scie 6

• Logical positivism


  The only meaningful philosophical problems are those which can be solved by logical analysis; marriage of empiricism with mathematical logic.
• Relativism


  The doctrine that knowledge, truth and morality exist in relation to culture, society or historical context and are not absolute.
• Realism


  The view of an object that exists in reality independently of our conceptual framework.
• Operationalism


  A form of positivism; defines scientific concepts in terms of the operations used to determine or prove them.
• Reductionism


  The reducing of one science to some other (more fundamental) science; explaining a phenomenon in the simplest terms or most fundamental theory.
• Emergence


  The idea that the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts.
• Chance


  Possibility of something happening.
• Science is ‘theory-laden’
• Thomas Kuhn's theory of how science evolves


  1. Scientific communities share assumptions

  2. Work within a paradigm is normal science

  3. Excess of unsolvable puzzles leads to new paradigm

  4. New paradigm adopted during scientific revolution

  5. Produces revolutionary science.
• Formal criteria used by scientific communities

  • Explanatory power
  • Simplicity
  • Fertility
  • Ability to predict unforeseen results
• Epistemé


  Knowledge in the sense of understanding that is fitting within a conceptual framework.
• Tekhne


  Skill or know-how; practical knowledge or ability to do something.
• Gnosis


  The intuitive apprehension of truth, or knowledge gained through direct insight into reality; spiritual truths.
• Coherence theory of truth


  The truth of any (true) proposition consists in its coherence with some specified set of propositions.
• Correspondence theory of truth


  The truth (or falsity) of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes that world.
• Three fundamental metaphysical assumptions of science

  • Nature is ordered
  • This order is comprehensible to the human race
  • Our understanding of this order can be communicated without subjective bias.