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Philosophy of Science The School of Athens 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. More about the philosophy of science... Show new selections    Selected Article The problem of free will is the problem of whether rational agents exercise control over their own actions and decisions. Addressing this problem requires understanding the relation between freedom and causation, and determining whether or not the laws of nature are causally deterministic. The various philosophical positions taken differ on whether all events are determined or not—determinism versus indeterminism—and also on whether freedom can coexist with determinism or not—compatibilism versus incompatibilism. So, for instance, hard determinists argue that the universe is deterministic, and that this makes free will impossible. In the scientific realm, the principle of free will may imply that the actions of the body, including the brain and the mind, are not wholly determined by physical causality. ...Archive/Nominations Read more...    Selected picture Credit: J. Jastrow An epistemological paradigm shift was called a scientific revolution by epistemologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It occurs when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. ...Archive/Nominations Read more...    Quote "Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." — Isaac Newton ...Archive/Nominations More quotes...    Selected biography Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), was a German philosopher. He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his "critical philosophy" of the "Copernican revolution" which he claimed to have wrought in philosophy were his epistemology of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason. These placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science could never be accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-based activity of "synthesis". ...Archive/Nominations More...    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? ...Archive/Nominations    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... 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