Everything about Philosophy Of Science totally explained
Philosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications of
science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science. In addition to these central problems for science as a whole, many philosophers of science consider these problems as they apply to particular sciences (for example
philosophy of biology or
philosophy of physics). 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.
Issues of
ethics, such as
bioethics and
scientific misconduct, are not generally considered part of philosophy of science. These issues may be studied in ethics or
science studies.
Nature of scientific concepts and statements
Demarcation
Karl Popper contended that the central question in the philosophy of science was distinguishing science from non-science. Early attempts by the
logical positivists grounded science in observation while non-science (for example
metaphysics) was non-observational and hence nonsense. Popper claimed that the central feature of science was that science aims at
falsifiable claims (for example claims that can be proven false, at least in principle). 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.
This problem has taken center stage in the debate regarding
evolution and
intelligent design. Many opponents of intelligent design claim that it doesn't meet the criteria of science and should thus not be treated on equal footing as
evolution. Those who defend intelligent design either defend the view as meeting the criteria of science or challenge the coherence of this distinction.
Scientific realism and instrumentalism
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 doesn't aim (or at least doesn't succeed) at truth and that we shouldn't regard scientific theories as true. 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. More radical antirealists, like
Thomas Kuhn and
Paul Feyerabend, have argued that scientific theories don't even succeed at this goal, and that later, more accurate scientific theories are not "typically approximately true" as Popper contended.
Realists often point to the success of recent scientific theories as evidence for the truth (or near truth) of our current theories. Anti-realists point to either the history of science, epistemic morals,, or widely termed
postmodern criticisms of objectivity as evidence against scientific realisms. Some anti-realists attempt to explain the success of our theories without reference to truth while others deny that our current scientific theories are successful at all. Although ignored for a decade, this view was subjected to substantial criticism, resulting in several widely believed counter examples to the theory.
In addition to their D-N model, Hempel and Oppenheim offered other statistical models of explanation which would account for statistical sciences. 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).
The motto is most commonly cited in the form "entities shouldn't be multiplied beyond necessity", generally taken to suggest that the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. As interpreted in contemporary scientific practice, it advises opting for the simplest theory among a set of competing theories that have a comparable explanatory power, discarding assumptions that don't improve the explanation. The "other things being equal" clause is a critical qualification, which rather severely limits the utility of Ockham's razor in real practice, as theorists rarely if ever find themselves presented with competent theories of exactly equal explanatory adequacy.
Among the many difficulties that arise in trying to apply Ockham's razor is the problem of formalizing and quantifying the "measure of simplicity" that's implied by the task of deciding which of several theories is the simplest. Although various measures of simplicity have been brought forward as potential candidates from time to time, it's generally recognized that there's no such thing as a theory-independent measure of simplicity. In other words, there appear to be as many different measures of simplicity as there are theories themselves, and the task of choosing between measures of simplicity appears to be every bit as problematic as the job of choosing between theories. Moreover, it's extremely difficult to identify the hypotheses or theories that have "comparable explanatory power", though it may be readily possible to rule out some of the extremes. Ockham's razor also doesn't say that the simplest account is to be preferred regardless of its capacity to explain outliers, exceptions, or other phenomena in question. The principle of falsifiability requires that any exception that can be reliably reproduced should invalidate the simplest theory, and that the next-simplest account which can actually incorporate the exception as part of the theory should then be preferred to the first. As
Albert Einstein puts it, "The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience".
Objectivity of observations in science
It is vitally important for science that the
information about the surrounding world and the
objects of study be as accurate and as reliable as possible. For the sake of this,
measurements which are the source of this information must be as
objective as possible. Before the invention of
measuring tools (like
weights,
meter sticks,
clocks, etc) the only source of information available to humans were their senses (vision, hearing, taste, tactile, sense of heat, sense of gravity, etc.). Because human senses differ from person to person (due to wide variations in personal chemistry, deficiencies, inherited flaws, etc) there were no objective measurements before the invention of these tools. The consequence of this was the lack of a rigorous science.
With the advent of exchange of goods,
trades, and
agricultures there arose a need in such measurements, and science (arithmetics, geometry, mechanics, etc) based on standardized
units of measurements (
stadia,
pounds,
seconds, etc) was born. To further abstract from unreliable human senses and make measurements more objective, science uses measuring
devices (like spectrometers, voltmeters, interferometers, thermocouples, counters, etc) and lately - computers. In most cases, the less human involvement in measuring process, the more accurate and reliable scientific data are. Currently most measurements are done by a variety of mechanical and electronic sensors directly linked to computers—which further reduces the chance of human error/contamination of information. This made it possible to achieve astonishing accuracy of modern measurements. For example, current accuracy of measurement of mass is about 10
-10, of angles—about 10
-9, and of time and length intervals in many cases reaches the order of 10
-13 - 10
-15. This made possible to measure, say, the distance to the Moon with sub-centimeter accuracy (see
Lunar laser ranging experiment), to measure slight movement of
tectonic plates using
GPS system with sub-millimeter accuracy, or even to measure as slight variations in the distance between two mirrors separated by several kilometers as 10
-18 m—three orders of magnitude less than the size of a single atomic nucleus—see
LIGO.
Theory-dependence of observation
A scientific method depends on
objective observation in defining the
subject under investigation, gaining
information about its behavior and in performing
experiments.
Observation involves
perception as well as a
cognitive process. That is, one doesn't make an observation passively, but is actively involved in distinguishing the thing being observed from surrounding sensory data. Therefore, observations depend on some underlying understanding of the way in which the world functions, and that understanding may influence what is perceived, noticed, or deemed worthy of consideration.
Empirical observation is supposedly used to determine the acceptability of some
hypothesis within a theory. When someone claims to have made an observation, it's reasonable to ask them to justify their claim. Such a justification must make reference to the theory - operational definitions and hypotheses - in which the observation is embedded. That is, the observation is a component of the theory that also contains the hypothesis it either verifies or falsifies. But this means that the observation can't serve as a neutral arbiter between competing hypotheses. Observation could only do this "neutrally" if it were independent of the theory.
Thomas Kuhn denied that it's ever possible to isolate the theory being tested from the influence of the theory in which the observations are grounded. He argued that observations always rely on a specific paradigm, and that it isn't possible to evaluate competing paradigms independently. By "paradigm" he meant, essentially, a
logically consistent "portrait" of the world, one that involves no logical contradictions. More than one such logically consistent construct can each paint a usable likeness of the world, but it's pointless to pit them against each other, theory against theory. Neither is a standard by which the other can be judged. Instead, the question is which "portrait" is judged by some set of people to promise the most in terms of “puzzle solving”.
For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by, but not ultimately determined by, logical processes. The individual's choice between paradigms involves setting two or more “portraits" against the world and deciding which likeness is most promising. In the case of a general acceptance of one paradigm or another, Kuhn believed that it represented the consensus of the community of scientists. Acceptance or rejection of some paradigm is, he argued, more a social than a logical process.
That observation is embedded in theory doesn't mean that observations are irrelevant to science. Scientific understanding derives from observation, but the acceptance of scientific statements is dependent on the related theoretical background or paradigm as well as on observation.
Coherentism and
skepticism offer alternatives to
foundationalism for dealing with the difficulty of grounding scientific theories in something more than observations.
Indeterminacy of theory under empirical testing
According to the
Duhem–Quine thesis, after
Pierre Duhem and
W.V. Quine, any theory can be made compatible with any empirical observation by the addition of suitable ad hoc hypotheses. This is analogous to the way in which an infinite number of curves can be drawn through any finite set of data points on a graph.
This thesis was accepted by
Karl Popper, leading him to reject
naïve falsification in favor of 'survival of the fittest', or most falsifiable, of scientific theories. In Popper's view, any hypothesis that doesn't make testable predictions is simply not science. Such a hypothesis may be useful or valuable, but it can't be said to be science.
Confirmation holism, developed by
W.V. Quine, states that empirical data are not sufficient to make a judgment between theories. In this view, a theory can always be made to fit with the available empirical data. However, that empirical evidence doesn't serve to determine between alternative theories doesn't necessarily imply that all theories are of equal value, as scientists often use guiding principles such as
Occam's Razor.
One result of this view is that specialists in the philosophy of science stress the requirement that observations made for the purposes of science be restricted to
intersubjective objects. That is, science is restricted to those areas where there's general agreement on the nature of the observations involved. It is comparatively easy to agree on observations of physical phenomena, harder for them to agree on observations of social or mental phenomena, and difficult in the extreme to reach agreement on matters of theology or ethics (and thus the latter remain outside the normal purview of science).
Philosophy of particular sciences
In addition to addressing the general questions regarding science and induction, many philosophers of science are occupied by investigating philosophical or foundational problems in particular sciences. The late 20th and early 21st century has seen a rise in the number of practitioners of philosophy of a particular science.
Philosophy of physics
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 results of the
interpretation 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).
Philosophy of biology
epistemological,
metaphysical, and
ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology (for example,
Aristotle,
Descartes, and even
Kant), philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. Philosophers of science then began paying increasing attention to developments in biology, from the rise of
Neodarwinism in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of
Deoxyribonucleic acid in 1953 to more recent advances in
genetic engineering. Other key ideas such as the
reduction of all life processes to
biochemical reactions as well as the incorporation of
psychology into a broader
neuroscience are also addressed.
Philosophy of mathematics
philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of
mathematics.
Recurrent themes include:
» * What are the sources of mathematical subject matter?
* What is the
ontological status of mathematical entities?
» * What does it mean to refer to a mathematical object?
* What is the character of a mathematical proposition?
» * What is the relation between
logic and mathematics?
* What is the role of
hermeneutics in mathematics?
» * What kinds of inquiry play a role in mathematics?
* What are the objectives of mathematical inquiry?
» * What gives mathematics its hold on
experience?
* What are the
human traits behind mathematics?
» * What is
mathematical beauty?
* What is the source and nature of mathematical truth?
» * What is the relationship between the abstract world of mathematics and the material universe?
Philosophy of chemistry
Philosophy of chemistry considers the
methodology and underlying assumptions of the
science of chemistry. It is explored by philosophers, chemists, and philosopher-chemist teams.
The philosophy of science has centered on physics for the last several centuries, and during the last century in particular, it has become increasingly concerned with the ultimate constituents of
existence, or what one might call
reductionism. Thus, for example, considerable attention has been devoted to the philosophical implications of
special relativity,
general relativity, and
quantum mechanics. In recent years, however, more attention has been given to both the
philosophy of biology and
chemistry, which both deal with more intermediate states of existence.
In the philosophy of chemistry, for example, we might ask, given quantum reality at the microcosmic level, and given the enormous distances between electrons and the atomic nucleus, how is it that we're unable to put our hands through walls, as physics might predict? Chemistry provides the answer, and so we then ask what it's that distinguishes chemistry from physics?
In the philosophy of
biology, which is closely related to chemistry, we inquire about what distinguishes a living thing from a non-living thing at the most elementary level. Can a living thing be understood in purely mechanistic terms, or is there, as
vitalism asserts, always something beyond mere quantum states?
Issues in philosophy of chemistry may not be as deeply conceptually perplexing as the quantum mechanical measurement problem in the
philosophy of physics, and may not be as conceptually complex as optimality arguments in
evolutionary biology. However interest in the philosophy of chemistry in part stems from the ability of chemistry to connect the “hard sciences” such as physics with the “soft sciences” such as biology, which gives it a rather distinctive role as
the central science.
Philosophy of economics
philosophy which studies philosophical issues relating to
economics. It can also be defined as the branch of economics which studies its own foundations and morality.
Philosophy of psychology
psychology. Some of these issues are
epistemological concerns about the methodology of psychological investigation. For example:
- What is the most appropriate methodology for psychology: mentalism, behaviorism, or a compromise?
- Are self-reports a reliable data gathering method?
- What conclusions can be drawn from null hypothesis tests?
- Can first-person experiences (emotions, desires, beliefs, etc.) be measured objectively?
Other issues in philosophy of psychology are philosophical questions about the nature of mind, brain, and cognition, and are perhaps more commonly thought of as part of
cognitive science, or
philosophy of mind, such as:
What is a cognitive module?
Are humans rational creatures?
What psychological phenomena comes up to the standard required for calling it knowledge?
What is innateness?
Philosophy of psychology also closely monitors contemporary work conducted in cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and artificial intelligence, questioning what they can and can't explain in psychology.
Philosophy of psychology is a relatively young field, due to the fact that psychology only became a discipline of its own in the late 1800s. Philosophy of mind, by contrast, has been a well-established discipline since before psychology was a field of study at all. It is concerned with questions about the very nature of mind, the qualities of experience, and particular issues like the debate between dualism and monism.
Social accountability
Scientific Openness
A very broad issue affecting the neutrality of science concerns the areas over which science chooses to explore, so what part of the world and man is studied by science. Since the areas for science to investigate are theoretically infinite, the issue then arises as to what science should attempt to question or find out.
Philip Kitcher in his "Science, Truth, and Democracy" argues that scientific studies that attempt to show one segment of the population as being less intelligent, successful or emotionally backward compared to others have a political feedback effect which further excludes such groups from access to science. Thus such studies undermine the broad consensus required for good science by excluding certain people, and so proving themselves in the end to be unscientific.
See also The Mismeasure of Man and Nazi eugenics.
Critiques of scientific method
Paul Feyerabend argued that no description of scientific method could possibly be broad enough to encompass all the approaches and methods used by scientists. Feyerabend objected to prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that any such method would stifle and cramp scientific progress. Feyerabend claimed, "the only principle that doesn't inhibit progress is: anything goes.". However there have been many opponents to his theory.
Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont authored the essay "" for his belief that science is of little use to society. Most other analytic philosophers resent Feyerabend`s ideas as they believe that his ideas have contributed to the Postmodern criticism of science.
Sociology and anthropology of science
In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn argues that the process of observation and evaluation take place within a paradigm. 'A paradigm is what the members of a community of scientists share, and, conversely, a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm' (postscript, part 1). On this account, science can be done only as a part of a community, and is inherently a communal activity.
For Kuhn, the fundamental difference between science and other disciplines is in the way in which the communities function. Others, especially Feyerabend and some post-modernist thinkers, have argued that there's insufficient difference between social practices in science and other disciplines to maintain this distinction. It is apparent that social factors play an important and direct role in scientific method, but that they don't serve to differentiate science from other disciplines. Furthermore, although on this account science is socially constructed, it doesn't follow that reality is a social construct. (See Science studies and the links there.) Kuhn’s ideas are equally applicable to both realist and anti-realist ontologies.
There are, however, those who maintain that scientific reality is indeed a social construct, to quote Quine:
Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits
See also cultural studies.
A major development in recent decades has been the study of the formation, structure, and evolution of scientific communities by sociologists and anthropologists including Michel Callon, Elihu Gerson, Bruno Latour, John Law, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm Strauss, Lucy Suchman, and others. Some of their work has been previously loosely gathered in actor network theory. Here the approach to the philosophy of science is to study how scientific communities actually operate.
More recently Gibbons and colleagues (1994) have introduced the notion of mode 2 knowledge production.
Researchers in Information science have also made contributions, for example, the Scientific Community Metaphor.
Continental philosophy of science
In the Continental philosophical tradition, science is viewed from a world-historical perspective. One of the first philosophers who supported this view was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Philosophers such as Ernst Mach, Pierre Duhem and Gaston Bachelard also wrote their works with this world-historical approach to science. Nietzsche advanced the thesis in his "The Genealogy of Morals" that the motiv for search of truth in sciences is a kind of ascetic ideal.
All of these approaches involve a historical and sociological turn to science, with a special emphasis on lived experience (a kind of Husserlian "life-world"), rather than a progress-based or anti-historical approach as done in the analytic tradition. Two other approaches to science include Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and Martin Heidegger's hermeneutics.
The largest effect on the continental tradition with respect to science was Martin Heidegger's assault on the theoretical attitude in general which of course includes the scientific attitude. For this reason one could suggest that the philosophy of science, in the Continental tradition, hasn't developed much further due to its inability to overcome Heidegger's criticism.
Notwithstanding, there have been a number of important works: especially a Kuhnian precursor, Alexandre Koyré. Another important development was that of Foucault's analysis of the historical and scientific thought in The Order of Things and his study of power and corruption within the "science" of madness. His works were considered a great work of art and the science of madness was a significant achievement. It involved explaining madness as a science (knowledge) and therefore must be gratified.
Traditional Chinese philosophy of science
In ancient China, science and technology were subordinate to value. The formless and personal Tao of Confucianism was holistically mingled with forms and usefulness. Therefore, its philosophy of science and values like moral and pragmatic considerations was a single entity. Together with its holistic health and pacifism, skepticism of the totalitarianism of Taoism also formed part of its characteristics. Alternatively, other philosophies in China emphasized technical experimentation, such as Mohism.
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