The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science Science is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction or reliable outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice. In addition to these central problems for science as a whole, many philosophers of science consider these problems as they apply to particular sciences (e.g. philosophy of biology The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology , philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy or philosophy of physics In philosophy, the philosophy of physics studies the fundamental philosophical questions underlying modern physics, the study of matter and energy and how they interact. The philosophy of physics begins by reflecting on the basic metaphysical and epistemological questions posed by physics: causality, determinism, and the nature of physical law. It). Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to draw philosophical morals.
Although most practitioners are philosophers, several prominent scientists have contributed to the field and still do. Other prominent scientists have felt that the practical effect on their work is limited: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” according to physicist Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum.[citation needed]
Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world although it is not easily defined.. Someone who studies metaphysics would be called either a metaphysicist or a metaphysician, epistemic Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: and semantic aspects of science. Ethical Ethics is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality — that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, justice, virtue, etc issues such as bioethics Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy and scientific misconduct Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions: are usually considered ethics or science studies Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in a broad social, historical, and philosophical context. It is concerned with the history of scientific disciplines, the interrelationships between science and society, and the alleged covert purposes that underlie scientific claims. While it is rather than philosophy of science.
Nature of scientific concepts and statements
Demarcation
Main article: Demarcation problem The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how and where to draw the lines around science. The boundaries are commonly drawn between science and non-science, between science and pseudoscience, between science and philosophy and between science and religion. A form of this problem, known as the generalized problem of demarcationKarl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century; he also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy contended that the central question in the philosophy of science was distinguishing science from non-science.[1]
Early attempts by the logical positivists Logical positivism is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism – the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world – with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology grounded science in observation while non-science was non-observational and hence nonsense.[2] Popper claimed that the central feature of science was that science aims at falsifiable Falsifiability or refutability is the logical possibility that an assertion could be shown false by a particular observation or physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, it means that if the statement were false, then its falsehood could be demonstrated claims (i.e. claims that can be proven false, at least in principle).[3]
No single unified account of the difference between science and non-science has been widely accepted by philosophers, and some regard the problem as unsolvable or uninteresting.[4]
This problem has taken center stage in the debate regarding evolution Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations. This change results from interactions between processes which introduce variation into a population, and other processes which remove it. As a result, variants with particular traits become more, or less, common. A trait is a particular and intelligent design Jewish · Roman Catholic . The vast majority of opponents of intelligent design claim that it does not meet the criteria of science and should thus not be treated on equal footing as evolution Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations. This change results from interactions between processes which introduce variation into a population, and other processes which remove it. As a result, variants with particular traits become more, or less, common. A trait is a particular.[5] Those who defend intelligent design either attempt to validate the view as meeting the criteria of science or challenge the coherence of this distinction.[6]
Scientific realism and instrumentalism
Main article: Scientific realism Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is often framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The debate over what the success of scienceTwo central questions about science are (1) what are the aims of science and (2) how should one interpret the results of science? Scientific realists claim that science aims at truth and that one ought to regard scientific theories as true, approximately true, or likely true. Conversely, a scientific antirealist or instrumentalist argues that science does not aim (or at least does not succeed) at truth and that we should not regard scientific theories as true.[7] Some antirealists claim that scientific theories aim at being instrumentally useful and should only be regarded as useful, but not true, descriptions of the world.[8] More radical antirealists, like Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the sociology and philosophy of science and Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958–1989). His life was a peripatetic one, as he lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally, have argued that scientific theories do not even succeed at this goal, and that later, more accurate scientific theories are not "typically approximately true" as Popper contended.[9][10]
Realists often point to the success of recent scientific theories as evidence for the truth (or near truth) of our current theories.[11][12][13][14][15] Antirealists point to either the history of science,[16][17] epistemic morals,[8] the success of false modeling Scientific modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, graphical and/or mathematical models. Science offers a growing collection of methods, techniques and theory about all kinds of specialized scientific modelling. Also a way to read elements easily which have been broken down to the simplest form assumptions,[18] or widely termed postmodern Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus criticisms of objectivity as evidence against scientific realisms.[19] Some antirealists attempt to explain the success of our theories without reference to truth[8][20] while others deny that our current scientific theories are successful at all.[9][10]
Scientific explanation
Main article: Scientific explanation Models of scientific inquiry have two functions: first, to provide a descriptive account of how scientific inquiry is carried out in practice, and second, to provide an explanatory account of why scientific inquiry succeeds as well as it appears to do in arriving at genuine knowledge of its objectsIn addition to providing predictions about future events, we often take scientific theories to offer explanations for those that occur regularly or have already occurred. Philosophers have investigated the criteria by which a scientific theory can be said to have successfully explained a phenomenon, as well as what gives a scientific theory explanatory power One theory is said to have more explanatory power than another theory about the same subject matter if it can predict and otherwise account for all the facts that the second one does, but also explains the causes of other facts which the second one does not. The opposite of explanatory power is explanatory impotence. One early and influential theory of scientific explanation was put forward by Carl G. Hempel Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel was a philosopher of science and a major figure in 20th-century logical empiricism. He is especially well-known for his articulation of the Deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, which was considered the "standard model" of scientific explanation during the 1950s and 1960's. He is also and Paul Oppenheim in 1948. Their Deductive-Nomological The deductive-nomological model is a formalized view of scientific explanation in natural language. It characterizes scientific explanations primarily as deductive arguments with at least one natural law statement among its premises. "Nomological" comes from the Greek word "νόμος" (nomos), i.e., "law." (D-N) model of explanation says that a scientific explanation succeeds by subsuming a phenomenon under a general law.[21] Although ignored for a decade, this view was subjected to substantial criticism, resulting in several widely believed counter examples to the theory.[22]
In addition to their D-N model, Hempel and Oppenheim offered other statistical models of explanation which would account for statistical sciences.[21] These theories have received criticism as well.[22] Salmon attempted to provide an alternative account for some of the problems with Hempel and Oppenheim's model by developing his statistical relevance model.[23][24] In addition to Salmon's model, others have suggested that explanation is primarily motivated by unifying disparate phenomena or primarily motivated by providing the causal or mechanical histories leading up to the phenomenon (or phenomena of that type).[24]
Analysis and reductionism
Analysis is the activity of breaking an observation or theory down into simpler concepts in order to understand it. Analysis is as essential to science as it is to all rational enterprises. For example, the task of describing mathematically the motion of a projectile A projectile is any object projected into space by the exertion of a force. Although a thrown baseball is technically a projectile too, the term more often refers to a weapon. is made easier by separating out the force of gravity Gravitation, or gravity, is one of the four fundamental interactions of nature , in which objects with mass attract one another. In everyday life, gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped. Gravitation causes dispersed matter to coalesce, thus accounting for, angle of projection and initial velocity. After such analysis it is possible to formulate a suitable theory of motion.
Reductionism Reductionism can either mean an approach to understand the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents in science can have several different senses. One type of reductionism is the belief that all fields of study are ultimately amenable to scientific explanation. Perhaps a historical event might be explained in sociological and psychological terms, which in turn might be described in terms of human physiology, which in turn might be described in terms of chemistry and physics.
Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, invented the term greedy reductionism Greedy reductionism is a term coined by Daniel Dennett, in the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to distinguish between what he considers acceptable and erroneous forms of reductionism. Whereas reductionism means explaining a thing in terms of what it reduces to, greedy reductionism arises when the thing we are trying to understand is explained away to describe the assumption that such reductionism was possible. He claims that it is just 'bad science', seeking to find explanations which are appealing or eloquent, rather than those that are of use in predicting natural phenomena. He also says that:
- There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. —Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy,, Darwin's Dangerous Idea Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life is a book by Daniel Dennett which argues that Darwinian processes are the central organizing force that gives rise to complexity. Dennett asserts that natural selection is a blind and algorithmic process which is sufficiently powerful to account for the generation and evolution of life, 1995.
Arguments made against greedy reductionism through reference to emergent In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems phenomena rely upon the fact that self-referential systems can be said to contain more information Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is an ordered sequence of symbols. As a concept, however, information has many meanings. Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation than can be described through individual analysis of their component parts. Examples include systems that contain strange loops Strange loops may involve self-reference and paradox. The concept of a strange loop was proposed and extensively discussed by Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach, and is further elaborated in Hofstadter's book I Am a Strange Loop, which appeared in 2007, fractal A fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity. Roots of mathematically rigorous treatment of fractals can be traced back to functions studied by Karl Weierstrass, Georg Cantor and Felix Hausdorff in studying functions organization and strange attractors An attractor is a set to which a dynamical system evolves after a long enough time. That is, points that get close enough to the attractor remain close even if slightly disturbed. Geometrically, an attractor can be a point, a curve, a manifold, or even a complicated set with a fractal structure known as a strange attractor. Describing the in phase space In mathematics and physics, a phase space, introduced by Willard Gibbs in 1901, is a space in which all possible states of a system are represented, with each possible state of the system corresponding to one unique point in the phase space. For mechanical systems, the phase space usually consists of all possible values of position and momentum. Analysis of such systems is necessarily information-destructive because the observer must select a sample of the system that can be at best partially representative. Information theory Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Historically, information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data. Since its inception it can be used to calculate the magnitude of information loss and is one of the techniques applied by Chaos theory Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, physics, economics and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-.
Grounds of validity of scientific reasoning
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:16:02 GMT+00:00
First Things ... known such moments are unlikely to be convinced by any purely materialist account of consciousness, at least of the mechanical philosophy variety. ...
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taken a toll on his legs After making the colossal error of downing a pint each over our over processed and microwaved lunches we staggered off to find the Bembridge Trail head This path was not particularly interesting although it provided a few scenic views and one or two sites of interest It covered 11 miles ending in the village of Shide on the south side of Newport By
John S. Wilkins
Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:36:38 GM
I first met David Hull in the fall of 1968, at the first meeting of the . Philosophy of Science. Association, being held in Pittsburgh. He was one of a very few people, including Ken Schaffner, Marjorie Grene, and (although still a ...
Q. Does explanation of our existence vary with philosophy, science and religion? Why?
Asked by anil m - Sun Jun 21 13:15:53 2009 - - 7 Answers - 0 Comments
A. Philosphy is in the mind of human beings and is twice removed from reality. But Philosophy is the ultimate thinking, beyond philosophy is mysticism and other transcendental states where mind is dropped and mind no more works to think philosophic. Whereas science is a physical presentation of philosophical thoughts laid on table and dissected. Not even a spec of what can be thought philosophically can be proved by science or phisically established by science. The reasons being the imperfection of the senses. Science work in the plane of the five senses. That is materialistic plane of consciousness. Philosophy works at the thought level and mind level including spiritual level which cannot be proved on a material plane. Religion is… [cont.]
Answered by udaya k - Sun Jun 21 18:43:30 2009
