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The Philosophy of Science Portal

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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In science and the philosophy of science, falsifiability refers to the property of empirical statements that they must admit of logical counterexamples. This stands in contradistinction to formal and mathematical statements that may be tautologies, that is, universally true by dint of definitions, axioms, and proofs. Some philosophers and scientists, most notably Karl Popper, have asserted that no empirical hypothesis, proposition, or theory can be considered scientific if it does not admit the possibility of a contrary case.

For example, the proposition "all swans are white" would be falsified by observing a black swan, which would in turn depend on there being a black swan somewhere in existence. A falsifiable proposition or theory must define in some way what is, or will be, forbidden by that proposition or theory.

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Credit: Louis Comfort Tiffany

The center third of Education (1890), a stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, depicts Science (personified by Devotion, Labor, Truth, Research and Intuition) and Religion (personified by Purity, Faith, Hope, Reverence and Inspiration) in harmony, presided over by Love.

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"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate. - Plurality should not be posited without necessity."

— William of Ockham - Occam's razor

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Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) was an American intellectual, most famous for his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR). In SSR, he presented the idea that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but instead undergoes periodic revolutions which he calls "paradigm shifts", in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the philosophy of science: besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn raised the word "paradigm" itself from a term used in certain forms of linguistics to its current broader meaning, coined the term "normal science" to refer to the relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists working within a paradigm, and was largely responsible for the use of the term "scientific revolutions".

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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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