philosophy of science summary

Learn about the ontological and epistemological branches of philosophy

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see philosophy of science.

AristotleAristotle, marble portrait bust, Roman copy (2nd century bce) of a Greek original (c. 325 bce); in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome.

philosophy of science, Branch of philosophy that attempts to elucidate the nature of scientific inquiry—observational procedures, patterns of argument, methods of representation and calculation, metaphysical presuppositions—and evaluate the grounds of their validity from the points of view of epistemology, formal logic, scientific method, and metaphysics. Historically, it has had two main preoccupations, ontological and epistemological. The ontological preoccupations (which frequently overlap with the sciences themselves) ask what kinds of entities can properly figure in scientific theories and what sort of existence such entities possess. Epistemologically, philosophers of science have analyzed and evaluated the concepts and methods employed in studying natural phenomena, both the general concepts and methods common to all scientific inquiries and the specific ones that distinguish special sciences.

metalogic Summary

Metalogic, the study and analysis of the semantics (relations between expressions and meanings) and syntax (relations among expressions) of formal languages and formal systems. It is related to, but does not include, the formal treatment of natural languages. (For a discussion of the syntax and

Alfred North Whitehead Summary

Alfred North Whitehead was an English mathematician and philosopher who collaborated with Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematica (1910–13) and, from the mid-1920s, taught at Harvard University and developed a comprehensive metaphysical theory. Whitehead’s grandfather Thomas Whitehead was a

Erwin Schrödinger Summary

Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist who contributed to the wave theory of matter and to other fundamentals of quantum mechanics. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with British physicist P.A.M. Dirac. Schrödinger entered the University of Vienna in 1906 and obtained his

Arthur Eddington Summary

Arthur Eddington was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics, investigating the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He also was the first expositor of the theory of relativity in the English language. Eddington was the son of the