, to God (or what Hick calls Reality) so that an attitude of ‘apophatic critical realism’ may be applied both to God (as it is in Eastern Orthodoxy) and to created entities. (In relation to God, something comparable can, it is noted, be found in certain Western Christian scholars such as Yves Congar.) This understanding, in its theological component, may be applied to apparent incompatibilities between different faith traditions, such as that between ‘personal’ and ‘non-personal’ and between ‘monotheistic’ and ‘polytheistic’ understandings.

Science always has occupied a special niche in society because of its perceived and proven truth value, which comes from its ostensibly unbiased, rigorous, accurate, precise, dispassionate, and metaphysical nature. After all, isn't science practiced in laboratories and universities quite apart from the "real world," the world of opinion, supposition, business, politics, and religion? But is it? As discussed in this chapter, the answer is "no," because science, in many senses, is a social endeavor, one subject to the vagaries of personal bias, the quest for recognition and funding, peer and social pressure, and tradition. Science may indeed be special relative to other endeavors, but this does not mean that its product – knowledge – should be accepted without question. Science can be wrong, but only temporarily, as it is a self-correcting enterprise that, in light of continual hypothesis testing, eventually fixes its own errors.

The breadth of psychology’s history underscores the importance of learning about the present from the past, and psychology’s past is certainly fascinating. Several approaches to the study of intellectual history, particularly for psychology, are presented, as are some of the major recurring themes that are addressed in the book. Finally, the study of the history of psychology as an area of specialization within the discipline focuses on the resources available for serious pursuit.

This chapter outlines the ways in which the philosophy of science handles the problem of inconsistency in scientific theorising. After raising this problem in ,will summarise the standard view of inconsistency in the analytical philosophy of science (SVI). In , we will touch on the break with the standard view of inconsistency in the analytical philosophy of science as initiated by Kuhn and continued by Lakatos and Laudan.will discuss the most recent trends that re-evaluate the emergence and the presence of inconsistencies in scientific theorising.will draw the conclusions that serve as guidelines for the next steps of our train of thought.

Two questions should be considered when assessing the Kantian dimensions of Kuhn’s thought. Was Kuhn a Kantian? Did Kuhn have an influence on later Kantians and neo-Kantians? Kuhn mentioned Kant as an inspiration, and his focus on explanatory frameworks and the conditions of knowledge appear Kantian. But Kuhn’s emphasis on learning; on activities of symbolization; on paradigms as practical, not just theoretical; and on the social and community aspects of scientific research as constitutive of scientific reasoning are outside the Kantian perspective. Kuhn’s admiration for Kant is tempered by his desire to understand the processes of learning, initiation into a scientific community, experimentation using instruments, and persuasion, drawing on the work of Piaget, Koyré, Wittgenstein, and others. Both Kuhn and Kant were interested in the status of science, and the role of the scientist in its development and justification. But Kuhn presents science in a much more messy, historically contingent, and socially charged way than Kant does. The paper’s conclusion evaluates Kuhn’s reception among researchers including Richardson and Friedman, assessing the prospects for future work.

I spell out Kuhn’s rationale for pursuing the evolutionary approach. He first concluded that the historical record does not support the assumption that science develops teleologically towards the truth, which then led him to outline an evolutionary view of scientific development. Kuhn argues that the future of the sciences is open-ended and that the sciences are bound to diversify, not unify. Because the historical process of the sciences leads to an ever more fragmented outcome, there is no coherent worldview at the end of this process. Kuhn thought that not only sciences fail to arrive at the final truth about the world, but that truth as correspondence to the mind-independent world must be rejected. Because sciences’ niches, in which sciences are practiced, change, there simply is no fixed and permanent mind-independent world to which statements and theories could correspond. Nevertheless, Kuhn was interested in the function of ‘truth,’ that is, the possibility to judge whether beliefs and theories should be accepted or rejected. I argue that a specific Sellarsian pragmatist notion of truth, which understands truth as semantic assertibility, serves Kuhn’s interests well.

Conservation biology emerged in the 1980s as a rigorous science focused on protecting biodiversity and as a discipline distinct from ecology. Two breakthroughs in information processing made this possible: place-prioritization algorithms and GIS. They provided a defensible, data-driven methodology for designing reserves to conserve biodiversity, obviating the need for largely intuitive and highly problematic appeals to ecological theory to design reserves. They also supplied quantitative, critical assessments of existing reserves; most had been designated on unsystematic, ad hoc grounds and thus poorly represented biodiversity. Demonstrating this convincingly was crucial to ensuring biodiversity would be protected in future policy-making contexts. Despite these unquestionable advances, that they constitute scientific “progress” has recently been criticized. Ecological theory, it is claimed, is required for genuine progress about reserve design; algorithmic innovation in data processing is insufficient. Place-prioritization algorithms are also supposedly less scientifically grounded and produce reserves that poorly protect biodiversity. On all accounts this criticism is indefensible. It involves numerous inaccuracies about the science and relies on an untenable conception of progress for applied sciences with ethical objectives such as conservation biology.