Dr. Forster is pursuing a line of research which he began in his paper, "Unification, Explanation, and the Composition of Causes in Newtonian Mechanics." His goal under this grant it to extend and develop this research into what he calls a "Whewellian" approach to the philosophy of science. William Whewell, an astronomer and leading science educator, made major contributions to the history and philosophy of science. His philosophical works on induction have been undergoing a recent revival among current historians, philosophers and sociologists of science. This work entails a summary of Whewell's philosophy of science with special emphasis on the hierarchical nature of scientific induction. He will examine in this context problems concerning the existence of component forces and inertial reference frames in Newtonian mechanics. He will further examine applications of Whewell's ideas to probabilistic methods of causal inference, strange quantum mechanical correlations, the confirmational utility of unification, Glymour's bootstrapping account of confirmation, and the problem of old evidence. These issues are of central concern for contemporary philosophy of science.
