An Introduction to Philosophy and Sociology of Science- Paradigms in Science and Paradigm shift

An Introduction to Philosophy and Sociology of Science- Paradigms in Science and Paradigm shift

Ralte, Rodinmawia. The Interface of Science and Religion: An Introductory Study. New Delhi: Christian World Imprints, 2017.

Vinck, Dominique. The Sociology of Scientific Work: The Fundamental Relationship between Science and Society. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 2010. 

Philosophy is an attempt to ask and answer some very basic questions about the universe and our place within it. These questions can sometimes seem far removed from practical concerns. It made a difference to developments in many other academic fields, and some of the debates have reverberated much further, affecting discussions of education, medicine, and the proper place of science in society. 

Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that critically examines the foundations, methods, products, and implications of scientific activity. According to William Bechtel, “It is a field devoted to analyzing the character of scientific investigation. It attempts to answer to a plethora of questions in the scientific investigation”. Merrilee H.Salmon explains the philosophy of science as the branch of philosophy that reflects and critically analyzes science. 

John Losee brings out four viewpoints on the philosophy of science. First, the formulation of worldviews that are consistently based on scientific theories. Second, it is an exposition of the presuppositions and predispositions of scientists. Third, a discipline in which the concepts and theories of the sciences are analyzed and clarified. Fourth, philosophy of science as a second-order criteriology. 

The Philosophers of science south to answer questions like:

        1. What characteristics distinguish scientific inquiry from other types of investigation?

        2. What procedures should scientists follow in investigating nature?

        3. What conditions must be satisfied for a scientific explanation to be correct?

        4. What is the cognitive status of scientific laws and principles?

The principle task of Philosophy of Science is to analyze the methods of inquiry used in various sciences. To questions assumptions that scientists take for granted. From the history of science we have known that many scientists have played an an important role in the development of the philosophy of science, such as, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc are prominent examples. Each was deeply interested in philosophical questions about how science should proceed, what methods of inquiry it should be used, how much confidence should place in those methods, whether there are limits to scientific knowledge, and so on.

All these questions still lie in the mind of contemporary philosophy of Science. 

Brief Historical Survey of the Developments in Philosophy of Science 

Philosophy of science is a sub-field 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. 

To trace the history of the philosophy of science, especially in the Western world, we have to begin with the philosophers of Greece. The genesis of science can be rooted in Aristotle, who is considered the Father of Science. With him the idea of ‘deductive reasoning’ a cornerstone of the scientific method began. Aristotle was credited as the initiator of the scientific method. 

After Greek world, we have the Roman world and the Romans were the next to take the burgeoning science, developing the scientific method of Greeks. They relied on Aristotle and Ptolemy methods. The Islamic world preserved the philosophical knowledge of the Ancient Greek Philosophers and made a great contribution towards the development of the philosophy of science. After the inauguration of “Abbasid Caliphate’ (750-1258 A.D.), translations into Arabic began to be made of Greek scientific and philosophical works. 

As mentioned above, the philosophical thought pertaining to science dates back at least to the time of Aristotle, philosophy of science emerged as a distinct discipline only in the middle of the 20th century in the wake of the logical positivism movement, which aimed to formulate criteria for ensuring all philosophical statements' meaningfulness and objectively assessing them. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) developed ‘inductive method’ over against deductive method of Aristotle. Eventually, Galileo (1564-1642) took science to another level by emphasizing empiricism and rationalist thinking. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) put up a pyramid of propositions in the philosophy of science.

Christian Huygens (1629-1695) started argued that science and mathematics are actually different fields. He was the first proponent of hypothetico-deductive. 

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) enter the fray of philosophy of science by arguing that scientific undertaking should begin with analysis. Newton firmly believes in God and he saw his works as uncovering the laws of the universe behind creation. Huygens and Newton both agree that’s science could not give definite answers only a probability that something is correct. Then comes David Hume (1711-1776) who first highlighted the problem of induction, in that any inductively derived ‘proof’ could be undone by a single contrary observation.

John Herschel (1792-1871), Poincare (1854-1912) were contributing greatly to the building blocks of the philosophy of science. 

Thomas Kuhn's landmark 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was also formative, challenging the view of scientific progress as steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge based on a fixed method of systematic experimentation and instead arguing that any progress is relative to a "paradigm," the set of questions, concepts, and practices that define a scientific discipline in a particular historical period. Karl Popper and Charles Sanders Pierce moved on from positivism to establish a modern set of standards for scientific methodology. 

Major Schools (Method) in Philosophy of Science

(a) Deductive Method

        It is a series of deductions made from a priori truths, started by the Greeks especially Aristotle.

(b) Inductive Method

        It is to stress on observation as well as in its acceptance of the methodological rule that scientists must generalize from empirical observations to overarching natural laws. Modern Science was born with the advent of the inductive approach.

(c) Falsification

The philosophy of Science move from induction to falsification as the defining mark of scientific practices. Karl Pepper is the proponent of this method. According to him, what demarcates science from non-science is the practice of formulating risky hypothesis and then trying to falsify them.

(d) The Received View

        The Received view held that scientific theories and scientific rationality could be clearly delineated from other human rational endeavors.

(e) Subjective Research

        It held that scientists are engaged not merely in seeing the world range of interpretive issues and presuppositions that it involves, which perceived that scientific research, not just present uninterpreted data but expectations and conceptual commitments of the researchers influence.