Philosophy of Science

The 'philosophy of science' is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, including the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. In this respect, the philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology and the philosophy of language. Note that issues of scientific ethics are not usually considered to be part of the philosophy of science; they are studied in such fields as bioethics and science studies.

In particular, the philosophy of science considers the following topics: the character and the development of concepts and terms, propositions and hypotheses, arguments and conclusions, as they function in science; the manner in which science explains natural phenomena and predicts natural occurrences; the types of reasoning that are used to arrive at scientific conclusions; the formulation, scope, and limits of scientific method; the means that should be used for determining when scientific information has adequate objective support; and the implications of scientific methods and models, along with the technology that arises from scientific knowledge for the larger society.

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Philosophy of physics is the study of the fundamental, philosophical questions underlying modern physics, the study of matter and energy and how they interact. The main questions concern the nature of space and time, atoms and atomism. Also the predictions of cosmology, the interpretation of the results of quantum mechanics, the foundations of statistical mechanics, causality, determinism, and the nature of physical laws. Classically, several of these questions were studied as part of metaphysics (for example, those about causality, determinism, and space and time). Today, the philosophy of physics is very close to the philosophy of science, and is the most active subtopic within it.

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Credit: Raffaello Sanzio

The School of Athens shows the greatest philosophers, scientists and mathematicians of classical antiquity. Plato and Aristotle, the Greek philosophers that were considered most important, are standing in the center of the composition at the top of the steps.

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"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."

— Galileo Galilei

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Ernst Mach (February 18, 1838 – February 19, 1916) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher and is the namesake for the "Mach number" (aka Mach speed) and the optical illusion known as Mach bands. He was born in Chrlice (now part of Brno), Czech Republic. There he studied mathematics, physics and philosophy, and received a doctorate in physics in 1860.

Mach developed a philosophy of science which was influential in the 19th and 20th centuries. Mach held that scientific laws are summaries of experimental events, constructed for the purpose of human comprehension of complex data. Thus scientific laws have more to do with the mind than with reality as it exists apart from the mind.

Mach had a direct influence on the Vienna Circle philosophers and the school of logical positivism in general. Albert Einstein called him the "forerunner of [the] Theory of relativity".

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Did you know...

• ...that a thought experiment uses a hypothetical scenario to help us understand things through a priori, rather than empirical methodology?
• ...that Paul Feyerabend's theory of epistemological anarchism in the philosophy of science led him to be labeled the "worst enemy of science" by his detractors?
• ...that the philosophy of biology has grown with the rise of Neodarwinism, the discovery of the structure of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and more recent advances in genetic engineering?
• ...that Occam's razor argues the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible?
• ...that Scientism is an ideology which holds that science has primacy over other interpretations of life?
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WikiProjects

Philosophy of science • Science • History of Science • Philosophy • Logic • Epistemology

Categories

Philosophy of science

Anti-psychiatry • Determinism • Empiricism • Epistemology • Evolution • Free will • History of science • Holism • Ontology • Philosophy of biology • Philosophy of physics • Pseudoscience • Reductionism • Skepticism • Sociology of scientific knowledge • Vitalism

Topics

Philosophy of science: Biology • Chemistry • Information • Language • Logic • Mathematics (Education, Probability) • Mind (Artificial intelligence, Perception) • Physics (Space & time, Thermal & statistical physics) • Social sciences (Environment, Psychology) • Technology

Epistemology: A priori and a posteriori • Analysis • Analytic-synthetic distinction • Belief • Causality • Coherentism • Constructivist epistemology • Contextualism • Descriptive knowledge • Determinism • Empiricism • Faith and rationality • Fallibilism • Foundationalism • Gettier problem • Holism • Infinitism • Innatism • Internalism and externalism • Knowledge • Objectivity • Positivism • Proposition • Rationalism • Reductionism • Regress argument • Reliabilism • Simplicity • Skepticism • Speculative reason • Theaetetus (dialogue) • Theory of forms • Theory of justification • Transcendental idealism • Truth • Uniformitarianism • Vienna Circle • Vitalism

Ontology: Being • Category of being • Change • Cogito ergo sum • Dualism • Embodied philosophy • Entity • Existence • Existentialism • Identity • Integrative level • Physical object • Properties • Reality • Relativism • Scientific realism • Subjectivism • Substance theory • Type theory • Universal • Unobservables

General: Anti-psychiatry • Commensurability • Demarcation problem • Evolution • Free will • History of science • Pseudoscience • Rhetoric of science • Scientific method • Scientism • Sociology of scientific knowledge

Things you can do

Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: Science of science, Ethnoscience, Blind posits theory, Cognition theory, Epistemic support, Paul Durbin, Larry Hickman, Philosophy of astronomy, More... Merge: Identity (philosophy) ← Identity and change, Platonic epistemology ← Platonic doctrine of recollection, Causality (split), Objectivity (philosophy) ← Objectivity (science) Cleanup: Analytic-synthetic distinction, Causality, Coherentism, Constructivist epistemology, Contextualism, Existence, Existentialism, Philosophy of science, Proposition, Relativism, Substance theory, Universal (metaphysics), William Whewell Expand: Ontology, Pierre Duhem, Philosophy of mathematics education, Philosophy of probability, Physical body, Positivism, Unobservables Stubs: Berlin Circle (philosophy), Biological determinism, Boundary-work, Cartesian anxiety, Causal chain, Chaos argument, Clockmaker hypothesis, Conceptual definition, Condition of possibility, Deductive-nomological, Descriptive science, More... NPOV: Reality, David Stove Other: Science collaboration of the month: Carbon • More mathematical and natural sciences, or philosophy pages needing attention...

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