|
Commensurability (philosophy Of Science)
Commensurability is a concept in the philosophy of science whereby scientific theories are said to be "commensurable" if scientists can discuss the theories using a shared nomenclature that allows direct comparison of them to determine which one is more valid or useful. On the other hand, theories are incommensurable if they are embedded in starkly contrasting conceptual frameworks whose languages do not overlap sufficiently to permit scientists to directly compare the theories or to cite empirical evidence favoring one theory over the other. Discussed by Ludwik Fleck in the 1930s, and popularized by Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s, the problem of incommensurability results in scientists talking past each other, as it were, while comparison of theories is muddled by confusions about terms, contexts and consequences. Introduction of the term In 1962, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend both independently introduced the idea of incommensurability to the philosophy of science. In both ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Science
Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose and meaning of science as a human endeavour. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of scientific practice, and overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, logic, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and the concept of truth. Philosophy of science is both a theoretical and empirical discipline, relying on philosophical theorising as well as meta-studies of scientific practice. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than the philosophy of science. Many of the central problems concerned with the philosophy of science lack contemporary consensus, including whether ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...s. Frederick Suppe describes the position of the received view by saying that it identifies scientific theories with "axiomatic calculi in which theoretical terms are given a partial observation interpretation by mean of correspondence rules." The received view is generally associated with the logical empiricists. Recently, the received view of theories has been displaced by the semantic view of theories as the dominant position in theory formulation in the philosophy of science. Notes Metatheory of science Logical positivism [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Geach
Peter Thomas Geach (29 March 1916 – 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher who was Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds. His areas of interest were philosophical logic, ethics, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion and the theory of identity. Early life Peter Geach was born in Chelsea, London, on 29 March 1916. He was the only son of George Hender Geach and his wife Eleonora Frederyka Adolfina ''née'' Sgonina. His father, who was employed in the Indian Educational Service, would go on to work as a professor of philosophy in Lahore and later as the principal of a teacher-training college in Peshawar. His parents' marriage was unhappy and quickly broke up. Until the age of four, he lived with his maternal grandparents, who were Polish immigrants, in Cardiff. After this time he was placed in the care of a guardian (until his father returned to Britain) and contact with his mother and her parents ceased. He attended Llandaff Cathedral School in Cardif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Anscombe
Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (; 18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001), usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and ethics. She was a prominent figure of analytical Thomism, a fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Anscombe was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein and became an authority on his work and edited and translated many books drawn from his writings, above all his ''Philosophical Investigations''. Anscombe's 1958 article " Modern Moral Philosophy" introduced the term '' consequentialism'' into the language of analytic philosophy, and had a seminal influence on contemporary virtue ethics. Her monograph ''Intention'' (1957) was described by Donald Davidson as "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle". It is "widely considered a found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London School Of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded by Fabian Society members Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb, Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw, LSE joined the University of London in 1900 and offered its first degree programmes under the auspices of the university in 1901. LSE began awarding degrees in its own name in 2008, prior to which it awarded degrees of the University of London. It became a university in its own right within the University of London in 2022. LSE is located in the London Borough of Camden and Westminster, Central London, near the boundary between Covent Garden and Holborn. The area is historically known as Clare Market. As of 2023/24, LSE had just under 13,000 students, with the majority being postgraduate students and just under two thirds coming from outsid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics (natural language), Formal semantics relies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationality
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do, or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in a rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either ''arational'', if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or '' irrational'', if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards. There are many discussions about the essential features shared by all forms of rationality. According to reason-responsiveness accounts, to be rational is to be responsive to reasons. For example, dark clouds are a reason for taking an umbrella, which is why it is rational for an agent to do so in response. An important rival to this approach are coherence-based ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of Falsifiability, empirical falsification, and for founding the Department of Philosophy at the London School of Economics. According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can (and should) be scrutinised with decisive experiments. Popper was opposed to the classical Justification (epistemology), justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with "the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy", namely critical rationalism. In political discourse, he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism that he believed mad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricists argue that empiricism is a more reliable method of finding the truth than purely using logical reasoning, because humans have cognitive biases and limitations which lead to errors of judgement. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. Empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences. Historically, empiricism was associated with the " blank slate" concept (''tabula rasa''), according to which the human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through later experience. Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standard Language
A standard language (or standard variety, standard dialect, standardized dialect or simply standard) is any language variety that has undergone substantial codification in its grammar, lexicon, writing system, or other features and that stands out among related varieties in a community as the one with the highest status or prestige. Often, it is the prestige language variety of a whole country. In linguistics, the process of a variety becoming organized into a standard, for instance by being widely expounded in grammar books or other reference works, and also the process of making people's language usage conform to that standard, is called standardization. Typically, the varieties that undergo standardization are those associated with centres of commerce and government, used frequently by educated people and in news broadcasting, and taught widely in schools and to non-native learners of the language.Trudgill, Peter (2009). ''Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Science
The history of science covers the development of science from ancient history, ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural science, natural, social science, social, and formal science, formal. Protoscience, Science in the ancient world, early sciences, and natural philosophies such as alchemy and astrology that existed during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, declined during the early modern period after the establishment of formal disciplines of science in the Age of Enlightenment. The earliest roots of scientific thinking and practice can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. These civilizations' contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine influenced later Greek natural philosophy of Science in classical antiquity, classical antiquity, wherein formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the Universe, physical world based on n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Normal Science
Normal science, identified and elaborated on by Thomas Samuel Kuhn in ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'', is the regular work of scientists theorizing, observing, and experimenting within a settled paradigm or explanatory framework. Regarding science as puzzle-solving, Kuhn explained normal science as slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory, without questioning or challenging the underlying assumptions of that theory. Route to normal science Kuhn stressed that historically, the route to normal science could be a difficult one. Prior to the formation of a shared paradigm or research consensus, would-be scientists were reduced to the accumulation of random facts and unverified observations, in the manner recorded by Pliny the Elder or Francis Bacon, while simultaneously beginning the foundations of their field from scratch through a plethora of competing theories. Arguably at least the social sciences remain at such a pre-paradigmatic leve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
