2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

PSA Abstracts
type can be obtained for humans because of ethical considerations as well as
technical difficulties. While interesting conclusions can be derived for other
mammals, and possibly even for some primates, the study of nature vs. nurture
in humans is indeed very limited, and it is about time that the scientific
community refrains itself from making grand statements that cannot be
reasonably substantiated by the available evidence. This especially in light of
the obvious implications of such studies for social and educational policies.
Cassandra␣ L. Pinnick Western Kentucky University
Error and Underdetermination: The Status of Metamethodology
In her book, Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge, Deborah Mayo
maintains that her new use of error statistics can resolve the abiding Duhem
Problem that some philosophers and sociologists of science believe to plague
scientific evidence and knowledge. My paper considers, first, Mayo’s response
to certain of Larry Laudan’s cautions to the scientific methodologist regarding
experimental design and normativity. Next, I take up the question of how well
Mayo’s methods fare in rendering the Duhem Problem toothless. I examine
possible criticisms that center on Mayo’s method of severe test; these criticisms
focus on the methodological—rather than the logical—gaps possibly remaining
as between evidence and theory and how any such gaps might risk loss of
normative power for Mayo’s overall methodology.
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Itamar Pitowsky The Hebrew University
Quantum Speedup of Computations
Physicists often interpret the Church-Turing Thesis as saying something about
the scope and limitations of physical computing machines. Although this was
not the intention of Church or Turing, the Physical Church-Turing Thesis is
interesting in its own right. Consider, for example, Wolfram’s formulation: “One
can expect in fact that universal computers are as powerful in their computational
capabilities as any physically realizable system can be... No physically
implementable procedure could then shortcut a computationally irreducible
process.” Wolfram’s claim is not just that any physically computable function
(from natural numbers to natural numbers) is recursive. He maintains,
furthermore, that any theoretical bound on Turing machine (TM) computation
reflects a physical limitation. For example, suppose that we can prove that the
fastest TM computation of a given function runs in exponential number of steps
(in the size of the input). This, says Wolfram, constrains the actual time of
computation of that function on any real physical machine. An even more extreme
formulation can be found in Aharonov’s excellent review of quantum