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Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of science. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than the philosophy of science.
The phrase "correlation does not imply causation" refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them. The idea that "correlation implies causation" is an example of a questionable-cause logical fallacy, in which two events occurring together are taken to have established a cause-and-effect relationship. This fallacy is also known by the Latin phrase cum hoc ergo propter hoc. This differs from the fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc, in which an event following another is seen as a necessary consequence of the former event, and from conflation, the errant merging of two events, ideas, databases, etc., into one.
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In Categories, Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that, as George Lakoff put it, "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing". The contrary view—non-essentialism—denies the need to posit such an "essence'".
Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. Examples include the idea that personal thoughts can influence the external world without acting on them, or that objects must be causally connected if they resemble each other or came in contact with each other in the past. Magical thinking is a type of fallacious thinking and is a common source of invalid causal inferences. Unlike the confusion of correlation with causation, magical thinking does not require the events to be correlated.
Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a body of observations is considered to derive a general principle. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from deductive reasoning. If the premises are correct, the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain; in contrast, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is probable, based upon the evidence given.
Ram Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014) was an English philosopher of science who is best known as the initiator of the philosophical movement of critical realism (CR). Bhaskar argued that the task of science is "the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of the world", rather than the discovery of quantitative laws, and that experimental science makes sense only if such mechanisms exist and operate outside the lab as well as inside it. He went on to apply that realism about mechanisms and causal powers to the philosophy of social science, and he also elaborated a series of arguments to support the critical role of philosophy and the human sciences. According to Bhaskar, it is possible and desirable for the study of society to be scientific.
The deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, also known as Hempel's model, the Hempel–Oppenheim model, the Popper–Hempel model, or the covering law model, is a formal view of scientifically answering questions asking, "Why...?". The DN model poses scientific explanation as a deductive structure, one where truth of its premises entails truth of its conclusion, hinged on accurate prediction or postdiction of the phenomenon to be explained.
In philosophy of science, idealization is the process by which scientific models assume facts about the phenomenon being modeled that are strictly false but make models easier to understand or solve. That is, it is determined whether the phenomenon approximates an "ideal case," then the model is applied to make a prediction based on that ideal case.
Jon Elster is a Norwegian philosopher and political theorist who holds the Robert K. Merton professorship of Social Science at Columbia University.
Physical causal closure is a metaphysical theory about the nature of causation in the physical realm with significant ramifications in the study of metaphysics and the mind. In a strongly stated version, physical causal closure says that "all physical states have pure physical causes" — Jaegwon Kim, or that "physical effects have only physical causes" — Agustin Vincente, p. 150.
Initially developed by Roy Bhaskar in his book A Realist Theory of Science (1975), transcendental realism is a philosophy of science that was initially developed as an argument against epistemic realism of positivism and hermeneutics. The position is based on Bhaskar's transcendental arguments for certain ontological and epistemological positions based on what reality must be like in order for scientific knowledge to be possible.
In the science of biology, a mechanism is a system of causally interacting parts and processes that produce one or more effects. Scientists explain phenomena by describing mechanisms that could produce the phenomena. For example, natural selection is a mechanism of biological evolution; other mechanisms of evolution include genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow. In ecology, mechanisms such as predation and host-parasite interactions produce change in ecological systems. In practice, no description of a mechanism is ever complete because not all details of the parts and processes of a mechanism are fully known. For example, natural selection is a mechanism of evolution that includes countless, inter-individual interactions with other individuals, components, and processes of the environment in which natural selection operates.
Lindley Darden is a contemporary philosopher of science, with a research focus on the philosophy of biology.
An explanandum is a sentence describing a phenomenon that is to be explained, and the explanans are the sentences adduced as explanations of that phenomenon. For example, one person may pose an explanandum by asking "Why is there smoke?", and another may provide an explanans by responding "Because there is a fire". In this example, "smoke" is the explanandum, and "fire" is the explanans.
Causal analysis is the field of experimental design and statistics pertaining to establishing cause and effect. Typically it involves establishing four elements: correlation, sequence in time, a plausible physical or information-theoretical mechanism for an observed effect to follow from a possible cause, and eliminating the possibility of common and alternative ("special") causes. Such analysis usually involves one or more artificial or natural experiments.
Peter Hedström is one of the founders of the field of analytical sociology. He has made contributions to the analysis of social contagion processes and complex social networks, as well as to the philosophical and meta-theoretical foundations of analytical sociology. He is one of the key contributors to the literature on social mechanisms.
Analytical sociology is a strategy for understanding the social world. It is concerned with explaining important macro-level facts such as the diffusion of various social practices, patterns of segregation, network structures, typical beliefs, and common ways of acting. It explains such facts not merely by relating them to other macro-level facts, but by detailing in clear and precise ways the mechanisms through which they were brought about. This is accomplished by a detailed focus on individuals' actions and interactions, and the use of state-of-the-art simulation techniques to derive the macro-level outcomes that such actions and interactions are likely to bring about. Analytical sociology can be seen as contemporary incarnation of Robert K. Merton's well-known notion of middle-range theory.
Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science initially developed by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014). It specifically opposes forms of empiricism and positivism by viewing science as concerned with identifying causal mechanisms. In the last decades of the twentieth century it also stood against various forms of postmodernism and poststructuralism by insisting on the reality of objective existence. In contrast to positivism's methodological foundation, and poststructuralism's epistemological foundation, critical realism insists that (social) science should be built from an explicit ontology. Critical realism is one of a range of types of philosophical realism, as well as forms of realism advocated within social science such as analytic realism and subtle realism.
Peter K. Machamer is an American philosopher and historian of science. Machamer was Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His work has been influential in philosophy of science in developing an account of mechanistic explanation which rejects standard deductive models of explanation, such as the deductive-nomological model by understanding scientific practice as the search for mechanisms. His research has also focused on 17th-century history of philosophy and science, on Galileo Galilei and René Descartes in particular, and on values and science. He was also a wine columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for fifteen years, and he has reflected on wine and beer in philosophical writing. Machamer is also the "Philosopher in Residence" for the Pittsburgh dance company Attack Theater.
Roberta L. Millstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, with affiliations in the Science and Technology Studies Program and the John Muir Institute for the Environment. She is the Senior Co-chair of the Philosophy of Science Association’s Women's Caucus and an Editor of the peer-reviewed online open-access journal Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology. She also serves as a member of the executive committee and Council for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pacific Division (AAAS-PD) as well as the council for the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB).
References
Elster, J. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hedström, P. and P. Ylikoski. 2010. Causal mechanisms in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology 36: 49–67.
Machamer, P., L. Darden, and C.F. Craver. 2000. Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science 67:1-25.
