Philosophy of Science

Aristotelian era and his geo-centric legacies came to an end when Copernicus suggested an alternative world view i.e The sun is at the center of the universe and planets, including the earth, were in orbit around it. Initially it was met with much resistance, not least from the Church, but the subsquent 100 years saw the establishment of a scientific orthodoxy (Copernicanism).
Newton, the progenitor of Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, sought to improve the Descrate’s law ( physical world consists simply of inert particles of matter interacting and colliding with one another ). The result was adynamical and mechanical theory of great power, based around Newton’s three laws of motion and his famous principle of universal gravitation.
But even the confidence in Newton was shattered in the early years of 20th century, when Einstein showed that Newtonian mechanics doesnot give right result when applied to very massive objects or objects under very high velocity resulting in the rise of strange and radical Relativity and Quantum mechanics which I stil find hard to accept or even understand.

Most of the religious scriptures propose a radical theory “ Everything has already been planned”. This theory can’t be refuted. If by anychance, you came acrosss a sound arguement objecting this even that would be put, very easily, under the tab of already planned.

Here are two examples one being a pursuit of Science and the other at best is an example of pseudo-science. In such and other nuanced questions, the philosophy of Science came to our rescue.
The principal task of philosophy of science is to analyze the methods of enquiry used in various sciences. Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, thought that the fundamental feature of a scientific theory is that it should be falsifiable ( i.e the theory must make some definate predictions that are capable of being tested against experience). The 2nd theory concerning the planning of future fails because it doesn’t propose anything definate. This seems quite plausible as there is definately something fishy about theory which can be made to fit any empirical data whatsoever.

Related posts:

We love the custom of attributing an animal to an otherwise dry and informative number. That’s what we do too. According to the Chinese calendar, 2019 was and still is a year of Earth Pig. To…

BoJack Horseman tackles issues that are normally not portrayed in popular media (or, issues that are only ever portrayed in a watered-down, “acceptable” way): abortion, asexuality, and serial…

This question often bugs buyers as well as sellers when they are looking forward to making such a big decision in their life. But at the same time, it is quite unsettling to think like this for real…