Chapel Information Domain Theory Research

Dudley Shapere(Dudley Shapere 1928--)is an influential scientific philosopher in contemporary American.Most scholars in the country regard him as one of the important representatives of the new historicism.But,in an interview,he said,“I'm not a new historicist.”The domain of information theory he elaborated in the “Illinois meeting” has had a broad and far-reaching influence in western scientific philosophy.The famous scientific philosopher,F.Suppe,and others praised the methodology for its “promising future”,which marked “new directions”,even assert that “the philosophical research on scientific growth will increasingly converge to the general direction of the shapere's theory”.In order to rebuild the scientific rationality,after analyzing and criticizing the scientific theory of logical empiricism and historicism,Shapere has made a radical rethink about the crisis of irrationalism caused by historicism,and the information domain theory is proposed in this case.The theory of information domain is the core of Shapere's scientific philosophy.The theoretical system that it constructs provides a powerful explanation for the production and development of scientific theory and the rationality of scientific discovery.The theory of information domain and background information is the ideological basis of Shapere's scientific philosophy.The background information is the reason for the information domain,information domains must be based on background information.Scientific realism thought and truth are established on the basis of the theory of information domain,and the argument of the information domain theory also reflected his stance.His view of truth is based on information domain and background information,and it merges the truth of the theory of conformity,the theory of integration and the theory of practicality.In philosophy of science development in hovering turning period,the explanation of scientific rationality by the theory of information domain provides another direction and thought for the development of scientific philosophy.This paper starts from the theory of “information domain” to grasp the rationlity of the scientific philosophy of Shapere,and in turn,to understand the whole philosophy of Shapere,and to explore its impact on the devrlopment of scientific philosophy and the development of science and the biases that exist in this theory.This paper is divided into four patrs to discuss the information domain theory of Shapere:The first part of the paper mainly analyzes the production mechanism of the information domain theory.What is the background of the information domain theory?First,after the long reign of logical empiricism and the rebellion of historicism,scientific philosophers have found that Presupposition and Relativism are not rational trends in scientific development,and Relativism leads directly to the prevalence of irrationalism.In order to restore the rationality of science,Shapere puts forward the theory of information domain,which is critical to Historicism and Logical positivism.Second,the idea of the information domain theory is based on a lot of scientific history and scientific case studies,and in the process of demonstrating the information domain theory,he uses the method of case analysis and concrete incredulity.At the end of the day,Shapere was constantly enriching his theories in the process of communicating and arguing with other new historicists.As another important representative of the new historicist,Laudan has an important influence on the scientific philosophy of Shapere.The second part focuses on the main content of the information domain theory.Shapere presents the concept of information domain instead of the traditional“observation and theory” relationship,and by the understanding of the concept of information domain,the formation and the evolution and the problems existing in the information field and its solution to deep and specific analysis the information domain theory,and to seek the discussion of the scientific rationality.The third part of this is the analysis of the scientific philosophy of shapere from the perspective of realism,the theory of information domain embodies the nature of his scientific realism.By analyzing the definition of realism and the theory of the realism that is relevant to shapere show that the realismof Shapere is a unique realism.The fourth part mainly analyse the significance and limitation of the theory.Theproposal of the information domain theory not only brings vitality to the solution of irrationalism,but also promotes the production of concrete scientific discovery.The formation and evolution of the information domain has the color of historical materialism,guiding the development of western scientific philosophy to the materialistic path.At the same time,it also points out some defects in the theory of the information domain.