Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamentals, the assumptions and implications of science, in relation to logic and the natural sciences, such as physics or biology, both with respect to the social sciences, such as sociology, psychology or economics.
Philosophy of science is linked in general to the philosophy of knowledge and epistemology. It seeks to explain the nature of the concepts and scientific statements, the ways in which they are produced; how science explains nature, how is predicted, and as it uses for its purposes; the means for determining the validity of the information; the formulation and use of the scientific method; types of reasoning that are used to reach conclusions; the implications of scientific methods, with models of the scientific environment and human society surrounding.In the most common sense, philosophy of science is the study of how is the scientific knowledge. It has large overlap with epistemology and several themes in common with the problem of demarcation. When we need to identify what exists, whatever the object of which we speak, ontology and epistemology will also be involved. In the philosophy of science has a certain importance also logic both for its connection with the deductive methods, and for its close ties with the philosophy of mathematics.
Philosophy of science can also be in the plural, as internal reflection to a scientific community on the philosophical aspects relating to a common discipline of competence, so we get the philosophy of physics, mathematics and other philosophical sectors.
It is part of the philosophy of science also the ethics of science, which deals with its moral aspects. "Science as an institution implies a tacit social contract among scientists so that each is dependent on the reliability of the other [...] the whole cognitive system of science is rooted in the moral integrity of the whole of the individual scientists.
In the historical development of the philosophy of science, particularly important reveals the twentieth century. At its beginning it were basic the studies of historians and philosophers Ernst Mach and Pierre Duhem that inspired the philosophers gathered in the Vienna Circle, a group of scholars who met regularly in Vienna from 1922 until 1936 to discuss issues of philosophy of science. Among the members of this group most active were Rudolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick. To be mentioned in the debate on philosophy of science, especially in relation to Popper, was Paul Feyerabend. Karl Popper, an occasional visitor to the Vienna Circle, contested the issue of ‘experimental’, to which opposed the criterion of falsifiability.
Incidentally, more or less in the same years developed, thanks to the initiative of Hans Reichenbach, the Berlin Circle, who took charge of the same themes, but with an emphasis on causality, statistics and the predictive power of science.
Kuhn criticized partially Popper’s falsificationism on the point concerning the casting aside of the theory in the case of empirical refutation of one of its elements, arguing that it should have been set aside only that single element and not the theory as a whole.
Also Lakatos, while welcoming the philosophical setting of Popper, claimed that were never the single refutations of empirical facts to determine the abandonment of a theory, because the questioning of scientific truth would cover only a marginal part of it, not its core, that although weakened in its overall certainty, would continue to be accepted as true. For a general theory to be abandoned, according to Lakatos, it should rather have a new comprehensive program of scientific research being able to give an account of the events: it is not the falsification in itself to cause the progress of the science, but the spirit of research and human ingenuity-
After the dissolution of the Vienna Circle in 1936, studies in this discipline continued in various European and American universities. Among the developments of the last decades of the twentieth century are remembered the important contributions of the American philosopher Thomas Kuhn and Hungarian Imre Lakatos related to research programs and to the progressive development and evolution of scientific theories.
Professor Mauro Dorato speaks of a "significant tension that existed among the objectives of the different philosophies (" local ") of the individual sciences, more and more " technical "and specialist, and the essential need of a general philosophy of science , seen in a synergistic context with other branches of philosophy – from ontology to epistemology, from metaphysics to ethics. "
He concludes his article with these words: "The philosopher of science, unlike the scholar of the foundations of the individual sciences, does not intended to raise the knowledge within a particular science. He / she has only the goal, not less important, to understand it better, comparing it with the image of the world that was deposited both in our pre-theoretical experience and in the implicit theories in the use of natural languages. It follows that the acquisition of a technical-scientific knowledge, if it comes from the philosopher of science inclined to a "synthesis" work, has the essential object, already mentioned, to probe the consequences of certain scientific theories, considered as "given" or acquired, on issues of "border line", which, for example, are those of the relationship between time and space of the physical world (space / time) and the time and space of our conscious experience, or among the numerous and complex neural connections and phenomenology of our mental states”.
@Henk,
let him/her do as liked. Fortunately, we are in a Social Research Network free and open to accept any kind of decent and polite thought. I am here, proud of myself and always ready to learn.
Thank you, Gianrocco
The very idea of a general philosophy of science relies on the assumption that there is this thing called science—as opposed to the various individual sciences. Indeed, unless we take the view that the various individual sciences do not share anything interesting in common in virtue of which they are sciences, there must be something like science in general.
Scientists use concepts and principles that are partly specific for their subject matter, but they also share part of them with colleagues working in different fields. Compare the biological notion of a natural kind with the general notion of confirmation of a hypothesis by certain evidence. Or compare the physical principle of the conservation of energy and the general principle of the unity of science. Scientists agree that all such notions and principles arent as crystal clear as one might wish.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780444515483
http://users.uoa.gr/~psillos/PapersI/4-Prospects%20of%20GPoS.pdf
Dear Subhash,
thank you for your very useful contribution, especially for the references of which I have just downloaded the one on General Philosophy of Science.
Best regards, Gianrocco
Dear George,
you are wright. That is why I wonder whether I can and should be present in RG, being an economist, learner in physics ans philosophy. But I like both and that is not the entire story because I am involved in inter and transdisciplinary studies since quite a time.
I have appreciated your message and I'll try my best.
Warm regards, Gianrocco
@Henk,
let him/her do as liked. Fortunately, we are in a Social Research Network free and open to accept any kind of decent and polite thought. I am here, proud of myself and always ready to learn.
Thank you, Gianrocco
Everybody should care about their work, let them do as liked. Every body has never same thought.
I think there is a need for a general philosophy of science. However I see a kind of circular problem (I am an amateur of the argument). In fact, there is much disagreement about what is science and this especially regarding humanistic sciences but also biology etc. The philosophy of science should determine which are the areas of research that can be described as scientific. But in order to do this it should identify a common paradigm. But this possibility has been greatly reduced by the resizing of Popper 'falsifiability. I apologize for the intrusion.
Philosophy of science, I assume is a necessary blue print on which the human society creates, advances and utilizes science to its service. It is that philosophy that forces the entanglement of different parts of science to function together for better results. The problem I see at the moment is that philosophers of science in most part are devoted and passionate thinkers who observe science not by being inside but from outside and make analysis about science. It is easier to comment on an art performance than to be one of the actors in the play and do flawless performance.
There are many knowers in this world (such as human, monkey, fishes, bees,…), each knower has their own general cognizing ways decided by the species’ biological structure. We call these cognizing fruits knowledges (such as human knowledge, monkey knowledge, fishes knowledge, bees knowledge,…) and some of the knowledge is called science (such as human science, but I don’t know exactly what happen in other species) and science can be divided into branches according to different cognizing fields (in human science we have mathematics, physics, linguistics, … but I don’t know exactly what happen in other species). So, one thing is certain that we have general science and the branches of science------there should be a general philosophy of science and philosophies of science branches in human knowledge mansion.
" ... the logical clarification of scientific concepts, sentences, and methods releases us from inhibitory prejudices. Logical and episte-mological analysis does not want to impose constraints on scientificc research; on the contrary: it provides science with a scope of formal possibilities that is as complete as possible and from which the
possibility that corresponds to the experience in question is to be selected"
http://www.mcmp.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/students/math/leitgeb_phil_sci.pdf
This question has a lot to do with “what philosophy is” and “what science is”.
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