Index of philosophy of science articles

This is a list of articles in philosophy of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

A-series and B-series
A-series and B-series
A-series and B-series are two different descriptions of the temporal ordering relation among events. The two series differ principally in their use of tense to describe the temporal relation between events...
A New Model of the Universe
Abductive reasoning
Abductive reasoning
Abduction is a kind of logical inference described by Charles Sanders Peirce as "guessing". The term refers to the process of arriving at an explanatory hypothesis. Peirce said that to abduce a hypothetical explanation a from an observed surprising circumstance b is to surmise that a may be true...
Abner Shimony
Abner Shimony
Abner Shimony is an American physicist and philosopher of science specializing in quantum theory.-Career:Shimony obtained his BA in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University in 1948, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1950. He obtained his Ph.D...
Abstinence
Abstinence
Abstinence is a voluntary restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure. Most frequently, the term refers to sexual abstinence, or abstention from alcohol or food. The practice can arise from religious prohibitions or practical...
Adolf Grünbaum
Adolf Grünbaum
Adolf Grünbaum is a philosopher of science and a critic of psychoanalysis. He is also well-known as a critic of Karl Popper's philosophy of science....
Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
Alexandre Koyré
Alexandre Koyré
Alexandre Koyré , sometimes anglicised as Alexander Koiré, was a French philosopher of Russian origin who wrote on the history and philosophy of science.-Life:...
Alfred Jules Ayer
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
Alfred Wilm
Alfred Wilm
Alfred Wilm , was a German metallurgist, who invented the alloy Al-3.5–5.5%Cu-Mg-Mn, now known as duraluminium, which is used extensively in aircraft....
Alison Wylie
Alison Wylie
Alison Wylie is a Canadian feminist philosopher of science at the University of Washington, Seattle. In her own words, Wylie describes her interests in the following:...
Altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...
André-Marie Ampère
André-Marie Ampère
André-Marie Ampère was a French physicist and mathematician who is generally regarded as one of the main discoverers of electromagnetism. The SI unit of measurement of electric current, the ampere, is named after him....
Andreas Speiser
Andreas Speiser
Andreas Speiser was a Swiss Mathematician and Philosopher of Science.-Life and work:Speiser studied since 1904 in Göttingen notably with David Hilbert, Felix Klein, Hermann Minkowski. In 1917 he became full time professor at the University of Zurich but later relocated in Basel...
Androcentrism
Androcentrism
Androcentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing male human beings or the masculine point of view at the center of one's view of the world and its culture and history...
Anthropic principle
Anthropic principle
In astrophysics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the philosophical argument that observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. Some proponents of the argument reason that it explains why the Universe has the age and the fundamental...
Anti-Supernaturalism
Anti-supernaturalism
Anti-Supernaturalism is a philosophical presupposition that claims one should, on principle, avoid any belief or explanation that involves supernatural causation.-For Anti-Supernaturalism:*-Against Anti-Supernaturalism:*...
Antiscience
Antiscience
Antiscience is a position that rejects science and the scientific method. People holding antiscientific views are generally skeptical that science is an objective method, as it purports to be, or that it generates universal knowledge. They also contend that scientific reductionism in particular is...
Anton Kržan
Anton Kržan
Anton Kržan was a Croatian philosopher, university professor and a rector.Professor Kržan was the third rector magnificus of the University of Zagreb, in the academic year 1876/1877. Since that year, the choice of rector is per turnum . He received his Ph.D...
Approximation
Approximation
An approximation is a representation of something that is not exact, but still close enough to be useful. Although approximation is most often applied to numbers, it is also frequently applied to such things as mathematical functions, shapes, and physical laws.Approximations may be used because...
Archimedes
Archimedes
Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an...
Aristotelian physics
Aristotelian physics
Aristotelian Physics the natural sciences, are described in the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle . In the Physics, Aristotle established general principles of change that govern all natural bodies; both living and inanimate, celestial and terrestrial—including all motion, change in respect...
Arthur Fine
Arthur Fine
Arthur Fine is an American philosopher of science teaching at the University of Washington . Before moving to UW he taught for many years at Northwestern University and, before that, at Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Chicago...
Arthur Pap
Arthur Pap
Arthur Pap was a philosopher in the school of analytic philosophy. Pap published a number of books regarding analytical philosophy, its function within philosophy, and its impact on society....
Artificial consciousness
Artificial consciousness
Artificial consciousness , also known as machine consciousness or synthetic consciousness, is a field related to artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics whose aim is to define that which would have to be synthesized were consciousness to be found in an engineered artifact .Neuroscience...
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
Asa Gray
Asa Gray
-References:*Asa Gray. Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936.*Asa Gray. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.*Asa Gray. Plant Sciences. 4 vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2001....
Atomism
Atomism
Atomism is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes...
Augustine Eriugena
Augustine Eriugena
De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae is a Latin treatise written around 655 by an anonymous Irish writer and philosopher known as Augustinus Hibernicus or the Irish Augustine....
Avicenna
Avicenna
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...
Barry Loewer
Barry Loewer
Barry Loewer is a philosopher and Chairperson of the Rutgers University Department of Philosophy and director of the . He obtained his BA from Amherst College and his PhD from Stanford...
Bas van Fraassen
Bayesian probability
Bayesian probability
Bayesian probability is one of the different interpretations of the concept of probability and belongs to the category of evidential probabilities. The Bayesian interpretation of probability can be seen as an extension of logic that enables reasoning with propositions, whose truth or falsity is...
Behaviorism
Behaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
Berlin Circle
Bernard d'Espagnat
Bernard d'Espagnat
Bernard d'Espagnat is a French theoretical physicist, philosopher of science, and author, best known for his work on the nature of reality....
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
Biological determinism
Biological determinism
Biological determination is the interpretation of humans and human life from a strictly biological point of view, and it is closely related to genetic determinism...
Biological imperative
Blockhead (computer system)
Bohr–Einstein debates
Bohr–Einstein debates
The Bohr–Einstein debates were a series of public disputes about quantum mechanics between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, who were two of its founders. Their debates are remembered because of their importance to the philosophy of science. An account of them has been written by Bohr in an article...
Bonifaty Kedrov
Bonifaty Kedrov
Bonifaty Mikhailovich Kedrov was a notable Soviet researcher, philosopher, logician, chemist and psychologist. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1918.Kedrov had a Doctor of Philosophy degree and specialized in philosophical questions of the natural sciences...
Boris Hessen
Boris Hessen
Boris Mikhailovich Hessen , also Gessen was a Soviet physicist, philosopher and historian of science...
C. D. Broad
Cargo cult science
Cargo cult science
Cargo cult science refers to practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but are missing "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty". The term was first used by the physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement...
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the research team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership...
Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel was a philosopher of science and a major figure in 20th-century logical empiricism...
Carl Linnaeus
Carlos Castrodeza
Carlos Castrodeza
Carlos Castrodeza Ruíz de la Cuesta is a Spanish biologist and philosopher. He teaches Philosophy of Science at Madrid's Complutense University.-Work:...
Carnap-Ramsey sentences
Carnap-Ramsey sentences
In philosophy, Ramsey sentences refer to an attempt by logical positivist philosopher Rudolf Carnap to reconstruct theoretical propositions such that they gained empirical content....
Causality
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds
Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds
The Centre for History and Philosophy of Science is a research institution devoted to the historical and philosophical study of science and technology, based in the Department of Philosophy, at the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England...
Christopher Potter (author)
Christopher Potter (author)
Christopher Potter is the former Publisher and Managing Director of Fourth Estate. He has a BSC in mathematics from King's College London and an MSc in the History and Philosophy of Science. He has written for The Sunday Times, The Independent and The Standard. He divides his time between London...
Classical mechanics
Classical mechanics
In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
Classification of the sciences (Peirce)
Classification of the sciences (Peirce)
The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce did considerable work over a period of years on the classification of sciences . His classifications are of interest both as a map for navigating his philosophy and as an accomplished polymath's survey of research in his time...
Claus Emmeche
Claus Emmeche
Claus Emmeche is a Danish theoretical biologist and philosopher. He is associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, and is head of the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies at the Faculty of Science .His research interests are in philosophy of science, especially...
Closed circle
Closed circle
A closed circle argument is one that is unfalsifiable.Psychoanalytic theory, for example, is held up by the proponents of Karl Popper as an example of an ideology rather than a science...
Cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
Commensurability (philosophy of science)
Commensurability (philosophy of science)
Commensurability is a concept in the philosophy of science. Scientific theories are described as commensurable if one can compare them to determine which is more accurate; if theories are incommensurable, there is no way in which one can compare them to each other in order to determine which is...
Computational humor
Computational humor
Computational humor is a branch of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence which uses computers in humor research. It is not to be confused with computer humor ....
Computer ethics
Computer ethics
Computer Ethics is a branch of practical philosophy which deals with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct....
Confirmation holism
Confirmation holism
Confirmation holism, also called epistemological holism is the claim that a single scientific theory cannot be tested in isolation; a test of one theory always depends on other theories and hypotheses....
Conjecture
Conjecture
A conjecture is a proposition that is unproven but is thought to be true and has not been disproven. Karl Popper pioneered the use of the term "conjecture" in scientific philosophy. Conjecture is contrasted by hypothesis , which is a testable statement based on accepted grounds...
Conjectures and Refutations
Conjectures and Refutations
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge is a book written by philosopher Karl Popper.Published in 1963 by Routledge, this book is a collection of his lectures and papers that summarised his thoughts on the philosophy of science...
Connectionism
Connectionism
Connectionism is a set of approaches in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, that models mental or behavioral phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnected networks of simple units...
Consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
Conservation biology
Conservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica was a Romanian philosopher, essayist and poet. His preoccupations were throughout all philosophy, from epistemology, philosophy of culture, axiology and philosophic anthropology to ontology and logics, from the history of philosophy to systematic philosophy, from ancient to...
Construct (philosophy of science)
Construct (philosophy of science)
A construct in the philosophy of science is an ideal object, where the existence of the thing may be said to depend upon a subject's mind. This, as opposed to a "real" object, where existence does not seem to depend on the existence of a mind....
Constructive empiricism
Constructive empiricism
In philosophy, constructive empiricism is a form of empiricism. Bas van Fraassen is nearly solely responsible for the initial development of constructive empiricism; its historically most important presentation appears in his The Scientific Image...
Constructive realism
Constructive realism
Constructive realism is a branch of philosophy, specifically the philosophy of science. It was developed in the late 1980s by Friedrich Wallner in Vienna. In his paper abstract on constructive realism, Wallner describes it as follows:...
Contextual empiricism
Contextual empiricism
Contextual empiricism is a theory about validating scientific knowledge. It is the view that scientific knowledge is shaped by contextual values as well as constitutive ones....
Conventionalism
Conventionalism
Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on agreements in society, rather than on external reality...
Copernican Revolution (metaphor)
Copernican Revolution (metaphor)
The Copernican Revolution, which in terms of astronomy amounted to the acceptance of heliocentrism as suggested by Nicolaus Copernicus, has also been used widely as a metaphor supporting descriptions of modernity...
Crabtree's Bludgeon
Crabtree's Bludgeon
Crabtree's Bludgeon is a foil to Occam's Razor , and may be expressed so:"No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated."...
Critical realism
Critical realism
In the philosophy of perception, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events...
Data system
Data system
A data system is a term used to refer to an organised collection of symbols and processes that may be used to operate on such symbols . Any organised collection of symbols and symbol-manipulating operations can be considered a data system. Hence, human-speech analysed at the level of phonemes can...
David Hilbert
David Hilbert
David Hilbert was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of...
David Hull
David Hull
David Lee Hull was a philosopher with a particular interest in the philosophy of biology. In addition to his academic prominence, he was well-known as a gay man who fought for the rights of other gay and lesbian philosophers....
David N. Stamos
David N. Stamos
David N. Stamos is a philosopher of science and teaches in the Philosophy Department at York University He studied in York University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1996." He emphasizes a interdisciplinary approach for philosophy: "To answer a question such as, for example, What is human...
David Papineau
David Papineau
David Papineau is an academic philosopher. He works as Professor of Philosophy of Science at King's College London, having previously taught for several years at Cambridge University and been a fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge...
David Stenhouse
David Stenhouse
David Stenhouse was born in Sutton, Surrey, England on 23 May 1932. He proposed the "4-factor" theory of evolutionary intelligence and was active in ethology, education, evolutionary biology and philosophy of science in Australia and New Zealand....
Dawkins vs. Gould
Dawkins vs. Gould
Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest is a book by philosopher of biology Kim Sterelny about the differing views of biologists Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. When first published in 2001 it became an international bestseller...
Decision theory
Decision theory
Decision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...
Deductive-nomological model
Demarcation problem
Demarcation problem
The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how and where to draw the lines around science. The boundaries are commonly drawn between science and non-science, between science and pseudoscience, between science and philosophy and between science and religion...
Democratic Rationalization
Democratic Rationalization
Democratic Rationalization is term used by Andrew Feenberg in his article "Subversive Rationalization: Technology, Power and Democracy with technology." Feenberg argues against the idea of technological determinism citing flaws in its two fundamental theses.The first is the thesis of unilinear...
Determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
Deterministic system (philosophy)
Deterministic system (philosophy)
A deterministic system is a conceptual model of the philosophical doctrine of determinism applied to a system for understanding everything that has and will occur in the system, based on the physical outcomes of causality. In a deterministic system, every action, or cause, produces a reaction, or...
Dominique Lecourt
Dominique Lecourt
Dominique Lecourt is a French philosopher and editor born on 5 February 1944 in Paris. He is known in the anglophone world primarily for his work developing a materialist interpretation of the philosophy of science of Gaston Bachelard....
Don Ihde
Don Ihde
Don Ihde is a philosopher of science and technology, and a post-phenomenologist. In 1979 he wrote what is often identified as the first North American work on philosophy of technology, Technics and Praxis. Ihde is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony...
Ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
Edward Grant
Edward Grant
Edward Grant is an American historian. He was named a Distinguished Professor in 1983. Other honors include the 1992 George Sarton Medal, for "a lifetime scholarly achievement" as an historian of science.-Biography:...
Edward Jones-Imhotep
Edward Jones-Imhotep
Edward Jones-Imhotep is a historian of science, academic and currently an assistant professor at York University. He received a B.A. in International Studies from Glendon College in 1995 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 2001. He was a recipient of the Mellon Fellowship from the Andrew W...
Edward S. Reed
Edward S. Reed
Edward S. Reed was a philosopher of science and an ecological psychologist in the vein of James J. Gibson...
Elisabeth Lloyd
Elisabeth Lloyd
Elisabeth Anne Lloyd is a philosopher of biology. She currently holds the Arnold and Maxine Tanis Chair of History and Philosophy of Science and is also Professor of Biology, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Affiliated Faculty Scholar at the Kinsey Institute for Research in...
Elliott Sober
Elliott Sober
Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin–Madison. Sober is noted for his work in philosophy of biology and general philosophy of science. Sober taught for one year at Stanford University and has...
Emergence
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
Émile Meyerson
Émile Meyerson
Emile Meyerson was Polish-born French epistemologist, chemist, and philosopher of science. Emile Meyerson was born in Lublin, Poland. He died in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 74....
Empirical method
Empirical method
The empirical method is generally taken to mean the approach of using a collection of data to base a theory or derive a conclusion in science...
Empirical relationship
Empirical relationship
In science, an empirical relationship is one based solely on observation rather than theory. An empirical relationship requires only confirmatory data irrespective of theoretical basis. Sometimes theoretical explanations for what were initially empirical relationships are found, in which case the...
Empirical research
Empirical research
Empirical research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empirical evidence can be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively...
Empiricism
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
Entity realism
Entity realism
Entity realism is a philosophical position within the debate about scientific realism. Whereas traditional scientific realism argues that our best scientific theories are true, or approximately true, or closer to the truth than their predecessors, entity realism does not commit itself to judgments...
Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
Epistemological anarchism
Epistemological anarchism
Epistemological anarchism is an epistemological theory advanced by Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge...
Epistemological rupture
Epistemological rupture
The notion of epistemological rupture was introduced by Gaston Bachelard. He proposed that the history of science is replete with "epistemological obstacles"--or unthought/unconscious structures that were immanent within the realm of the sciences, such as principles of division...
Epistemology
Eric Higgs (philosopher)
Eric Higgs (philosopher)
Eric Stowe Higgs is professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Trained in ecology, philosophy, and environmental planning, his work concerns ecological restoration, historical ecology, intervention ecology, and the changing character of life in technological...
Ernest Nagel
Ernest Nagel
Ernest Nagel was a Czech-American philosopher of science. Along with Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he is sometimes seen as one of the major figures of the logical positivist movement....
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves...
Ernst W. Mayr
Ervin László
Ervin László
Ervin László is a Hungarian philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, originally a classical pianist. He has published about 75 books and over 400 papers, and is editor of World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution...
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...
Ethics of artificial intelligence
Ethics of artificial intelligence
The ethics of artificial intelligence is the part of the ethics of technology specific to robots and other artificially intelligent beings. It is typically divided into roboethics, a concern with the moral behavior of humans as they design, construct, use and treat artificially intelligent beings,...
Ethics of technology
Ethics of technology
Ethics in technology is a subfield of ethics addressing the ethical questions specific to the Technology Age. Some prominent works of philosopher Hans Jonas are devoted to ethics of technology. It is often held that technology itself is incapable of possessing moral or ethical qualities, since...
Ethics of terraforming
Ethics of terraforming
The ethics of terraforming has constituted a philosophical debate within biology, ecology, and environmental ethics as to whether terraforming other worlds is an ethical endeavor.-Support:...
Eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
Evelyn Fox Keller
Evelyn Fox Keller
Evelyn Fox Keller is an American physicist, author and feminist. She is currently a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller has also taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, New York University and in the department of...
Evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
Evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary epistemology refers to two distinct topics - on the one hand, the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, and on the other hand, a theory in that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection....
Evolutionary logic
Evolutionary logic
Evolutionary Logic is the idea that logical rules can be reduced to biology.It is a theory of rationality in which rational and logical rules emerged for pragmatic reasons, and are therefore not special laws....
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
Experiment
Experiment
An experiment is a methodical procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. Experiments vary greatly in their goal and scale, but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results...
Experimenter's bias
Experimenter's bias
In experimental science, experimenter's bias is subjective bias towards a result expected by the human experimenter. David Sackett, in a useful review of biases in clinical studies, states that biases can occur in any one of seven stages of research:...
Explanation
Explanation
An explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequencesof those facts....
Explanatory gap
Explanatory gap
The explanatory gap is the claim that consciousness and human experiences such as qualia cannot be fully explained just by identifying the corresponding physical processes. Bridging this gap is known as "the hard problem"...
Explanatory power
Explanatory power
Explanatory power is the ability of a theory to effectively explain the subject matter it pertains to. One theory is sometimes said to have more explanatory power than another theory about the same subject matter if it offers greater predictive power...
Eyewitness testimony
Eyewitness testimony
Research in eyewitness testimony is mostly considered a subfield within legal psychology, however it is a field with very broad implications. Human reports are normally based on visual perception, which is generally held to be very reliable...
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast is a book by Nelson Goodman in which he explores some problems regarding scientific law and counterfactual conditionals and presents his New Riddle of Induction...
Faith, Science and Understanding
Faith, Science and Understanding
Faith, Science, and Understanding is a book by John Polkinghorne which explores aspects of the integration between science and theology. It is based on lectures he gave at Nottingham University and Yale and on some other papers.-Publication Information:...
Falsifiability
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
Faraday Institute for Science and Religion
Fatalism
Fatalism
Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate.Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas:...
Federico Cesi
Federico Cesi
Federico Angelo Cesi was an Italian scientist, naturalist, and founder of the Accademia dei Lincei. On his father's death in 1630, he became briefly lord of Acquasparta.- Biography :...
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
Frank P. Ramsey
Frank P. Ramsey
Frank Plumpton Ramsey was a British mathematician who, in addition to mathematics, made significant and precocious contributions in philosophy and economics before his death at the age of 26...
Frederick Suppe
Frederick Suppe
Frederick Suppe is a professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Maryland. He has prominent work in the philosophy of science including much work with the semantic view of theories...
Friedrich Kambartel
Friedrich Kambartel
-Biography:Kambartel studied mathematics, physics, chemistry and philosophy at the University of Münster, where he received his PhD and his “habilitation”, the postdoctoral lecture qualification...
Friedrich von Hayek
Friedrich Waismann
Friedrich Waismann
Friedrich Waismann was an Austrian mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. He is best known for being a member of the Vienna Circle and one of the key theorists in logical positivism.-Birth & Early Interest in Philosophy:...
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
Fringe science
Fringe science
Fringe science is scientific inquiry in an established field of study that departs significantly from mainstream or orthodox theories, and is classified in the "fringes" of a credible mainstream academic discipline....
Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra
Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born American physicist. He is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and is on the faculty of Schumacher College....
Functional contextualism
Functional contextualism
Functional contextualism is a modern philosophy of science rooted in philosophical pragmatism and contextualism. It is most actively developed in behavioral science in general and the field of behavior analysis in particular...
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...
Game theory
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
Genidentity
Genidentity
The concept of genidentity, introduced by Kurt Lewin in his 1922 Habilitationsschrift "Der Begriff der Genese in Physik, Biologie und Entwicklungsgeschichte" is today perhaps the only surviving evidence of Lewin's influence on the philosophy of science. However, this concept never became an object...
Geoffrey Hellman
Geoffrey Hellman
Geoffrey Hellman is an American professor and philosopher. He is Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.-Education:He obtained his B.A. and Ph.D...
Geohumoral theory
Geohumoral theory
Geohumoral Theory or Geohumoralism was a racialist concept propounded in Renaissance Europe. Briefly, it "held that variations in topography and climate produced variations in national characteristics" ....
Gerald Holton
Gerald Holton
Gerald Holton is Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and Research Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University.Born 1922 in Berlin, he grew up in Vienna before emigrating in 1938...
Gerard Verschuuren
Gerard Verschuuren
Gerard M. Verschuuren is a writer, speaker, and consultant, working at the interface of science, philosophy, and religion. He is a human geneticist who also earned a doctorate in the philosophy of science, and studied and worked at universities in Europe and the United States...
Gerd Buchdahl
Gerd Buchdahl
Gerd Buchdahl was a German-English philosopher of science, born to German-Jewish parents in Mainz.The developing natural sciences were the causal lens through which he viewed and from which he wrote about the consequences on epistemology and the history of metaphysics...
God of the gaps
God of the gaps
God of the gaps is a type of theological fallacy in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. The term was invented by Christian theologians not to discredit theism but rather to discourage reliance on teleological arguments for God's existence.-...
Great chain of being
Great chain of being
The great chain of being , is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God.-Divisions:...
Greedy reductionism
Greedy reductionism
Greedy reductionism is a term coined by Daniel Dennett, in his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to refer to a kind of erroneous reductionism...
Gunther Stent
Gunther Stent
Gunther S. Stent was Graduate Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was born in Berlin as "Günter Siegmund Stensch"; the name was changed after the migration to the USA...
Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann was a philosopher born in Vienna, Austria. He studied at the University of Vienna and was a member of the Vienna Circle. In the United States, he was a professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Iowa.- Biography :Bergmann earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at the...
Hans Hahn
Hans Hahn
Hans Hahn was an Austrian mathematician who made contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory.-Biography:...
Hans Reichenbach
Hans Reichenbach
Hans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical empiricism...
Harvey Brown (philosopher)
Harvey Brown (philosopher)
Harvey R. Brown, is a philosopher of physics. He is professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, as well as a Fellow of the British Academy....
Helen Longino
Helen Longino
Helen E. Longino is an American philosopher of science who has argued influentially for the significance of values and social interactions to scientific inquiry.-Career:...
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and a philosopher of science...
Henry Margenau
Henry Margenau
Henry Margenau was a German-U.S. physicist, and philosopher of science.-Early life:Born Bielefeld, Germany, Margenau obtained his bachelor's degree from Midland Lutheran College, Nebraska before his M.Sc...
Henry Moyes
Henry Moyes
Henry Moyes was a lecturer on natural philosophy. As an itinerant public speaker he helped raise 18th century popular interest in the new field of chemistry. He mixed with the greatest engineers and scientists of the day and attended the Lunar Society...
Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl was an Austrian philosopher and a member of the Vienna Circle.-Biography:The son of a weaver, Feigl was born in Reichenberg , Bohemia, and matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1922...
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
Heroic theory of invention and scientific development
Heroic theory of invention and scientific development
The heroic theory of invention and scientific development is the hypothesis that the principal authors of inventions and scientific discoveries are unique heroic individuals "great scientists" or "geniuses." A competing hypothesis is that most inventions and scientific discoveries are made...
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
History and philosophy of science
History and philosophy of science
The history and philosophy of science is an academic discipline that encompasses the philosophy of science and the history of science. Although many scholars in the field are trained primarily as either historians or as philosophers, there are degree-granting departments of HPS at several...
History of evolutionary thought
History of evolutionary thought
Evolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science...
History of the Church–Turing thesis
Horror vacui (physics)
Horror vacui (physics)
In physics horror vacui, or plenism, is a theory first proposed by Aristotle in the Fourth book of Physics that nature abhors a vacuum, and therefore empty space would always be trying to suck in gas or liquids to avoid being empty. The theory was widely accepted for a long time and supported by...
Hossein Nasr
Hugh Everett III
Hugo Dingler
Hugo Dingler
Hugo Albert Emil Hermann Dingler . Dingler was a German scientist and philosopher.-Life:...
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking, CC, FRSC, FBA is a Canadian philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of science.- Life and works :...
Ignoramus et ignorabimus
Ilkka Niiniluoto
Ilkka Niiniluoto
Ilkka Maunu Olavi Niiniluoto is a Finnish philosopher and mathematician, serving as a professor of philosophy at the University of Helsinki since 1981. He is currently on leave from his position, having been appointed as rector of the University of Helsinki on August 1, 2003 for a five-year period...
Immunology
Immunology
Immunology is a broad branch of biomedical science that covers the study of all aspects of the immune system in all organisms. It deals with the physiological functioning of the immune system in states of both health and diseases; malfunctions of the immune system in immunological disorders ; the...
Implications of nanotechnology
Implications of nanotechnology
The impact of nanotechnology extend from its medical, ethical, mental, legal and environmental applications, to fields such as engineering, biology, chemistry, computing, materials science, military applications, and communications....
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations' in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his...
Indeterminacy (philosophy)
Indeterminacy (Philosophy)
Indeterminacy, in philosophy, can refer both to common scientific and mathematical concepts of uncertainty and their implications and to another kind of indeterminacy deriving from the nature of definition or meaning...
Individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...
Inductivism
Inductivism
In the philosophy of science inductivism exists both in a classical naive version, which has been highly influential, and in various more sophisticated versions...
Inevitability thesis
Inevitability thesis
An idea in the philosophy of technology stating that once a technology is introduced into a culture that what follows is inevitable development of that technology. This development occurs not because it is of determinism but because we are able to pursue it and it seems like the right thing to do....
Infinite regress
Infinite regress
An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P1 requires the support of proposition P2, the truth of proposition P2 requires the support of proposition P3, .....
Information ethics
Information ethics
Information ethics has been defined as "the branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society". It provides a critical framework for considering...
Ingenuity
Ingenuity
Ingenuity refers to the process of applying ideas to solve problems or meet challenges. The process of figuring out how to cross a mountain stream using a fallen log, build an airplane from a sheet of paper, or start a new company in a foreign culture all involve the exercising of ingenuity...
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies was founded in 2004 by philosopher Nick Bostrom and bioethicist James Hughes. Incorporated in the United States as a non-profit 501 organization, the IEET is a self-described "technoprogressive think tank" that seeks to contribute to understanding...
Instrumentalism
Instrumentalism
In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that a scientific theory is a useful instrument in understanding the world. A concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective...
Intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...
Internalism and externalism
Internalism and externalism
Internalism and externalism are two opposing ways of explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings...
International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility
International Network of Engineers and Scientists for global responsibility
The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for global responsibility is an independent non-profit-organization concerned about the impact of science and technology on society....
Internet ethics
Internet ethics
In January 1989 the Internet Architecture Board issued a statement of policy concerning Internet ethics. This document is referred to as RFC 1087 'Ethics and the Internet'.An extract of RFC 1087 follows:...
Introspection
Introspection
Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious and purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul...
Ionian Enlightenment
Ionian Enlightenment
The Ionian Enlightenment is a term used to describe the advances in scientific thought, naturalistic explanations, and the application of rational and scientific criticisms to all spheres of life in Ionia of ancient Greece in 6th century BC. The Ionian Enlightenment received its origins in both...
Irreversibility
Irreversibility
In science, a process that is not reversible is called irreversible. This concept arises most frequently in thermodynamics, as applied to processes....
Is logic empirical?
Is logic empirical?
"Is logic empirical?" is the title of two articles that discuss the idea that the algebraic properties of logic may, or should, be empirically determined; in particular, they deal with the question of whether empirical facts about quantum phenomena may provide grounds for revising classical logic...
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
Jakob Friedrich Fries
Jakob Friedrich Fries
Jakob Friedrich Fries was a German philosopher from Barby .-Life and career:...
James G. Lennox
James G. Lennox
James G. Lennox is a professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, with secondary appointments in the departments of Classics and Philosophy. He a leader in the study of Aristotelian science in light of his groundbreaking work on Aristotle's...
James Robert Brown
James Robert Brown
James Robert Brown is a Canadian philosopher of science. He is a Professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. In the philosophy of mathematics, he has advocated mathematical Platonism, and in the philosophy of science he has defended scientific realism mostly against anti-realist views...
Jean Cavaillès
Jean Cavailles
Jean Cavaillès , was a French philosopher and mathematician, specialized in philosophy of science. He took part in the French Resistance within the Libération movement and was shot by the Gestapo on February 17, 1944....
Jerome Ravetz
Jerome Ravetz
Jerome Ravetz is an environmental consultant and academic.He has written on the philosophy of science. He is best known for his books challenging the assumptions of scientific objectivity, discussing the science wars and post-normal science...
Jerzy Giedymin
Jerzy Giedymin
Jerzy Giedymin was a philosopher and historian of mathematics and science.-Life:Giedymin, of Polish origin, was born in 1925.He studied at the University of Poznan under Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz...
Jesús Mosterín
Jesús Mosterín
Jesús Mosterín is a leading Spanish philosopher and a thinker of broad spectrum, often at the frontier between science and philosophy.-Biography:He was born in Bilbao in 1941. He studied in Spain, Germany and the USA...
Joachim Jungius
Joachim Jungius
Joachim Jungius was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher of sciences.-Life:He was a native of Lübeck...
John Beatty (philosopher)
John Beatty (philosopher)
John Beatty is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He received his PhD in 1979 in the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. His research focuses on the theoretical foundations,...
John Bulwer
John Bulwer
John Bulwer was an English physician and early Baconian natural philosopher who wrote five works exploring the Body and human communication, particularly by gesture....
John Earman
John Earman
John Earman is a philosopher of physics. He is currently an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taught at UCLA, the Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota, and was president of the Philosophy of...
John L. Pollock
John L. Pollock
John L. Pollock was an American philosopher known for influential work in epistemology, philosophical logic, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence....
John Lennox
John Lennox
John Carson Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, Fellow in Mathematics, Philosophy of Science and Pastoral Advisor at Green Templeton College of Oxford University...
John Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
John Weckert
John Weckert
John Weckert is an Australian philosopher who has been an influential figure in, and substantial contributor to the field of information and computer ethics...
John Worrall (philosopher)
John Worrall (philosopher)
John Worrall is a professor of philosophy of science at the London School of Economics. He is also associated with the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the same institution....
Jordi Pigem
Jordi Pigem
Jordi Pigem is a Catalan philosopher and writer.-Career:Pigem holds a Ph.D in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona . He coordinated the ecology journal Integral between 1989 and 1992...
Joseph Henry Woodger
Joseph Henry Woodger
Joseph Henry Woodger was a British theoretical biologist and philosopher of biology whose attempts to make biological sciences more rigorous and empirical was significantly influential to the philosophy of biology in the twentieth century...
Jules Vuillemin
Jules Vuillemin
Jules Vuillemin was a French philosopher, succeeding to Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Collège de France from 1962 to his death. A friend of Michel Foucault, he supported his election at the College, and was also close to Michel Serres...
Jürgen Mittelstraß
Jürgen Mittelstraß
Jürgen Mittelstraß is a German philosopher especially interested in the philosophy of science.He was born in Düsseldorf in 1936 and studied philosophy, history and protestant theology at Bonn, Erlangen, Hamburg and Oxford from 1956 till 1961.He received his Ph.D...
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
Kinetic theory
Kinetic theory
The kinetic theory of gases describes a gas as a large number of small particles , all of which are in constant, random motion. The rapidly moving particles constantly collide with each other and with the walls of the container...
Kurt Riezler
Kurt Riezler
Kurt Riezler was a German philosopher and diplomat. A top-level cabinet adviser in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, he negotiated Germany's underwriting of Russia's October Revolution and authored the 1914 September Program which outlined German war aims during World War I...
Kyle Stanford
Kyle Stanford
Kyle Stanford is an American philosophy professor who specializes in the philosophy of science.He earned his B.A. with Honors in Philosophy and Psychology from Northwestern University in 1991, and his M.A. and Ph. D...
Larry Laudan
Larry Laudan
Larry Laudan is a contemporary philosopher of science and epistemologist. He has strongly criticized the traditions of positivism, realism, and relativism, and he has defended a view of science as a privileged and progressive institution against popular challenges...
Leonardo Moledo
Leonardo Moledo
-Life and work:Leonardo Moledo was born in Buenos Aires, in 1947. He enrolled at the prestigious, public secondary school, the National College of Buenos Aires...
Lindley Darden
Lindley Darden
Lindley Darden is a contemporary philosopher of science, with a research focus on the philosophy of biology. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1974 and B.A. in 1968 from Rhodes College, and is currently Distinguished Scholar Teacher at the University of...
List of philosophers of science
Logical positivism
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...
Louis Rougier
Louis Rougier
Louis Auguste Paul Rougier was a French philosopher. Rougier made many important contributions to epistemology, philosophy of science, political philosophy and the history of Christianity.-Biography:Rougier was born in Lyon...
Luddite
Luddite
The Luddites were a social movement of 19th-century English textile artisans who protested – often by destroying mechanised looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life...
Ludwik Fleck
Ludwik Fleck
Ludwik Fleck was a Polish Israeli medical doctor and biologist who developed in the 1930s the concept of Denkkollektiv...
Mariano Artigas
Mariano Artigas
Mariano Artigas was a Spanish physicist, philosopher and writer. He received the Templeton Foundation Award in 1995 for his work on science and religion...
Mario Bunge
Mario Bunge
Mario Augusto Bunge is an Argentine philosopher and physicist mainly active in Canada.-Biography:Bunge began his studies at the National University of La Plata, graduating with a Ph.D. in physico-mathematical sciences in 1952. He was professor of theoretical physics and philosophy,...
Marx W. Wartofsky
Marx W. Wartofsky
Marx W. Wartofsky was a philosopher, specialising in historical epistemology. He was a professor of philosophy at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the editor of The Philosophical Forum.. With Robert S...
Mary Hesse
Mary Hesse
Mary Brenda Hesse is a contemporary English philosopher of science. She is now professor emerita of the philosophy of science at Cambridge University....
Mary Tiles
Mary Tiles
Mary Tiles is a philosopher and historian of mathematics and science. she is professor and chair in the philosophy department of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.-Life:...
Matteo Campani-Alimenis
Matteo Campani-Alimenis
Matteo or Mathieu Campani-Alimenis was a mechanician and natural philosopher of the 17th century.He held a curacy at Rome in 1661, but devoted himself principally to scientific pursuits...
Mauricio Suarez
Mauricio Suarez
Mauricio Suárez is a Spanish anglophone philosopher who specialises in philosophy of science and philosophy of physics. He earned his BSc in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh , and his MSc and PhD in philosophy of science from the London School of Economics .His appointments...
Max Bense
Max Bense
Max Bense was a German philosopher, writer, and publicist, known for his work in philosophy of science, logic, aesthetics, and semiotics...
Max Black
Max Black
Max Black was a British-American philosopher, who was a leading influential figure in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies...
Maxwell's demon
Maxwell's demon
In the philosophy of thermal and statistical physics, Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment created by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell to "show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty." It demonstrates Maxwell's point by hypothetically describing how to...
Measurement in quantum mechanics
Measurement in quantum mechanics
The framework of quantum mechanics requires a careful definition of measurement. The issue of measurement lies at the heart of the problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics, for which there is currently no consensus....
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
Mediocrity principle
Mediocrity principle
The mediocrity principle is the notion in philosophy of science that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of our solar system, the Earth, any one nation, or humans. It is a heuristic in the vein of the Copernican principle, and is sometimes used as a philosophical statement about the...
Meera Nanda
Meera Nanda
Meera Nanda is an Indian writer, historian and philosopher of science and was a visiting fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi during 2009. She is a John Templeton Foundation Fellow in Religion and Science , with a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an initial training in...
Methodological individualism
Methodological individualism
Methodological individualism is the theory that social phenomena can only be accurately explained by showing how they result from the intentional states that motivate the individual actors. The idea has been used to criticize historicism, structural functionalism, and the roles of social class,...
Michael Oakeshott
Michael Oakeshott
Michael Joseph Oakeshott was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and philosophy of law...
Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse is a philosopher of biology at Florida State University, and is well known for his work on the creationism/evolution controversy and the demarcation problem in science...
Michael Scriven
Michael Scriven
Michael Scriven is a British-born academic, with a first degree in mathematics and a doctorate in philosophy. He has made significant contributions in the fields of philosophy, psychology, critical thinking, and, most notably, evaluation .He has produced over 400 scholarly publications and has...
Michel Bitbol
Michel Bitbol
Michel Bitbol is a French researcher in philosophy of science, born on March 12, 1954.He is "Directeur de recherche" at CNRS, in the Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée of École polytechnique ....
Miura Baien
Miura Baien
was a Japanese philosopher of the Tokugawa era. A scholar often qualified as prolific original thinker in economy, interested in epistemology, he studied nature in a methodical way.-Life:...
Models of scientific inquiry
Models of scientific inquiry
In the philosophy of science, models of scientific inquiry have two functions: first, to provide a descriptive account of how scientific inquiry is carried out in practice, and second, to provide an explanatory account of why scientific inquiry succeeds as well as it appears to do in arriving at...
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith is a book by Stephen M. Barr, a physicist from the University of Delaware and frequent contributor to First Things. This book is "an extended attack" on what Barr calls scientific materialism. National Review says of the book: "[A] lucid and engaging survey of...
Molecular biology
Molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...
Molyneux's Problem
Molyneux's Problem
Molyneux's problem is a thought experiment in philosophy concerning immediate recovery from blindness.It was first formulated by William Molyneux, and notably referenced in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding....
Moravec's paradox
Moravec's paradox
Moravec's paradox is the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources. The principle was articulated by Hans...
Moritz Schlick
Moritz Schlick
Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick was a German philosopher, physicist and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle.-Early life and works:...
Multiple discovery
Multiple discovery
The concept of multiple discovery is the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors...
Myth of Progress
Naïve empiricism
Naïve empiricism
Naïve empiricism is a term used in several ways in different fields.In the philosophy of science, it is used by opponents to describe the position, associated with some logical positivists, that "immediate sense experience is by itself sufficient to provide the foundations for knowledge".The term...
Nancy Cartwright (philosopher)
Nancy Cartwright (philosopher)
Nancy Cartwright FBA is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and the University of California at San Diego, and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship...
Natural law
Natural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...
Natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
Nature (philosophy)
Nature (philosophy)
Nature is a concept with two major sets of inter-related meanings, referring on the one hand to the things which are natural, or subject to the normal working of "laws of nature", or on the other hand to the essential properties and causes of those things to be what they naturally are, or in other...
Neo-Luddism
Neo-luddism
Neo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816...
Neuroethics
Neuroethics
Neuroethics is the ethics of neuroscience, and the neuroscience of ethics.The ethics of neuroscience deals with matters as a subclass of bioethics...
Neuroscience
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
Neven Sesardic
Neven Sesardic
Neven Sesardić is a Croatian philosopher who has argued in favor of biological interpretations of the concept of race and against same-sex marriage.- Life and career :...
Newton's flaming laser sword
Newtonianism
Newtonianism
Newtonianism is a doctrine that involves following the principles and using the methods of natural philosopher Isaac Newton. While Newton's influential contributions were primarily in physics and mathematics, his broad conception of the universe as being governed by rational and understandable laws...
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in...
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
Norman Swartz
Norman Swartz
Norman Swartz is a professor emeritus of philosophy, Simon Fraser University. He is the author or co-author of multiple books and multiple articles on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He earned a B.A. in physics from Harvard University in 1961, an M.A. in history and philosophy of science...
Norwood Russell Hanson
Norwood Russell Hanson
Norwood Russell Hanson was a philosopher of science. Hanson was a pioneer in advancing the argument that observation is theory-laden – that observation language and theory language are deeply interwoven – and that historical and contemporary comprehension are similarly deeply interwoven...
Not even wrong
Not even wrong
An argument that appears to be scientific is said to be not even wrong if it cannot be falsified by experiment or cannot be used to make predictions about the natural world. The phrase was coined by theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or...
Novum Organum
Novum Organum
The Novum Organum, full original title Novum Organum Scientiarum, is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon, written in Latin and published in 1620. The title translates as new instrument, i.e. new instrument of science. This is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on...
Objectivity (science)
Objectivity (science)
Objectivity in science is a value that informs how science is practiced and how scientific truths are created. It is the idea that scientists, in attempting to uncover truths about the natural world, must aspire to eliminate personal biases, a priori commitments, emotional involvement, etc...
Observation
Observation
Observation is either an activity of a living being, such as a human, consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any data collected during this activity...
Occam's razor
Occam's razor
Occam's razor, also known as Ockham's razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae , is a principle that generally recommends from among competing hypotheses selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.-Overview:The principle is often summarized as "simpler explanations...
Olavo de Carvalho
Olavo de Carvalho
Olavo Luiz Pimentel de Carvalho is a Brazilian journalist, and essayist on several issues like the history of astrology and mysticism; the history of revolutionary mentality; and Philosophical Anthropology...
Omnology
Operational definition
Operational definition
An operational definition defines something in terms of the specific process or set of validation tests used to determine its presence and quantity. That is, one defines something in terms of the operations that count as measuring it. The term was coined by Percy Williams Bridgman and is a part of...
Operationalization
Operationalization
In humanities, operationalization is the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make the concept clearly distinguishable or measurable and to understand it in terms of empirical observations...
Otto Neurath
Otto Neurath
Otto Neurath was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist...
Oxford Calculators
Oxford Calculators
The Oxford Calculators were a group of 14th-century thinkers, almost all associated with Merton College, Oxford, who took a strikingly logico-mathematical approach to philosophical problems....
Paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
Paradigm shift
Paradigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
Parsimony
Particle physics
Particle physics
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...
Paul Feyerabend
Paul Feyerabend
Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades . He lived a peripatetic life, living at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand,...
Paul Haeberlin
Paul Haeberlin
Paul Haeberlin was a philosopher who at different times in his career took the standpoint that either religion or theoretical knowledge was the answer to human problems. He always gave philosophy an important role, but religion was to him the only way man could understand his real position in...
Perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
Percy Williams Bridgman
Percy Williams Bridgman
Percy Williams Bridgman was an American physicist who won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the physics of high pressures. He also wrote extensively on the scientific method and on other aspects of the philosophy of science.- Biography :Bridgman entered Harvard University in 1900,...
Peripatetic axiom
Peripatetic axiom
The Peripatetic axiom is: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" . It is found in De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19....
Pessimistic induction
Pessimistic induction
In the philosophy of science, the pessimistic induction, also known as the pessimistic meta-induction, is an argument which seeks to rebut scientific realism, particularly the scientific realist's notion of epistemic optimism....
Peter Achinstein
Peter Achinstein
Peter Achinstein is a distinguished American Philosopher of Science. He is the author of numerous influential books and articles. He is the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein University Professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University, director of the Yeshiva Center for History and Philosophy of Science,...
Peter Lewis (philosopher)
Phenomenalism
Phenomenalism
Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli situated in time and in space...
Philip Kitcher
Philip Mirowski
Philip Mirowski
Philip Mirowski is a historian and philosopher of economic thought at the University of Notre Dame. He received a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1979.-Career:...
Philipp Frank
Philipp Frank
Philipp Frank was a physicist, mathematician and also an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. He was a logical-positivist, and a member of the Vienna Circle.He was born on 20 March 1884 in Vienna, Austria, and died on 21 July 1966 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
Phillip H. Wiebe
Phillip H. Wiebe
Phillip H. Wiebe is the former Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy and former Dean of Arts and Religious Studies at Trinity Western University and its School of Graduate Studies. He is the author of God and Other Spirits and Visions of Jesus, both from Oxford University...
Philosophical interpretation of classical physics
Philosophical interpretation of classical physics
Classical Newtonian physics has, formally, been replaced by quantum mechanics on the small scale and relativity on the large scale. Because most humans continue to think in terms of the kind of events we perceive in the human scale of daily life, it became necessary to provide a new philosophical...
Philosophy of artificial intelligence
Philosophy of artificial intelligence
The philosophy of artificial intelligence attempts to answer such questions as:* Can a machine act intelligently? Can it solve any problem that a person would solve by thinking?...
Philosophy of biology
Philosophy of biology
The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences...
Philosophy of chemistry
Philosophy of chemistry
The philosophy of chemistry considers the methodology and underlying assumptions of the science of chemistry. It is explored by philosophers, chemists, and philosopher-chemist teams...
Philosophy of computer science
Philosophy of computer science
The philosophy of computer science is concerned with the philosophical questions that arise with the study of computer science, which is understood to mean not just programming but the whole study of concepts and methodologies that assist in the development and maintenance of computer systems...
Philosophy of economics
Philosophy of economics
Philosophy and economics may refer to the branch of philosophy that studies issues relating to economics or, alternatively, to the branch of economics that studies its own foundations and status as a moral science....
Philosophy of engineering
Philosophy of engineering
The philosophy of engineering is an emerging discipline that considers what engineering is, what engineers do and how their work impacts on society. As such, the philosophy of engineering includes aspects of ethics and aesthetics, as well as the ontology, epistemology, etc...
Philosophy of information
Philosophy of information
The philosophy of information is the area of research that studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of computer science, information technology, and philosophy.It includes:...
Philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy of mathematics
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics and to understand the place of...
Philosophy of physics
Philosophy of physics
In philosophy, the philosophy of physics studies the fundamental philosophical questions underlying modern physics, the study of matter and energy and how they interact. The philosophy of physics begins by reflecting on the basic metaphysical and epistemological questions posed by physics:...
Philosophy of psychology
Philosophy of psychology
Philosophy of psychology refers to issues at the theoretical foundations of modern psychology. Some of these issues are epistemological concerns about the methodology of psychological investigation...
Philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
Philosophy of Science Association
Philosophy of Science Association
The Philosophy of Science Association is an academic organization which promotes further studies and free discussion from diverse standpoints in the field of philosophy of science....
Philosophy of social science
Philosophy of social science
The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic and method of the social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology and political science...
Philosophy of space and time
Philosophy of space and time
Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a...
Philosophy of statistics
Philosophy of statistics
The philosophy of statistics involves the meaning, justification, utility, use and abuse of statistics and its methodology, and ethical and epistemological issues involved in the consideration of choice and interpretation of data and methods of Statistics....
Philosophy of technology
Philosophy of technology
The philosophy of technology is a philosophical field dedicated to studying the nature of technology and its social effects.- History :Considered under the rubric of the Greek term techne , the philosophy of technology goes to the very roots of Western philosophy.* In his Republic, Plato sees...
Philosophy of thermal and statistical physics
Philosophy of thermal and statistical physics
The philosophy of thermal and statistical physics is that part of the philosophy of physics whose subject matter is classical thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and related theories...
Physical law
Physical law
A physical law or scientific law is "a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present." Physical laws are typically conclusions...
Physicalism
Physicalism
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...
Physics envy
Physics envy
In science, the term physics envy is used to criticize a tendency of "soft sciences" and liberal arts to try to obtain mathematical expressions of their fundamental concepts, as an attempt to move them closer to "hard sciences", particularly physics.The success of physics to "mathematicize"...
Pierre Duhem
Pierre Duhem
Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem was a French physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science, best known for his writings on the indeterminacy of experimental criteria and on scientific development in the Middle Ages...
Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi was a French philosopher, priest, scientist, astronomer, and mathematician. With a church position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris, where he was a leader of a group of free-thinking intellectuals. He was also an active observational scientist, publishing the...
Popper's experiment
Popper's experiment
Popper's experiment is an experiment proposed by the 20th century philosopher of science Karl Popper, an advocate of an objective interpretation of quantum mechanics. He wanted to test the Copenhagen interpretation, a popular subjectivist interpretation of quantum mechanics...
Popper and After
Popper and After
Popper and After is a book by David Charles Stove first published by Pergamon Press in 1982. It was subtitled Four Modern Irrationalists...
Positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
Post-positivist
Pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
Prediction
Prediction
A prediction or forecast is a statement about the way things will happen in the future, often but not always based on experience or knowledge...
Principle of uniformity
Principle of uniformity
The principle of uniformity may refer to* The assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe: Uniformitarianism....
Probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
Problem of induction
Problem of induction
The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge. That is, what is the justification for either:...
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
Psychological nominalism
Psychological nominalism
Psychological nominalism is the view advanced in Wilfrid Sellars' paper "Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind" that explains psychological concepts in terms of public language use...
Psychologism
Psychologism
Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law...
Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
Quantity
Quantity
Quantity is a property that can exist as a magnitude or multitude. Quantities can be compared in terms of "more" or "less" or "equal", or by assigning a numerical value in terms of a unit of measurement. Quantity is among the basic classes of things along with quality, substance, change, and relation...
Quantum field theory
Quantum field theory
Quantum field theory provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized by an infinite number of dynamical degrees of freedom, that is, fields and many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and...
Quantum indeterminacy
Quantum indeterminacy
Quantum indeterminacy is the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system, that has become one of the characteristics of the standard description of quantum physics...
Quantum logic
Quantum logic
In quantum mechanics, quantum logic is a set of rules for reasoning about propositions which takes the principles of quantum theory into account...
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
R. B. Braithwaite
R. B. Braithwaite
Richard Bevan Braithwaite was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. He was a lecturer in moral science at the University of Cambridge from 1934 to 1953, then Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy there from 1953 to 1967...
Raimo Tuomela
Raimo Tuomela
Raimo Tuomela is a Finnish philosopher. Tuomela received his first degree of doctor of philosophy in 1968 from the University of Helsinki) and the second one in 1969 from Stanford University...
Ramsey–Lewis method
Rational reconstruction
Rational reconstruction
Rational reconstruction is a philosophical term with several distinct meanings. It is found in the work of Jürgen Habermas and Imre Lakatos.- Habermas :...
Reasonable doubt
Reasonable doubt
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard of evidence required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems . Generally the prosecution bears the burden of proof and is required to prove their version of events to this standard...
Received view of theories
Received view of theories
The received view of theories is a position in the philosophy of science that identifies a scientific theory with a set of propositions which are considered to be linguistic objects, such as axioms...
Reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
Regulation of science
Regulation of science
The regulation of science refers to use of law, or other ruling, by academic or governmental bodies to allow or restrict science from performing certain practices, or researching certain scientific areas...
Relationship between religion and science
Relationship between religion and science
The relationship between religion and science has been a focus of the demarcation problem. Somewhat related is the claim that science and religion may pursue knowledge using different methodologies. Whereas the scientific method basically relies on reason and empiricism, religion also seeks to...
Religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory
Religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory
Since the creation of the Big Bang theory, many religious interpretations of the Big Bang hypothesis of physical cosmology have been offered. The Big Bang itself is a scientific hypothesis, and as such stands or falls by its agreement with observations...
René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
Retrocausality
Retrocausality
Retrocausality is any of several hypothetical phenomena or processes that reverse causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause....
Richard Boyd
Richard Boyd
Richard Newell Boyd is an American philosopher who has spent most of his career at Cornell University, though he also taught briefly at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, Berkeley...
Richard Swinburne
Richard Swinburne
Richard G. Swinburne is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a very influential proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in philosophy of religion and...
Robert Grosseteste
Robert Grosseteste
Robert Grosseteste or Grossetete was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian and Bishop of Lincoln. He was born of humble parents at Stradbroke in Suffolk. A.C...
Robert Kilwardby
Robert Kilwardby
Robert Kilwardby was an Archbishop of Canterbury in England and as well as a cardinal.-Life:Kilwardby studied at the University of Paris, then was a teacher of grammar and logic there. He then joined the Dominican Order and studied theology, and became regent at Oxford University before 1261,...
Roberto Refinetti
Roberto Refinetti
Roberto Refinetti is a behavioral physiologist, philosopher of science, and higher-education administrator. He is best known for his book Circadian Physiology.- Biography :Roberto Refinetti was born in São Paulo, Brazil on November 19, 1957...
Robin O. Andreasen
Roboethics
Roboethics
The term roboethics was coined by roboticist Gianmarco Veruggio in 2002, who also served as chair of an Atleier funded by the European Robotics Research Network to outline areas where research may be needed...
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods...
Roger Penrose
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College...
Rose Rand
Rose Rand
Rose Rand A logician and a Philosopher. A member of the Vienna Circle.- Life and work :Rand was born in Lemberg . After her family moved to Austria she studied at the Polish Gymnasium in Vienna. In 1924 she enrolled in Vienna University, her teachers included Heinrich Gomperz, Moritz Schlick,...
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
Sandra Mitchell
Sandra Mitchell
Sandra D. Mitchell is an American philosopher and historian of ideas and professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh...
Science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
Science and Christian Belief
Science and Christian Belief
Science and Christian Belief is an academic journal published twice yearly by Christians in Science and the Victoria Institute. The journal focuses on the traffic of ideas between science and religion, with particular reference to Christianity...
Scientific Communism
Scientific Communism
Scientific communism was one of the three major ingredients of Marxism-Leninism as taught in the Soviet Union in all institutions of higher education and pursued in the corresponding research institutions, and departments...
Scientific essentialism
Scientific essentialism
Scientific essentialism, a view espoused by Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, maintains that there exist essential properties that objects possess necessarily. In other words, having such and such essential properties is a necessary condition for membership in a given natural kind...
Scientific law
Scientific law
A scientific law is a statement that explains what something does in science just like Newton's law of universal gravitation. A scientific law must always apply under the same conditions, and implies a causal relationship between its elements. The law must be confirmed and broadly agreed upon...
Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions: *Danish definition: "Intention or...
Scientific modelling
Scientific modelling
Scientific modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, graphical and/or mathematical models. Science offers a growing collection of methods, techniques and theory about all kinds of specialized scientific modelling...
Scientific progress
Scientific progress
Scientific progress is the idea that science increases its problem solving ability through the application of some scientific method.-Discontinuous Model of Scientific Progress:...
Scientific realism
Scientific realism
Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be...
Scientific revolution
Scientific revolution
The Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...
Scientific theory
Scientific theory
A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules that express relationships between observations of such concepts...
Scientism
Scientism
Scientism refers to a belief in the universal applicability of the systematic methods and approach of science, especially the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints...
Scientistic materialism
Scientistic materialism
Scientistic materialism is a philosophical stance which posits a limited definition of consciousness to that which is observable and subject to the scientific method...
Scientists for Global Responsibility
Scientists for Global Responsibility
Affiliated to the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility , SGR promotes the ethical practice and use of science and technology....
Semantic view of theories
Semantic view of theories
The semantic view of theories is a position in the philosophy of science that holds that a scientific theory can be identified with a collection of models...
Sense data
Sense data
In the philosophy of perception, the theory of sense data was a popular view held the early 20th century by philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, C. D. Broad, H. H. Price, A.J. Ayer and G.E. Moore, among others. Sense data are supposedly mind-dependent objects whose existence and properties are...
Sherrilyn Roush
Sherrilyn Roush
Sherrilyn Roush is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at U. C. Berkeley specializing in the Philosophy of Science and Epistemology.Tracking Truth presents a unified treatment of knowledge, evidence, and epistemological realism and anti-realism about science, based on the idea that knowing is...
Social constructionism
Social constructionism
Social constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...
Space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
Spacetime
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions...
Species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
Stephen Mulhall
Stephen Mulhall
Stephen Mulhall is a philosopher and Fellow of New College, Oxford. His main research areas are Ludwig Wittgenstein and post-Kantian philosophy.-Life:...
Stephen Toulmin
Stephen Toulmin
Stephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind...
Steve Fuller (sociologist)
Structuralism (philosophy of science)
Structuralism (philosophy of science)
Structuralism is a theory of science, reconstructing empirical theories. Its aim is to comprise all important aspects of an empirical theory in one formal framework. The proponents of this meta-theoretic theory are Patrick Suppes, Joseph D. Sneed, Wolfgang Stegmüller, Carlos Ulises Moulines and...
Supervenience
Supervenience
In philosophy, supervenience is a kind of dependency relationship. For example, mental states might depend on physical brain states. This dependency is typically held to obtain between sets of properties. A classic example is that mental states of pain supervene on 'C-fibers firing'...
Susan Oyama
Susan Oyama
Susan Oyama is a psychologist and philosopher of science, currently professor emerita at the John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center in New York.-Publications:*The Ontogeny of Information *Philadelphia Themn and Now...
Taketani Mitsuo
Taketani Mitsuo
was a prominent Japanese physicist and Marxist. He published his Doctrine of the Three Stages of Scientific Development in 1936. This was the first Japanese contribution to the philosophy of science. He applied Hegel's theory of dialectics, with the triad Phenomenon, Substance, and Essence...
Technocriticism
Technocriticism
Technocriticism is a branch of critical theory devoted to the study of technological change.Technocriticism treats technological transformation as historically specific changes in personal and social practices of research, invention, regulation, distribution, promotion, appropriation, use, and...
Technological determinism
Technological determinism
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values. The term is believed to have been coined by Thorstein Veblen , an American sociologist...
Technological Somnambulism
Technological Somnambulism
Technological Somnambulism is a concept used when talking about the philosophy of technology. The term was used by Langdon Winner in his essay Technology as forms of life. Winner puts forth the idea that we are simply in a state of sleepwalking in our mediations with technology. This...
Technorealism
Technorealism
Technorealism is an attempt to expand the middle ground between Techno-utopianism and Neo-Luddism by assessing the social and political implications of technologies so that people might all have more control over the shape of their future...
Temporal finitism
Temporal finitism
Temporal finitism is the idea that time is finite. The context of the idea is the pre-modern era, before mathematicians had understood the concept of infinity and before physical cosmology....
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
The Incoherence of the Philosophers is the title of a landmark 11th century polemic by the Sufi sympathetic Imam Al-Ghazali of the Asharite school of Islamic theology criticizing the Avicennian school of early Islamic philosophy...
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
The Logic of Scientific Discovery is a 1934 book by Karl Popper. It was originally written in German and titled Logik der Forschung. Then Popper reformulated his book in English and republished it in 1959. This forms the rare case of a major work to appear in two languages, both written and one...
The Relativity of Wrong
The Relativity of Wrong
The Relativity of Wrong is a 1988 essay collection by Isaac Asimov, which takes its title from the most ambitious essay it contains. Like most of the essays Asimov wrote for F&SF Magazine, each one in The Relativity of Wrong begins with an autobiographical anecdote which serves to set the mood...
The Selfish Genius
The Selfish Genius
The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy is a book on the history and philosophy of science of evolutionary theory by Fern Elsdon-Baker, published in 2009 the year that celebrates the 150th anniversary of on the Origin of Species...
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , by Thomas Kuhn, is an analysis of the history of science. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of scientific knowledge and it triggered an ongoing worldwide assessment and reaction in — and beyond — those scholarly...
The Two Cultures
The Two Cultures
The Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures—namely the sciences and the humanities—and that this was a major...
The Value of Science
The Value of Science
The Value of Science is a book by the French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Henri Poincaré. It was published in 1905. The book deals with questions in the philosophy of science and adds detail to the topics addressed by Poincaré's previous book, Science and Hypothesis .-Intuition and...
Theoretical definition
Theoretical definition
A theoretical definition gives the meaning of a word in terms of the theories of a specific discipline. This type of definition assumes both knowledge and acceptance of the theories that it depends on. To theoretically define is to create a hypothetical construct...
Theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
Theory choice
Theory choice
A main problem in the philosophy of science in the early 20th century, and under the impact of the new and controversial theories of relativity and quantum physics, came to involve how scientists should choose between competing theories....
Thomas Samuel Kuhn
Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
Time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
Tomislav Petković
Tomislav Petkovic
Tomislav Petković is a Croatian physicist and philosopher.Born in Šibenik, he completed primary school in Vrpolje and gymnasium in Šibenik in 1970...
Uncertainty principle
Uncertainty principle
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known...
Unified Science
Unified Science
"Unified Science" can refer to any of three related strands in contemporary thought.* Belief in the unity of science was a central tenet of logical positivism. Different logical positivists construed this doctrine in several different ways, e.g...
Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism
In the philosophy of naturalism, the uniformitarianism assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the...
Unity of science
Unity of science
The unity of science is a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole.Even though, for example, physics and politics are distinct disciplines, the thesis of the unity of science says that in principle they must be part of a unified intellectual endeavor,...
Universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
Varadaraja V. Raman
Varadaraja V. Raman
Varadaraja V. Raman is Emeritus Professor of Physics and Humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has lectured and written profusely on many aspects of Indian heritage and culture and authored numerous books, more than 300 book reviews and scores of articles on science and religion...
Verificationism
Verisimilitude
Verisimilitude
Verisimilitude is the quality of realism in something .-Competing ideas:The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory...
Victor Kraft
Victor Kraft
Victor Kraft was an Austrian philosopher, best known for being a member of the Vienna Circle.-Biography:Kraft studied philosophy, geography and history at the University of Vienna...
Victoria Institute
Victoria Institute
The Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain, was founded in 1865, as a response to the publication of On the Origin of Species and Essays and Reviews. Its stated objective was to defend "the great truths revealed in Holy Scripture .....
Vienna Circle
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
Voodoo science
Voodoo science
Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud is a book published in 2000 by physics professor Robert L. Park,critical of research that falls short of adhering to the scientific method. Other authors have used the term "voodoo science", but it remains most closely associated with Park...
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...
Wesley C. Salmon
Wesley C. Salmon
Wesley C. Salmon was a metaphysician and contemporary philosopher of science concerned primarily with the topics of causation and explanation....
What Is This Thing Called Science?
What Is This Thing Called Science?
What Is This Thing Called Science? is a best-selling textbook by Dr. Alan Chalmers. It is a guide to the philosophy of science which outlines the shortcomings of a naive empiricist accounts of science, and describes and assesses modern attempts to replace them...
Whitny Braun
Whitny Braun
Whitny Braun is an American bioethicist known for her research with regard to the Jain practice of Sallekhana and the Parsi practice of Dakhmenashini. She is also affiliated with the Center for Christian Bioethics at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California and currently studies philosophy...
Wilhelm Windelband
Wilhelm Windelband
Wilhelm Windelband was a German philosopher of the Baden School.Windelband is now mainly remembered for the terms nomothetic and idiographic, which he introduced. These have currency in psychology and other areas, though not necessarily in line with his original meanings...
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was a German physician, psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the founding figures of modern psychology. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology"...
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...
Willem B. Drees
Willem B. Drees
In 2009 Willem B. Drees assumed the editorship of Zygon, Journal of Religion & Science the leading journal of religion and science in the world . It is available in 3,000 academic libraries all over the world and publishes 1000 pages of peer reviewed articles annually...
William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompson is known primarily as a social philosopher and cultural critic, but he has also been writing and publishing poetry throughout his career and received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He describes his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz on ancient...
William Newton-Smith
William Newton-Smith
William Herbert Newton-Smith is an Anglo-Canadian philosopher of science.His undergraduate degree from Queen's University was in Mathematics and Philosophy, in 1966. He took an MA from Cornell University in Philosophy, in 1968, and a DPhil in philosophy from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1974...
William W. Tait
William W. Tait
William Walker Tait is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he served as a faculty member from 1972 to 1996, and as department chair from 1981 to 1987....
William Whewell
William Whewell
William Whewell was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.-Life and career:Whewell was born in Lancaster...
Wolfgang Smith
Wolfgang Smith
Wolfgang Smith is a mathematician, physicist, philosopher of science, metaphysician, Roman Catholic and member of the Traditionalist School...
Wolfgang Stegmüller
Wolfgang Stegmüller
Wolfgang Stegmüller , was a German-Austrian philosopher with important contributions in philosophy of science and in analytic philosophy.-Biography:...
Wronger than wrong
Wronger than wrong
Michael Shermer has called "wronger than wrong" Asimov's Axiom, after the noted author Isaac Asimov, who discussed the issue in his book of essays, The Relativity of Wrong. A statement that equates two errors is wronger than wrong when one of the errors is clearly wronger than the other...
Xu Liangying
Xu Liangying
Xu Liangying , b 1920, is a Chinese physicist, translator and a famous historian and philosopher of natural science in China.-Biography:...
Yoichiro Murakami
Yoichiro Murakami
born in Tokyo, Japan on September 9, 1936, is a Japanese scholar. He specializes in the areas of history of science and philosophy of science.Murakami studied at the Hibiya High School before attaining his undergraduate degree at Tokyo University in the field of education...
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a 1974 philosophical novel, the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality.The book sold 5 million copies worldwide...

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