John Worrall

John Worrall, c. 2000

John Worrall (born November 27, 1946 in Leigh ) is a British philosopher and scientific theorist. He is considered a representative of structural realism.

While studying statistics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a lecture by Karl Popper piqued John Worrall's interest in philosophy . Eventually he came under the influence of Imre Lakatos , with whom he received his doctorate. In 1971 he became a lecturer at the LSE and in 1998 professor for philosophy of science there . His main interest is the change of theories in science and its influence on double theses of scientific rationality and scientific realism. Worrall is also interested in philosophy and methodology in medicine and 19th century optics.

Publications

• Why Science Discredits Religion in M. Peterson and R. Vanarragon (eds.) Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion. Blackwell, 2004
• Normal Science and Dogmatism, Paradigms and Progress: Kuhn 'versus' Popper and Lakatos , in T. Nickles (Ed.): Thomas Kuhn. Cambridge University Press, 2003
• What Evidence in Evidence-Based Medicine Philosophy of Science, September 2002
• (with E. Scerri) Prediction and the periodic table , Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Vol 32/3, 2001;
• Kuhn, Bayes and Theory-Choice: How Revolutionary is Kuhn's Account of Theoretical Change? , in R. Nola and H. Sankey (Eds.): After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method, 2000;
• The Scope, Limits and Distinctiveness of the Method of Deduction from the Phenomena : Some Lessons from Newton's Demonstrations , in Optics The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2000;
• Two Cheers for Naturalized Philosophy of Science , Science and Education, July 1999
• Structural Realism: the Best of Both Worlds , in D. Papineau (ed) The Philosophy of Science (Oxford 1996).
• Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Subject Editor for Philosophy of Science), (Routledge, 1998)
• Philosophy and Natural Science in AC Grayling (Ed.), Philosophy 2. Further through the subject (Oxford University Press, 1998)
• Revolution in Permanence : Karl Popper on theory-change in science, Karl Popper: Problems and Philosophy (CUP, 1995)
• The Ontology of Science (Ed.), (Dartmouth Publishing Co, 1994)