science, philosophy

science, philosophy of

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.