Philosophy of science

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

(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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

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

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes, i.

Wholeness and the Implicate Order is a book by theoretical physicist David Bohm.

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.

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.

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 Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society was first established in 1974 to promote philosophical conferences, workshops, summer schools, and research that are inspired by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle.

The Karl Jaspers Prize or Karl-Jaspers-Preis is a German philosophy award named after Karl Jaspers and awarded by the city of Heidelberg and the University of Heidelberg.

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

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.

Michael M. Nikoletseas is a medical scientist, philosopher, classicist, poet.

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.

Vinciane Despret is a Belgian philosopher of science, associate professor, at the University of Liège, Belgium.

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.

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.

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

Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera (1562 – ca. 1622) was a Spanish writer in holistic medical philosophy in the late 16th – early 17th century.

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

The Center for Philosophy of Science is an academic center located at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania dedicated to research in the philosophy of science.

This is a list of articles in philosophy of science.

The International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology is one of the members of the International Council for Science (ICSU).

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