Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy of Science

The branch of philosophy that studies the methods and presuppositions of scientific inquiry: what justifies moving from a finite set of observations to a general law, what distinguishes a genuinely scientific claim from one that only resembles it, and whether scientific progress reflects a growing grasp of how the world actually is. Central questions include the demarcation between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, and whether science can infer truth about unobservable entities. Philosophical thought about science dates back at least to Aristotle, but the field became a distinct discipline only in the twentieth century, following the logical positivist movement and its attempt to set criteria for meaningful and objectively assessable claims. Karl Popper criticized logical positivism and helped establish modern standards for scientific method, and Thomas Kuhn argued in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that scientific progress is relative to a paradigm rather than a steady, cumulative accumulation of knowledge.

Facts

Disputed

Key Debate

Scientific realism versus anti-realism: whether well-confirmed theories are approximately true descriptions of an unobservable world, as realists hold, or are useful instruments for prediction whose unobservable posits need not be believed, as instrumentalists and constructive empiricists such as Bas van Fraassen hold. 1

Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism gave anti-realism its most influential modern statement against a realist consensus among working scientists.

Central Question

What justifies inferring a general law from a finite set of past observations, when the inference itself cannot be guaranteed by logic alone? 1

Key Debate

The problem of induction: Hume argued that no amount of past regularity can be shown, by reason or by experience, to guarantee that an unobserved case will conform to it, since the inference from past to future itself already assumes the very uniformity in question, leaving science's most basic method without a demonstrative justification. 1

Learn More

Hume's Unanswerable Question

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Every morning the sun has risen. On that basis, everyone expects it to rise tomorrow. Hume's question is not whether this expectation is reasonable in some loose, practical sense, everyone has it and could hardly function without it, but whether there is any argument, any chain of reasoning, that could justify it as more than habit dressed up as knowledge. Try to supply one, and the options narrow fast. You cannot justify the inference by an argument from pure logic, because there is no contradiction in supposing the sun fails to rise tomorrow; a rising sun is not contained in the concept of yesterday's sunrise. So the justification would have to come from experience instead, from the observation that nature has been uniform in the past. But that is exactly the premise in question, restated. To argue nature will keep behaving uniformly because it has always behaved uniformly assumes the very principle, that the future resembles the past, that needs justifying, which makes the argument circular rather than a genuine proof. Hume's own answer was not skepticism about crossing the street; he thought custom and habit did the practical work perfectly well, and that no one, including Hume, actually lived as though induction might fail at any moment. What he denied was that reason alone, unaided by habit, could underwrite the inference. This leaves the whole of experimental science resting, at its foundation, on a habit rather than a proof, an uncomfortable place for a discipline that prides itself on proof, and the reason the problem of induction still opens every serious discussion of what scientific method can and cannot deliver.

Why Science Still Works Anyway

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Hume's problem does not stop laboratories from running experiments, and it is worth asking why not, since nobody has actually solved it in the sense of supplying the demonstrative proof he showed was missing. Part of the answer is practical: a habit that has never once failed, however philosophically ungrounded, is still the only tool anyone has, and refusing to use it buys nothing, since the alternative is not a better method but no method at all. Part of the answer is a change of question. Twentieth century philosophy of science largely stopped trying to justify induction directly and asked instead whether science needs it at all. One influential answer holds that science does not confirm theories by accumulating supporting instances, the way induction is usually pictured, but by trying, honestly and severely, to refute them, keeping only the theories that survive serious attempts to break them. On this picture a theory is scientific not because enough sunrises have been observed to prove the next one, but because the theory forbids something, some observation that would count against it, and has been tested against that forbidden possibility and held up. This does not answer Hume's original question so much as route around it: a surviving theory is not proven true, only not yet shown false, which turns out to be a weaker and more honest thing to claim than proof ever was. Whether this fully escapes the problem, or only restates it one level up, since a theory's past survival is itself an inductive basis for trusting its future survival, is exactly the kind of question that keeps philosophy of science a live argument rather than a settled one.

Philosophy of Science

3 entries

Position Kind

Held By / Proponent

Era

Connections

Associated With

Philosophy of Chemistry

Source Philosophy of Chemistry (Wikipedia)

Philosophy of Computer Science

Source Philosophy of Computer Science (Wikipedia)

Philosophy of Geography

Geography's status and method as a science, and the special-science questions its spatial/regional concepts raise, are debated within philosophy of science's own literature, matching the same associated-with shape already live between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Chemistry/Computer Science/Physics/Social Science.

Philosophy of Medicine

Source Philosophy of Medicine (Wikipedia)

Philosophy of Physics

Source Philosophy of Physics (Wikipedia)

Philosophy of Social Science

Source Philosophy of Social Science (Wikipedia)

Includes

Adolf Grünbaum

Source Wikipedia: Adolf Grünbaum

Alessandro Piccolomini

Source Alessandro Piccolomini (Wikipedia)

Alexander Bird

Source Wikipedia: Alexander Bird

Alvin Plantinga

Source Alvin Plantinga (Wikipedia)

Andreas Eudaemon-Joannis

Source Andreas Eudaemon-Joannis (Wikipedia)

Ann-Sophie Barwich

Source Ann-Sophie Barwich (Wikipedia)

Antonio Rocco

Source Antonio Rocco (Wikipedia)

Bas van Fraassen

Source Bas van Fraassen (Wikipedia)

Bernardino Telesio

Source Bernardino Telesio (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Burchard de Volder

Source Burchard de Volder (Wikipedia)

Camilla Erculiani

Source Camilla Erculiani (Wikipedia)

Carl Hempel

Source Wikipedia: Carl Gustav Hempel

Carlo Rinaldini

Source Carlo Rinaldini (Wikipedia)

Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora

Source Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (Wikipedia)

Charlotte Werndl

Source Charlotte Werndl (Wikipedia)

Chauncey Wright

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Chauncey Wright

Claus Emmeche

Source Wikipedia: Claus Emmeche

David Hume

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Deborah Mayo

Source Deborah Mayo - Wikipedia

Elisabeth Nemeth

Source Elisabeth Nemeth (Wikipedia)

Elliott Sober

Source Wikipedia: Elliott Sober

Émilie du Châtelet

Source Émilie du Châtelet (Wikipedia)

Empedocles

Source Wikipedia: Empedocles

Ernst Cassirer

Source Ernst Cassirer (Wikipedia)

Ernst Mach

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Ernst Mach

Etienne Vermeersch

Source Etienne Vermeersch, Wikipedia

Falsificationism

Source Falsifiability (Wikipedia)

Fortunio Liceti

Source Fortunio Liceti (Wikipedia)

Francesco Bianchini

Source Francesco Bianchini (Wikipedia)

Francesco Buonamici

Source Francesco Buonamici (philosopher) (Wikipedia)

Francis Bacon

Source Francis Bacon (Wikipedia)

Georg Henrik von Wright

Source Georg Henrik von Wright, Wikipedia

George Herbert Mead

Source Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: George Herbert Mead

Giorgio Raguseo

Source Giorgio Raguseo (Wikipedia)

Hans Reichenbach

Source Wikipedia: Hans Reichenbach

Hasok Chang

Source Wikipedia: Hasok Chang

Heather Douglas

Source Wikipedia: Heather Douglas (philosopher)

Henricus Regius

Source Henricus Regius (Wikipedia)

Herbert Feigl

Source Herbert Feigl - Wikipedia

Hilary Putnam

Source Hilary Putnam (Wikipedia)

Ian Hacking

Source Ian Hacking, Wikipedia

Ilkka Niiniluoto

Source Wikipedia: Ilkka Niiniluoto

Imre Lakatos

Source Imre Lakatos (Wikipedia)

Incommensurability of Scientific Paradigms

Source Commensurability (philosophy of science) (Wikipedia)

Isaac Beeckman

Source Isaac Beeckman (Wikipedia)

Isabelle Stengers

Source Wikipedia: Isabelle Stengers

Jacques Rohault

Source Jacques Rohault (Wikipedia)

James T. Cushing

Source Wikipedia: James T. Cushing

Jan Faye

Source Wikipedia: Jan Faye

Jean Paul Van Bendegem

Source Jean Paul Van Bendegem (Wikipedia)

Showing 1 to 50 of 111 in Includes, page 1 of 3.

Long-Form Articles

Hume's Unanswerable Question

Why Science Still Works Anyway

In the Other Atlases

Same As

Philosophy of Science

Also in Science Atlas: the same subject.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Information

s.v. The Problem of Induction
We generally think that the observations we make are able to justify some expectations or predictions about observations we have not yet made, as well as general claims that go beyond the observed.
s.v. Scientific Realism
Debates about scientific realism are closely connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences.
Includes: Moritz Schlick

Falsificationism

Incommensurability of Scientific Paradigms

The Duhem-Quine Thesis

Associated With

Includes

Long-Form Articles

Same As