A fine evening!

How Do You Know?

20th Century Philosophy of Science and the Surprising Truth About the Way You Think

Randy Smith

This might be considered one scientist's overview of developments in the philosophy of science arising from the mid to late 1900's. Remarkably, I promise no vague theories based on abstruse argumentation. Rather, you'll see easily understandable applications of everyday reasoning to the way we think about the world.  We'll visit contributions from notables such as Popper, Hemple, Kuhn, and, given time, Goedel and Schrodinger. We'll show how by the 1960's, the weight of simple, ordinary logic crushed the school of thought called "logical positivism" into a smoking ruin. The scary part of this is ... there is a good chance you are a logical positivist! What are you going to do now? 

About the presenter: Randy Smith has a PhD in theoretical physics, but he long ago abandoned that field for Silicon Valley computer science research labs such as Xerox PARC and Sun (now Oracle) Labs. You might recognize him as the source of honking sounds emanating for the trumpet he sometimes plays on certain occasions at St. Mark's.

Further information including readings posted on:  http://tinyurl.com/StMarksForumHowDoYouKnow

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