Philosophy of Science

Named arguments and positions that concern scientific method, explanation, theory change and the demarcation of science from non-science: falsificationism as Popper's criterion that a genuinely scientific claim must be falsifiable, the incommensurability of scientific paradigms as Kuhn's thesis that successive paradigms cannot be directly compared on shared standards, and the Duhem-Quine thesis as the holist claim that no single hypothesis can be tested in isolation from the web of auxiliary assumptions around it. Belongs here: a formulated argument or named position whose target question is what makes an inquiry scientific or how scientific theories are tested and replaced. Does not belong here: a specific scientific theory or finding itself, tracked as its own kind of entity on this atlas or on Science Atlas via the ruling 631 seam, rather than as a philosophical argument-position about method.