At EvC there has been some debate about the relevance of philosophy or logic in the pursuit of science or scientific research.
As I have said before, science has its roots in philosophy, and is essentially a field of philosophy where a certain paradigm of evidence collection (epistemic justification) has been accepted and is being applied to reach conclusions.
In short, the fields of epistemology and metaphysics over a period of time formed a branch called natural philosophy, which through more time and focus became what we call modern science.
Modern Philosophy of Science is distinct from modern science only in that it retains epistemological concerns that science (as an applied discipline) rarely if ever deals with. It essentially studies scientific method to continue improving the method, or at least understanding its boundaries, as natural philosophers ("scientists") did more often in the past than modern scientists (who have the benefit of a solid and tested paradigm) need do now.
Unfortunately because of the scientific method's routine practical use, many scientists are losing sight of the philosophical nature of science, indeed that it actually is the practice of a philosophical principle that has limits. They refer to science as some sort of mere technical field with rules of what to do, which I guess are self evident (?), and beyond epistemic or logical concerns. Nothing could be more distant from the truth.
This has led to a general ignorance of scientific method and what it can yield or cover. It is almost treated like a religion with set dogma which is beyond question and thought to get at real truths. It has also produced many scientists ready to conflate correlation with causation, and so opinion with knowledge.
On the other hand there are many people frustrated with the success of the scientific method which was accepted long ago by natural philosophers and is the standard for modern science. This appears to be because specific theories they want to have accepted must be ignored or have been ruled out due its limits or its consistent application. This camp then attempts to use epistemological or Philosophy of Science based arguments to challenge the paradigm and get the evidence they wish admitted and so their theory accepted.
The first camp is correct that to work within modern science, the second camp cannot use epistemological argument alone. However the first camp leaves reason just as equally to say that epistemic arguments have no hold on science. It was epistemic debates which drove better methodology toward modern scientific method, and such debate can do so again.
Indeed it was epistemic and metaphysical concerns which were behind Galileo and Bacon. Both argued for a change (in this case correctly) in science, with Galileo in specific so that specific theories could be seen as acceptable.
For those that need some material to read, the following are from Wikipedia on the named topics (I recommend reading the whole pages):
Science:
Science is knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method. Scientific knowledge relies heavily upon forms of logic .
Natural Philosophy:
Natural philosophy is a term applied to the objective study of nature and the physical universe before the development of modern science .
In other words, all forms of science historically developed out of philosophy or more specifically natural philosophy. At older universities , long-established Chairs of Natural Philosophy are nowadays occupied mainly by professors of physics .
Philosophy of science:
The philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy which studies the philosophical foundations, assumptions, and implications of science , including the natural sciences such as physics and biology , and the social sciences ,such as psychology and economics . In this respect, the philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology and ontology . It seeks to explain such things as: the nature of scientific statements and concepts; the way in which they are produced; how science explains, predicts and, through technology, harnesses nature; the means for determining the validity of information; the formulation and use of the scientific method; the types of reasoning used to arrive at conclusions; and the implications of scientific methods and models for the larger society, and for the sciences themselves.
I might add that a look at the major contributors to philosophy of science before modern philosophers such as Popper, will reveal modern science's direct connection to (and a result of) philosophy of science.
History of Science:
Modern science is a body of verifiable empirical knowledge , a global community of scholars , and a set of techniques for investigating the universe known as the scientific method . The history of science traces these phenomena and their precursors back in time , all the way into human prehistory .
The Scientific Revolution saw the inception of the modern scientific method to guide the evaluation of knowledge . This change is considered to be so fundamental that older inquiries are known as pre-scientific . Still, many place ancient natural philosophy clearly within the scope of the history of science
In the West, from antiquity up to the time of the Scientific Revolution , inquiry into the workings of the universe was known as natural philosophy , and those engaged in it were known as natural philosophers . This included some fields of study which are no longer considered scientific). An account of the development of (natural) philosophy from ancient times until recent times can be found in Bertrand Russell 's History of Philosophy . In many cases, systematic learning about the natural world was a direct outgrowth of religion , often as a project of a particular religious community.
One important feature of "pre-scientific" inquiry (whether in the West or elsewhere) was reluctance to engage in experiment . For example, Aristotle , one of the most prolific natural philosophers of antiquity , made countless observations of nature, especially the habits and attributes of plants and animals in the world around him. He focused on categorizing , and made many observations on the large-scale workings of the universe, which led to the development of a comprehensive theory of physics (see Physics (Aristotle) ). Yet, until the period of the Scientific Revolution , these theories were never really tested experimentally. At the time, the utility of experiment was unproven. Some believed that setting up artificial conditions in an experiment could never produce results that would describe nature as it was in the world around them.
The Scientific Revolution is held by most historians to have begun in 1543 , when De Revolutionibus , by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus , was first printed. The thesis of this book was that the Earth moved around the Sun. The period culminated with the publication of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687 by Isaac Newton .
Other significant scientific advances were made during this time by Galileo Galilei ,Christiaan Huygens ,Johannes Kepler , and Blaise Pascal .
In philosophy, major contributions were made by Francis Bacon , Sir Thomas Browne ,Ren Descartes , and Thomas Hobbes . The basics of scientific method were also developed: the new way of thinking emphasized experimentation and reason over traditional considerations.
Everyone can follow links to other subjects within those pages, one important link might be to epistemology so that one understands how natural philosophy and scientific method are direct results of that field of philosophy.
I want to end with a quote regarding science and philosophy from Daniel Dennett, which he wrote in his book
Darwin's Dangerous Idea. This subject may be slightly different than what he was addressing but it certainly does work as an accurate assessment of philosophy's role in science, including the scientific method...
"There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination."
(I am not sure where this should go, but if nowhere else, then the coffee house)
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