Philosophy of Science Test 2

Positivism

Belief that natural science, based on observation, comprises the whole of human knowledge.

August Comte

was a French philosopher, mathematician and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Comte's ideas were also fundamental to the development of sociology, with him inventing the very term and treating the discipline as the crowning achievement of the sciences

Ernst Mach

was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the understanding of the physics of shock waves. The ratio of the speed of a flow or object to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honor. As a philosopher of science, he was a major influence on logical positivism and American pragmatism.

Logical Positivism

Twentieth-century philosophical movement that used a strict principle of verifiability to reject as meaningless the non-empirical statements of metaphysics, theology, and ethics.

Empiricism

Reliance on experience as the source of ideas and knowledge.

The Vienna Circle

A group of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists in Austria during the 1920s and early 1930s who founded logical positivism with their joint publication of Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung—der Wiener Kreis (A Scientific World-view—The Vienna Circle) in 1929.

Hempel’s critiques of strict inductivism

Hempel criticizes strict inductivism as a misconception of induction (the Narrow Inductivist View), arguing that scientific inquiry cannot be reduced to idealized, purely observational inference to general laws or hypotheses, and that induction in science involves more complex processes than straightforward observational-to-generalization steps.

(H-D model of) verification/confirmation

The H-D model, or Hypothetico-Deductive model, is a scientific method used for testing hypotheses. It involves forming a hypothesis based on observations, making testable predictions, and conducting experiments to confirm or refute those predictions. If the results support the predictions, the hypothesis is considered confirmed; if not, it may need to be revised or rejected.

The problem of alternative hypotheses

The problem of alternative hypotheses involves defining a clear, testable Ha that contrasts with the null hypothesis, avoiding bias and misinterpretation, and often facing challenges such as multiple competing alternatives, complexity of real-world phenomena, and the risk of misaligning the hypothesis with research objectives, which can complicate study design, analysis, and interpretation of findings.

“Non-evidential” criteria of theory choice
(simplicity/parsimony; internal
coherence; coherence with other
accepted theories)

Non-evidential criteria for theory choice include simplicity/parsimony (favoring fewer assumptions and entities), internal coherence (logical consistency), and coherence with other well-confirmed theories, with extraordinary claims requiring substantial justification if incompatible with established science.

Consilience

is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions.

Karl Popper

Austrian philosopher of science and political thinker. According to Popper knowledge of the natural world never advances by direct confirmation of scientific theories—which cannot occur—but only indirectly, through the systematic falsification of their alternatives by reference to our experience. He defended a realistic epistemology in Objective Knowledge (1966).

Falsification

A property of any proposition for which it is possible to specify a set of circumstances the occurrence of which would demonstrate that the proposition is false

Demarcation criteria/problem

The demarcation problem asks what criteria distinguish science from non-science, with proposed criteria including empirical testing, falsifiability (as Popper argued), peer-reviewed publication, acceptance by the scientific community, and naturalistic explanations, though consensus remains debated and some advocate broader, contextual approaches that assess how well a hypothesis satisfies multiple criteria rather than relying on a single necessary-and-sufficient condition

Psuedoscience

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be scientific or factual but are inherently incompatible with the scientific method

Popper’s examples of unfalsifiable theories
(bold) conjecture (risky prediction)
& refutation

Popper argues that unfalsifiable theories resist refutation by making bold conjectures with risk to predictions, but are structured so no possible observation could refute them, unlike scientific conjectures that are testable and subject to severe falsification.

the conventionalist strategem

A conventionalist stratagem is any technique a theorist uses to evade falsifying evidence, such as adding ad hoc hypotheses, redefining terms, doubting the experiment, declaring observations irrelevant, or doubting the theorist’s ingenuity.

corroboration/corroborating evidence

Corroborating evidence in philosophy refers to evidence that supports a proposition already backed by initial data, aiming to increase confidence in a hypothesis by evaluating it from multiple evidentiary angles rather than relying on a single line of reasoning.