Hi Piper, Your responses were, as usual, quite eloquent. Myself, I prefer to accept Lewontin's (1974) interpretation that the development of cumulative knowledge is an iterative process between observation and explanation-building, where each "moment" in one leads to subsequent refinement of the other. However, mine is an historical, rather than physical science, so the "rules" are slightly different in that I am forced to take an anti-essentialist, "materialist" (sensu Mayr) perspective.
However, Philosophy of Science is only rarely good philosophy, and never "science" of any kind at all, so I can't really claim to care too much. Essays in Hull and Ruse's (1988) _The Philosophy of Biology_ are among the rare recent exceptions, IMHO. I strongly recommend this volume. Ryan (to whom my response on the crucifiction was directed,) would probably also benefit from reading the Plantinga/McMullin debate in part X.
Still, I'll be honest, I agreee with Marx that "philosophy is to teh real world what masturbation is to sex." This is, IMHO, often (not always) particularly true for the philosophy of scinece.
-Floyd
