A High School Philosophy & Science Club

Session 1: Introduction to Philosophy of Science — Through a History of Astronomy

September 21, 2025 · Lu Changhai, That Star Is Not on the Star Chart: In Search of the Edge of the Solar System
The discovery of the outer solar system — Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto — served as a guided tour of the field's central problems. Herschel's telescopes and modern CCD searches showed how observation always depends on instruments; Uranus's misbehaving orbit carried the discussion from hypothesis to prediction to refutation (Neptune, the failed planet Vulcan, general relativity); and the session closed with the standard toolkit — deduction, induction and Hume's problem, abduction, Bayesian confirmation — together with knowledge, epistemic luck, and the intellectual virtues of great observers.