defining-philosophy-of-science

“science” from the term Scientia roughly translates to knowledge but referred particularly to the results of logical demonstrations that reveal general and necessary truths¹

Main themes in philosophy of science² =

1. broad sense of science = developing an understanding of how humans gain knowledge of the world around them
2. narrow sense of science = developing an understanding of what makes the work descended from the Scientific Revolution different (if it is different) from other kinds of investigation of the world

Roughly, the idea of a scientific theory is a set of interrelated sentences that make claims about some part of world (or our experiences)

• A descriptive theory is an attempt to describe what actually goes on in some area without making value judgements.
• A normative theory makes value judgements in its description (what should go on / what might be good or bad)

distinguishing pseudo-science from science (astrology vs. astronomy) =

• not quantifiable = pseudo sciences give vague predictions / not exact
• lack of predictive power
• evidence is correlational (vs. causal explanation)
• interactional effect = pseudo-sciences like astrology are not observer independent because humans are conscious of where their direction is directed
  • in “true” science, international effect can be accounted for
• any evidence is confirmation, and is not falsifiable
  • science theories like string theory may not be falsifiable yet, but attempts are being made to make it falsifiable. Researcher attitude plays a role then in differing between pseudo-science and “true” science.

Three initial answers to how science works (philosophical account) =

1. empiricism and science = the only source of genuine knowledge about the world is through experience
   • for the empiricist tradition, the difference between science and everyday thinking is of detail, with science being especially successful because it s organized, systematic, and responsive to experience
2. mathematics and science = what makes science different from other investigations, and successful, is its attempt to understand the world using mathematical tools and concepts
   • this could be seen as an argument against empiricism, as it shows that there must be another route to knowledge beside experience
   • however, it can also be argued that mathematics can be used as a tool along with empiricism to identify what makes science special
3. social structure and science = what makes science different from other investigations and successful is its unique social structure
   • this is strongly critical to empiricism as it identifies that each individual cannot test everything themselves, both in everyday thinking and especially in science, and must rely on testimony of others at some point

questions to be answered by philosophical accounts of science =

1. how does science produce knowledge?
2. how should scientific inquiry by structured to achieve the goal of producing knowledge of the highest possible quality?
3. what is the knowledge which science produces knowledge of?

The difference between the philosophy of science and other disciplines that study science is that the questions cannot be answered simply by finding out what has happened in the past or what people believe in now. Philosophy of science cannot be answered by science.

• “when was the planet Neptune discovered?” = historical
• “why did the Soviet biologists under Stalin reject Mendelian genetics?” = sociological / political / psychology
• when is a theory confirmed by its predictions? what is a law of nature?” = philosophical

Terms on defining accounts of scientific philosophy

context of discovery = covers how new ideas, hypotheses, or theories are generated through inspiration, intuition, or trial-and-error

context of justification = involves the logical, empirical testing and validation of those ideas (the “why it’s true”) through evidence and reasoned arguments, focusing on making knowledge reliable and objective

Normative accounts of science =

Descriptive accounts of science =

realism = goal of science to approximately describe the world anti-realism = goal of science is to be able to articulate patterns in observation

Footnotes

1. Theory and reality, Godfrey-Smith, ed. 2 p. 4 ↩

2. Theory and Reality, Godfrey-Smith, ed.2 , p.6 ↩