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The Philosophy of Science Portal

Sir Isaac Newton at 46 in Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait

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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According to Plato, Knowledge is what is both true and believed, though not all that is both true and believed counts as knowledge.

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of Western philosophy that studies the nature and scope of knowledge. The term "epistemology" is based on the Greek words "ἐπιστήμη or episteme" (knowledge) and "λόγος or logos" (account/explanation); it is thought to have been coined by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier. In Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, the Sanskrit term for the equivalent branch of study is "pramana."

Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. In other words, epistemology primarily addresses the following questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?".

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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.

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"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable."

— Albert Einstein in a response to Alfred Kerr

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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".

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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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