Philosophy of Science

• Introductory History & Philosophy of Science 6/12

• Scientific Odyssey (History & Philosophy of Science)

• History & Philosophy of Science | Rotman

• Philosophy of Science | Jake Sanders

• An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science

• Philosophy of Natural & Social Science

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Kuhn's Intellectual Path

• Philosophy of Deep Learning

• Philosophical Posthumanism

Talks

• Storytelling of Science

People to study

• Imhotep – Early medicine, architecture
• Shen Nong, Huangdi – Traditional Chinese medicine, agriculture
• Confucius – Ethics, philosophy of knowledge
• Thales of Miletus – Natural philosophy, geometry
• Anaximander – Cosmology, geography
• Heraclitus – Theory of change, metaphysics
• Parmenides – Ontology, logic
• Anaxagoras – Atomism, cosmology
• Pythagoras – Mathematics, numerology
• Hippocrates – Medicine, Hippocratic Corpus
• Plato – "Republic," "Timaeus" (philosophy, idealism)
• Aristotle – "Physics," "Metaphysics," "Organon" (logic, natural science)
• Euclid – "Elements" (geometry)
• Plotinus – Neoplatonism, metaphysics
• Archimedes – "On Floating Bodies," "The Method" (physics, calculus precursor)
• Eratosthenes – Geography, earth measurement
• Hipparchus – Astronomy, trigonometry
• John Philoponus – Critique of Aristotelian physics
• Al-Khwarizmi – "Kitab al-Jabr" (algebra, algorithms)
• Al-Kindi – Optics, philosophy, translation movement
• Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) – "Book of Optics" (scientific method, optics)
• Avicenna (Ibn Sina) – "The Canon of Medicine" (medicine, logic, physics)
• Roger Bacon – "Opus Majus" (experimental science)
• Nicole Oresme – Motion theory, planetary physics
• Sir Francis Bacon – "Novum Organum" (scientific method, empiricism)
• Nicolaus Copernicus – "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres" (heliocentrism)
• Andreas Vesalius – "De humani corporis fabrica" (human anatomy)
• Galileo Galilei – "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" (physics, astronomy)
• René Descartes – "Discourse on Method," "Meditations" (rationalism, analytic geometry)
• Isaac Newton – "Principia Mathematica" (calculus, mechanics, gravity)
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Calculus, metaphysics, formal logic
• Carl Linnaeus – "Systema Naturae" (taxonomy, classification)
• David Hume – "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" (empiricism, skepticism)
• Adam Smith – "The Wealth of Nations" (economics, philosophy of human behavior)
• Antoine Lavoisier – "Elements of Chemistry" (chemical revolution, oxygen theory)
• Pierre-Simon Laplace – "Celestial Mechanics" (probability, mathematical physics)
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck – Early theory of evolution
• Michael Faraday – "Experimental Researches in Electricity" (electromagnetism, field theory)
• John Stuart Mill – "A System of Logic" (scientific methodology, inductive reasoning)
• Hermann von Helmholtz – "On the Conservation of Force" (thermodynamics, neuroscience)
• James Clerk Maxwell – "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" (electromagnetism, statistical physics)
• Ernst Mach – "The Science of Mechanics" (physics, philosophy of science)
• Immanuel Kant – "Critique of Pure Reason" (epistemology, metaphysics)
• William Whewell – "The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" (scientific methodology)
• Charles Darwin – "On the Origin of Species" (evolution, natural selection)
• Karl Popper – "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" (falsifiability, scientific method)
• Thomas Kuhn – "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (paradigm shifts)
• Paul Feyerabend – "Against Method" (epistemological anarchism)
• Imre Lakatos – "The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (scientific progression)

History

• Changes in the mosaic of accepted theories.
• The history of science shows that our views concerning even most simple phenomena change through time.

Philosophy

• Is there anything like absolute knowledge?
  • Can analytic propositions(Formal Science) be absolutely certain? Yes
  • Can synthetic propositions(Empirical) be absolutely certain? No
    • Sensation <- Our precepts can be different from reality
    • Induction <- Our experience is always limited
    • Theory-Ladeness <- Not pure facts, led by theory
  • Fallibilism -> No synthetic proposition can be infallible. Empirical knowledge cannot be certain.
  • There is no such thing as proof in empirical science.
• How do we evaluate competing theories?
  • Scientific Method
  • Acceptance, Use and Pursuit
  • Method -> Implicit Expectations
  • Methodology -> Explicitly formulated rules/plan
  • Scientific Mosaic -> A set of all accepted theories and employed methods.
• What's mechanism of scientific change?
  • Both scientific theories and methods of theory evaluation are changeable.
  • 0th law -> compatibility -> At any moment in time, the elements of scientific mosaic are compatible with each other.
  • 1st law -> Scientific Inertia -> An element of the mosaic maintains it's state in the mosaic unless replaced by some other elements.
  • 2nd law -> Theory Acceptance -> In order to become accepted into the mosaic, a theory is assessed by the method actually employed at the time.
  • The third law -> Method Employment -> A method becomes employed only when it is deducible from other employed methods and accepted theories of the time.
  • Contextual Appraisal
  • Mosaic split theorem
• Given that even time-honored theories become rejected, is there scientific progress?
• What makes theory scientific?
  • Three components -> Demarcation, Acceptance and Compatibility Criteria
  • An empirical theory is scientific if, it explains by and large, the known facts of the domain and it is testable(falsifiable) at least in principle.
  • Note: this is only our contemporary demarcation criteria.