What is Philosophy of Science?

Philosophy of science is an interdisciplinary field of study developed in the 19th and 20th century to explain the procedures that lead to both historical and contemporary developments in science. It draws from philosophy, history of science, and various scientific disciplines. It has a mutual relation with the history of science as a field of study. On the one hand, philosophy of science observes the ways in which new scientific theories have been created on the foundation of earlier theories, and the ways in which these new theories have been accepted by scientists. Thus, it benefits from results of studies by historians of science. On the other hand, philosophy of science serves history of science by developing new methodological approaches that can help historians of science to better understand and contextualize the developments in science.

The Field of Philosophy of Science

For example, the importance of errors in scientific discoveries, highlighted in philosophy of science, help historians of science to not focus only on scientific achievements, and instead investigate historical sources pursuing for errors that lead to suggestion of an innovative scientific theory. This mutual relation, however, is more acknowledged by historians of science than philosophers of science. Although the philosophy of science is a relatively new field of study, the works written throughout several centuries earlier by scholars like Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and David Hume were fundamental for the establishment of this field.

The philosophy of science deals with a number of key questions, one of which is that what does qualify to be called science? Can we call whatever has been studied systematically by humans a science? Answering this question leads to setting boundaries between science and non-science or pseudoscience. While many philosophers of science tried to define science, there is no universally accepted definition for science.

The History of Philosophy of Science

In the early 20th century, influenced by the new experimental developments in different scientific disciplines, a group of philosophers known as logical positivists considered observation as the key factor in defining science. In their view, the ultimate basis of knowledge rests upon public experimental verification rather than upon personal experience. After collecting enough experimental data, the scientists try to find a theory that governs these data. The logical positivists believed metaphysical doctrines are not false but meaningless—that the “great unanswerable questions” about substance, causality, freedom, and God are unanswerable just because they are not genuine questions at all. All genuine knowledge about nature can be expressed in a single language common to all the sciences. Although logical positivism widely gained the attention of philosophers of science, shortly after its first appearance, its theoretical foundation was objected to by several figures. Among them, Karl Popper, a younger contemporary of the main leaders of logical positivism, was the most influential philosopher. His criticism of logical positivism was based on two crucial points.

Positivists in Philosophy of Science

From logical positivists perspective, experience and observation is the starting point of any scientific expedition. Popper argues that it is impossible to ask a scientist to experience without offering him a theoretical background. This means that, contrary to what logical positivists were claiming, theory is prior to observation. Popper’s second argument against logical positivism was related to the logical foundation of positivism. The fact that scientists are able to conclude a theory from a series of experiments is based on a principle of induction. Popper asked how this principle can be justified? One cannot justify it solely based on induction, as this would lead to circular reasoning. Thus, Popper believed that the whole positivism is founded on a ground that can not be justified, so it cannot offer a valid explanation for the validity of scientific theories.

One of the common examples mentioned to show the positivists’ approach and its problem is the case of the white swan. One can observe an infinite number of white swans, and then conclude that every swan is white. But this induction is vulnerable because at the moment that we observe a black swan, as it was discovered that the black swans exist in Australia, your conclusion will be invalid. Thus, no one can claim that the infinite number of observations of a case can justify the induction’s conclusion, because there is a possibility that the next day an opposite case will be observed. This being so, Popper argued that, on the contrary, the falsity of the conclusion of an induction can be proven by the observation of an opposite case. The moment that we observe a black swan, we have shown that the statement that “all swans are white” is false. Popper used this to establish his own explanation of scientific exploration.

He said, contrary to what logical positivists claimed, scientific inquiries do not start by experiments and observations, rather they start by conjectures. Then, these conjectures will be tested by scientists trying to refute them based on observations. The theories that survive after this testing process will be accepted as scientific theories, but only temporarily, until someone can refute them. Scientific theories can be regarded as falsifiable when they make specific predictions that can be proven wrong by observation or experimentation. Finding that starting conjectures depend on scientists’ ingenuity and psychological state, thus cannot be explained logically.

The Development of Philosophy of Science

The development of philosophy of science does not stop by Karl Popper and many other philosophers contributed to expanding this field in the past century. Nevertheless, philosophy of science does not only focus on the past, and it deals with questions that are related to our today life and the future of scientific discoveries.

The philosophy of science addresses ethical implications and societal impacts of scientific advancements, such as in areas like biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and climate change. It is also tied with other branches of philosophy, such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of physics, which often intersect in discussions about scientific theories and their implications. It investigates the influence of new scientific discoveries and developments in fields like quantum mechanics, cosmology, and neuroscience, which may lead to further philosophical debates about the nature of reality, causality, and the mind-body problem.

This article is contributed by Sajjad Nikfahm Khubravan