Donald A. Gillies
Encyclopedia
Donald A. Gillies is a British philosopher and historian of science
and mathematics
. He is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College, London.
and Imre Lakatos
at the London School of Economics, where he completed a PhD on the foundations of probability.
Gilles is a past President and a current Vice-President of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. From 1982 to 1985 he was an editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Gillies is probably best known for his work on confirmation theory, his attempt to simplify and extend Popper’s theory of corroboration. He proposes a novel "principle of explanatory surplus", likening a successful theoretician to a successful entrepreneur. The entrepreneur generates a surplus (of income) over and above his initial investment (of funds) to meet the necessary expenses of the enterprise. Similarly, the theoretician generates a surplus (of explanations) over and above his initial investment (of assumptions) to make the necessary explanations of known facts. The size of this surplus is held to be a measure of the confirmation of the theory - but only in qualitative, rather than quantitative, terms.
Gillies has researched the philosophy of science, most particularly the foundations of probability; the philosophy of logic and mathematics; and the interactions of artificial intelligence with some aspects of philosophy, including probability, logic, causality and scientific method.
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
. He is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College, London.
Career
After undergraduate studies in mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge, Gillies became a graduate student of Karl PopperKarl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
and Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations' in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his...
at the London School of Economics, where he completed a PhD on the foundations of probability.
Gilles is a past President and a current Vice-President of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. From 1982 to 1985 he was an editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Gillies is probably best known for his work on confirmation theory, his attempt to simplify and extend Popper’s theory of corroboration. He proposes a novel "principle of explanatory surplus", likening a successful theoretician to a successful entrepreneur. The entrepreneur generates a surplus (of income) over and above his initial investment (of funds) to meet the necessary expenses of the enterprise. Similarly, the theoretician generates a surplus (of explanations) over and above his initial investment (of assumptions) to make the necessary explanations of known facts. The size of this surplus is held to be a measure of the confirmation of the theory - but only in qualitative, rather than quantitative, terms.
Gillies has researched the philosophy of science, most particularly the foundations of probability; the philosophy of logic and mathematics; and the interactions of artificial intelligence with some aspects of philosophy, including probability, logic, causality and scientific method.
Books and articles
- Gillies, Donald (2000) Philosophical Theories of Probability. London: Routledge.
- Gillies, Donald ed. (1992) Revolutions in MathematicsRevolutions in MathematicsRevolutions in Mathematics is an influential collection of essays in the history and philosophy of mathematics.-Contents:*Michael J. Crowe, Ten "laws" concerning patterns of change in the history of mathematics ;*Herbert Mehrtens, T. S...
. Oxford Science Publications. The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, New York. - Gillies, Donald (1989). Non-Bayesian Confirmation Theory and the Principle of Explanatory Surplus. The Philosophy of Science Association, PSA 1988, Volume 2, pp. 373–380.
External links
- Professor Donald Gillies, personal webpage, University College, London