. The study of science in the broadest sense, its nature, aims, methods, tools, parts, range, and relation to other subjects.
The study of how science works is normally taken as a fair guide to how it should. This study is often called methodology, a term which can also be relative, e.g. methodology of history. Literally ‘methodology’ means ‘study of method’; a method is not itself a methodology. Inductive logic, or the logic of induction, is normally limited to the study of INDUCTION as a mode of reasoning. Whether strictly there is any inductive reasoning is a question philosophy of science shares with philosophy of logic. But philosophy of science itself studies the process, taken as a whole, whereby we start from premises about the world and reach, by rational means, conclusions about the world which cannot be reached from those premises by deduction alone. Everyday thinking also uses such a process, but science is more systematic and method-conscious, and so more often studied.
The ‘mathematical’ sciences, especially physics, need special mathematical techniques, but scientific argument in general is often taken to presuppose a mathematical apparatus for applying the notions of PROBABILITY and CONFIRMATION, both of which themselves raise many problems. The calculus of chances (see PROBABILITY), which underlies probability, is often, but not always, taken as the basis for scientific procedure.
When studying the nature of scientific reasoning we naturally ask how it can be justified, and what are its purposes. In what circumstances can a scientific statement properly be accepted? In particular what role does simplicity play, and when is one hypothesis simpler than another? Apart from prediction and control the main purpose of science is perhaps EXPLANATION, and an important part of philosophy of science concerns what this is and how it is achieved. LAWS of nature, CAUSATION and scientific necessity (see MODALITIES) are important concepts here: what are they, and are they real or should they somehow be explained away or reduced to other notions?
The difficulties about acceptability, and about what laws of nature are, lead to questions about the nature of scientific systems. Are they perhaps abstract systems which we fit to the world as we might choose between alternative geometries (see SPACE)? Just as there are problems about a system as a whole, so there are about the terms in it. What sort of meaning and definition can they have? (Cf. POSITIVISM for operationalism.) Should so-called theoretical entities such as electrons, which cannot be directly observed, be postulated as really existing things, or should they be treated as LOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONS? These problems about the terms and structures of scientific hypotheses lead one to ask about the properties a good hypothesis should have, and about the respective roles of observation and experiment, and the nature and types of measurement (see MAGNITUDES).
Moreover, how does science develop? Is it through the orderly replacement of hypotheses found to be false by better ones, or in some other way? Does it progressively approach an absolute truth? And how far does science extend? Do geology, astronomy, psychology, sociology, even history, have equal claims with physics, chemistry and biology to be called sciences (cf. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, philosophy of HISTORY), and can they be reduced to a common basis, as physicalism (in one of the senses of that term: see POSITIVISM) asserts?
R.Boyd, P.Gasper and J.D.Trout (eds), The Philosophy of Science, MIT Press, 1991. (41 collected essays, divided into sections with introduction to each.)
L.J.Cohen, The Implications of Induction, Methuen, 1970. (Develops alternative to calculus of chances as basis of confirmation.)
M.Giaquinto, ‘Science and ideology’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1983–4. (Defends rationality of science against various irrationalist approaches without making this a mere matter of definition.)
*D.A.Gillies, Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century: Four Central Themes, Blackwell, 1993. (The themes are inductivism, conventionalism, observation, demarcation (of science as such).)
*I.Hacking (ed.), Scientific Revolutions, Oxford UP, 1981 (Essays stemming from the work of Kuhn.)
I.Hacking, Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science, Cambridge UP, 1983. (Discusses scientific objectivity (‘representing’) and experimental method (‘intervening’).)
T.S.Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Chicago UP, 1962, 2nd edn with postscript, 1970. (One, controversial, view of how science develops. For criticism see I.Lakatos and A.Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge UP, 1970, and Hacking (ed.) (above). See also P.Horwich (ed.), World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science, MIT Press, 1993 (conference papers reflecting Kuhn’s influence and with ‘Afterwords’ by him).)
P.Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, Routledge, 1993.
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 19, 1993. (Issue devoted to philosophy of science.)
H.Putnam, ‘What is “realism”?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1975–6. (Science and truth. Explained in his Meaning and the Moral Sciences, RKP, 1978.)
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