Philosophy of science

Vladimir Ryabov, PhD

Principal Lecturer in Information Technology
Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences
Contents
What is science and philosophy of science?
Knowledge and knowledge acquisition
What is a theory? Model and theory
The concept of paradigm
Method and methodology
What is science?
The main objective of
science is acquisition of
knowledge.

Social and ethical
aspects of knowledge
are always important.

Science is a complex
phenomenon that is
characterized by
objectivity
criticality
testability
self-correction
autonomy
advancement
Objectivity of science
Science studies phenomena existing in reality, but at the
same time it is individual activity.
The personal preferences of individual researchers
should not affect the result.
The requirement of repeatability: scientific experimental
results have to be repeatable under some conditions.
Criticality of science
Criticality refers to sceptical and evaluative attitudes
towards all kinds of presuppositions.
It should be possible to question everything in science:
presuppositions, concepts, theories and hypotheses,
reasoning, experiments, and conclusions of findings.

Testability of science
Scientific theories should be testable.
Each scientific discipline has specific methods for this
(e.g., empirical testing).
The more intensively it is possible to test a theory, the
better.
If science does not satisfy the requirement of testability,
it turns into pseudo-science.
Self-correction of science
Self-correction is connected to criticality and testability.
Science neither needs nor tolerates external instructions
for the evaluation of its results.
A critical scientific discussion often leads to research
correcting its own errors.
Autonomy of science
Science must not be dependant on other institutions of
society, which is problematic in reality.
It must be possible to direct scientific work and it is in
practice directed from outside of the scientific
community.
The objectives of research are nowadays occasionally
formulated in social, financial and production
environments.
Advancement of science
Based on the above characteristics, science represents
the most rational tool used by man to analyze reality.
There is no a scientific method which would always
produce only absolute, correct results, if improved to
perfection.
Scientific truth is a relative concept. Science is always
linked to a point of view and background information.
What is philosophy of science (PS)?
The basic question of the PS is critical evaluation of the
ideas and assumptions concerning the science.
The PS does not limit itself to descriptive part (describing
the nature of scientific research and knowledge), but it also
aims at representing what science could or should be.
Research field of the PS
Research Field of
the Philosophy of Science
General Part Specific Part
Questions common
to all disciplines
(e.g., epistemology and the
theory of scientific reasoning)
Studying philosophical and
methodological bases of
the special sciences
General part of the PS
Epistemology, which studies possibilities and prerequisites for
acquiring knowledge, different forms of knowledge and
reliability.
Theory of scientific reasoning (i.e. logics) studies the questions:
What are the sources of scientific knowledge?
How scientific hypotheses are formed?
How scientific claims are reasoned?
Prerequisites allowing scientific community to reasonably accept
the result as a part of scientific knowledge?
How reliable and accurate scientific knowledge could be?
Development stages and changes in scientific knowledge?
Deduction, induction, adduction, analysis and synthesis.
General part of the PS (continued)
Theory of scientific concept and theory formation examines how
scientific knowledge is expressed and presented:
Where the concepts used in a theory are coming from? Are they
sufficient and essential? How can we formulate correct and realistic
concepts?
Basic requirements for a scientific concept?
What kind of definitions are used in science?
What concept types can be found in science?
How can the meaning of scientific concepts be specified?
What are the laws, theories and models?
Structure of scientific theories?
What is the epistemological status of the theoretical terms in
theories?
General part of the PS (continued)
Objectives of Science:
Why scientific knowledge is obtained and what is it used for?
A problem of whether the scientific knowledge can be objective
and free of values.
Special ways of using the scientific knowledge:
Explanation of facts and regularities and prediction of new facts.
Theory of scientific explanation:
Structure of scientific explanations.
Different types of explanation, such as causal, teleological,
functional, and genetic explanations.
Contrast between explaining and understanding.
Specific part of the PS
The focus is on study of philosophical and methodological
bases of the special sciences:
The philosophy of physics: concepts of time and space, and
interpretation problem of quantum theory .
The philosophy of social sciences: structure of the social activity
and decision-making .
The philosophy of mathematics: mathematical objects (groups,
numbers), their existence and special nature of knowledge
concerning these objects.
All of these are closely related to the traditional fields of
philosophy, such as the philosophy of nature, law, society, human
mind, history and linguistics.
Contents
What is science and philosophy of science?
Knowledge and knowledge acquisition
What is a theory? Model and theory
The concept of paradigm
Method and methodology
Epistemology
The Greek word episteme often translated as knowledge.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals
with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge.
Epistemological theories:
Rationalism
Empiricism
Idealism
Phenomenalism
Defining knowledge
The most influential attempt to define knowledge can be
traced back to Plato. He defined knowledge as
justified true belief.
One implication of this definition is that one can't be said to
"know" something just because one believes it and that
belief turns out to be true.
Knowledge, therefore, is distinguished from true belief by its
justification, and much of epistemology is concerned with
how true beliefs might be properly justified. This is
sometimes referred to as the theory of justification.
Defining knowledge (continued)
This viewpoint still prevailed at least as late as Bertrand
Russels early 20th century book The Problems of Philosophy.
The Problems show that there are situations in which a
belief may be justified and true, and yet most would not
consider it to be knowledge.
Although being a justified, true belief is necessary for a
definition of knowledge, it is not sufficient.
So epistemologists have attempted to find strengthened
criteria for knowledge. No one has yet succeeded.
What is knowledge acquisition (KA)?
KA is the process of eliciting, analysing, and formalising the
patterns of thought underlying some subject matter
(Sowa J., Knowledge Representation, 2000).
KA assumes that an expert's knowledge may be acquired by a
knowledge engineer and entered into an expert system.
KA is the first stage of the knowledge engineering process .
What is knowledge acquisition (KA)?
5 stages in the KA process:
Identification. Identifies the problem characteristics.
Conceptualization. Finds Concepts to represent the
knowledge.
Formalization. Designs the structure to organise the
knowledge.
Implementation. Formulates rules, frames etc. to represent
the knowledge.
Testing. Validates the rules that organise the knowledge.
Explicit and tacit knowledge
Explicit and tacit knowledge are the main knowledge types in
KA.
Explicit knowledge is the type of knowledge explicitly
represented and accessible (e.g., recorded as a document,
formal knowledge).
Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that enters into the
production of behaviours and/or the constitution of mental
states but is not ordinarily accessible to consciousness.
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/tacitknowled
ge.html
Tacit knowledge (continued)
Tacit knowledge is intuitive, unconscious information, often
culturally conditional, used much in everyday life and valid
especially in familiar situations.
Tacit knowledge is unspoken knowledge that only surfaces in
the context of doing something or when the knower is
somehow reminded of it.
Knowledge we use to do everyday tasks is tacit.
Much of an expert's knowledge is tacit and cannot be
articulated in abstract contexts such as interviews.
Knowledge acquisition schemes cannot hope to capture all
of what an expert knows.
Explicit and tacit knowledge
(continued)
Tacit
knowledg
e
Tacit
knowledg
e
Tacit
knowledg
e
Explicit
knowledge
KA is the objective of science
The main objective of the scientific work is the acquisition
of new knowledge through research.
Research knowledge is needed:
To generalise a phenomenon or to get a deeper insight
into the nature of the phenomenon.
To validate a theory.
To understand the nature of a process.
To know various factors of systems design or decision
making process.
Contents
What is science and philosophy of science?
Knowledge and knowledge acquisition
What is a theory? Model and theory
The concept of paradigm
Method and methodology
What is theory?
Theoria is originally a Greek word meaning watching,
viewpoint.
Scientific research aims at establishing theories.
A theory is composed of a set of laws or definitions, which
systemize a certain phenomenon either in an empirical
manner, i.e. based on the knowledge gained through
observations, or in a hermeneutic manner, i.e. based on the
interpretation of the phenomenon.
What is theory? (continued)
The essence of theory can be understood as new knowledge
which is better than its predecessor if it includes more
empirical evidence or has gained new empirical support, and if
it produces, generates, new theories, i.e. is progressive.
A research is good if it questions the existing theories and
examines whether the new theory is better than its
predecessor.
It is impossible to carry out good research without a proper
theoretical support.
A good researcher has to acquire knowledge (especially
theoretical) through hard work.
Research grows always from the existing knowledge.
Theory and model
The concepts of theory and model are often confused in
practice.
A theory is the concept system that have been previously
confirmed by research, and which can be improved and
developed, even corrected, but which may, however, have a
specific verified status.
A model, on the other hand, is a preliminary thought
structure, which may develop into a new theory, or a part of
a theory, depending on the results of the research, but which
is still yet explored and examined.
Theory and model
http://www.metodix.com
Contents
What is science and philosophy of science?
Knowledge and knowledge acquisition
What is a theory? Model and theory
The concept of paradigm
Method and methodology
The concept of paradigm
From the late 1800s paradigm refers to a thought pattern in
any scientific disciplines or other epistemological context.
Paradigm is a background assumption of the study.
Every researcher has philosophical background assumptions
concerning the objectives of the study, the conduction of the
study and the received results
Thomas Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as:
What is to be observed and scrutinized
The kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed
for answers in relation to this subject
How these questions are to be put
How the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted
The concept of paradigm
The ontological
foundation (the essence
of the research object)
Competence of subject/field
(understanding the substance
and object of research)
Theory and
concepts
The epistemological foundation of
knowledge, i.e. the science of
knowledge (which, from where,
how the knowledge is acquired)
Methodology
(the conception
of a valid method)
Research
approaches
and choices
Philosophy
of science
Background
engagements
PARADIGM
Research
Contents
What is science and philosophy of science?
Knowledge and knowledge acquisition
What is a theory? Model and theory
The concept of paradigm
Method and methodology
Scientific method
The scientific method is a sequence or collection of processes
that are considered characteristic of scientific investigation and
the acquisition of new scientific knowledge based upon physical
evidence.
The essential elements of the scientific method are iterations and
recursions of the following four steps:
Characterization
Hypothesis (a theoretical, hypothetical explanation)
Prediction (logical deduction from the hypothesis)
Experiment (test of all of the above)
This can be called the hypothetico-deductive method.
Methodology
The word Methodology is used in several ways.
Methodology can refer to the science that studies the methods
of problem solving. Most sciences have their own specific
methodology.
Methodology is sometimes used as a synonym for the word
"method," particularly a complex method. Some usage
arbiters regard this usage as pretentious and questionable.
In software engineering and project management, a
methodology is a codified set of recommended practices,
sometimes accompanied by training materials, formal
educational programs, worksheets, and diagramming tools.
References
Chapter 1 from
Blaxter, L., Hughes, C., and Tight, M., 2003, How to
Research, 2nd Edition, Open University Press, McGraw Hill
Education.

Chapter 1 from
Booth, W., Colomb, G., and Williams, J., 2003, The Craft of
Research, 2nd Edition, The University of Chicago Press.