Working
scientists usually take for granted a set of basic assumptions that are needed
to justify a scientific method: (1) that there is an objective reality shared
by all rational observers; (2) that this objective reality is governed by
natural laws; (3) that these laws can be discovered by means of systematic observation
and experimentation. Philosophy of science seeks a deep understanding of what
these underlying assumptions mean and whether they are valid. Most
contributions to the philosophy of science have come from philosophers, who
frequently view the beliefs of most scientists as superficial or naive—thus
there is often a degree of antagonism between working scientists and
philosophers of science.
John Locke
The
belief that all observers share a common reality is known as realism. It can be contrasted with anti-realism, the belief that there is no
valid concept of absolute truth such that things that are true for one observer
are true for all observers. The most commonly defended form of anti-realism is idealism, the belief that the mind or
spirit is the most basic essence, and that each mind generates its own reality.
In an idealistic world-view, what is true for one mind need not be
true for other minds.
There
are different schools of thought in philosophy of science. The most popular
position is empiricism, which claims that knowledge is
created by a process involving observation and that scientific theories are the
result of generalizations from such observations. Empiricism generally encompasses
inductivism, a position that tries to
explain the way general theories can be justified by the finite number of
observations humans can make and the hence finite amount of empirical evidence
available to confirm scientific theories. This is necessary because the number
of predictions those theories make is infinite, which means that they cannot be
known from the finite amount of evidence using deductive logic only. Many versions of
empiricism exist, with the predominant ones being bayesianism and the hypothetico-deductive
method.
Empiricism
has stood in contrast to rationalism, the
position originally associated with Descartes, which holds that knowledge is
created by the human intellect, not by observation. A significant twentieth
century version of rationalism is critical
rationalism, first defined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rejected the way that
empiricism describes the connection between theory and observation. He claimed
that theories are not generated by observation, but that observation is made in
the light of theories and that the only way a theory can be affected by observation
is when it comes in conflict with it. Popper proposed falsifiability as the landmark of scientific
theories, and falsification as
the empirical method, to replace verifiability and induction by purely
deductive notions. Popper further claimed that there is actually only one
universal method, and that this method is not specific to science: The negative
method of criticism, trial and error.
It covers all products of the human mind, including science, mathematics,
philosophy, and art
Another
approach, instrumentalism,
colloquially termed "shut up and calculate", emphasizes the utility
of theories as instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. It claims
that scientific theories are black boxes with only their input (initial
conditions) and output (predictions) being relevant. Consequences, notions and
logical structure of the theories are claimed to be something that should
simply be ignored and that scientists shouldn't make a fuss about (see interpretations
of quantum mechanics).
Finally,
another approach often cited in debates of scientific
skepticism against controversial movements like "scientific
creationism", is methodological
naturalism. Its main point is that a difference between natural and supernatural explanations should be made,
and that science should be restricted methodologically to natural explanations.
That the restriction is merely methodological (rather than ontological) means
that science should not consider supernatural explanations itself, but should
not claim them to be wrong either. Instead, supernatural explanations should be
left a matter of personal belief outside the scope of science. Methodological
naturalism maintains that proper science requires strict adherence to empirical study and independent
verification as a process for properly developing and evaluating
explanations for observable
phenomena. The absence of these standards, arguments from
authority, biased observational
studies and other common fallacies are frequently cited by
supporters of methodological naturalism as criteria for the dubious claims they
criticize not to be true science.
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