Flashcards: Philosophy of science

The Duhem–Quine thesis, also called the Duhem–Quine problem, after Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine, is that it is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions (also called auxiliary assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses).

(For other uses, see Eternity (disambiguation).)("Sempiternal" redirects here. For the album by Bring Me the Horizon, see Sempiternal (album).) Eternity in common parlance is either an infinite or an indeterminately long period of time.

Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings.

In numerous fields of study, the component of instability within a system is generally characterized by some of the outputs or internal states growing without bounds.

Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor, and lex parsimoniae in Latin, which means law of parsimony) is a problem-solving principle attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher and theologian.

Objectivity is a central philosophical concept, related to reality and truth, which has been variously defined by sources.

A physical law or scientific law is a theoretical statement "inferred from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present.

Pseudoscience is a term used to describe a claim, belief, or practice presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to the scientific method.

Scientism is a belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most valuable part of human learning—to the exclusion of other viewpoints.

In research design, especially in psychology, social sciences, life sciences, and physics, operationalization is a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon that is not directly measurable, though its existence is indicated by other phenomena.

Reproducibility is the ability of an entire experiment or study to be duplicated, either by the same researcher or by someone else working independently.

Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which argues that the conscious mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system (or the brain), but also what occurs or exists outside the subject.

Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study.

The anthropic principle (from Greek anthropos, meaning "human") is the philosophical consideration that observations of the Universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it.

Experience is the knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it.

Falsifiability or refutability of a statement, hypothesis, or theory is the inherent possibility that it can be proved false.

Holism (from Greek ὅλος holos "all, whole, entire") is the idea that systems (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) and their properties should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts.

Indeterminism is the concept that events (certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or not caused deterministically (cf. causality) by prior events.

The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of finite and infinite possible universes, including the universe in which we live.

An operational definition is the application of operationalization used in defining the terms of a process (or set of validation tests) needed to determine the nature of an item or phenomenon (e.g. a variable, term, or object) and its properties such as duration, quantity, extension in space, chemical composition, etc.

A paradigm shift, as identified by American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline.

Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that some aspects of reality are ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc.

Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations.

A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation or decision-making of that individual or organization.

Instrumentalism is one of a multitude of modern schools of thought created by scientists and philosophers throughout the 20th century.

The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences.

The Physics (Greek: Φυσικὴ ἀκρόασις Phusike akroasis; Latin: Physica, or Physicae Auscultationes, meaning "lectures on nature") of Aristotle is one of the foundational books of Western science and philosophy.

Rationality is the quality or state of being reasonable, based on facts or reason.

The theory of descriptions is the philosopher Bertrand Russell's most significant contribution to the philosophy of language.

The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge understood in the classic philosophical sense, since it focuses on the alleged lack of justification for either:

A working hypothesis is a hypothesis that is provisionally accepted as a basis for further research in the hope that a tenable theory will be produced, even if the hypothesis ultimately fails.

Commensurability is a concept, in philosophy of science, whereby scientific theories are commensurable if scientists can discuss using a shared nomenclature that allows direct comparison of theories to determine which theory is more valid or useful.

This is a list of articles in philosophy of science.

The sociology and philosophy of science, as well as the entire field of science studies, have in the 20th century been occupied with the question of large-scale patterns and trends in the development of science, and asking questions about how science "works" both in a philosophical and practical sense.

Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes, i.

Biological determinism is the belief that human behavior is controlled solely by an individual's genes or some component of physiology.

In the philosophy of science, models of scientific inquiry have two functions: first, to provide a descriptive account of how scientific inquiry is carried out in practice, and second, to provide an explanatory account of why scientific inquiry succeeds as well as it appears to do in arriving at genuine knowledge.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant uses the terms "analytic" and "synthetic" to divide propositions into two types.

In mathematics and empirical science, quantification (or quantitation) is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into quantities.

The science of morality may refer to various forms of ethical naturalism grounding morality in rational, empirical consideration of the natural world.

Cartesian doubt is a form of methodological skepticism or scepticism associated with the writings and methodology of René Descartes (1596-1650).

Form of life (German: Lebensform) is a technical term used by Ludwig Wittgenstein and others in the continental philosophy and philosophy of science traditions.