Overview
Biology, philosophy of
Biologists sometimes look perplexed when they are told of the existence of a subject called ‘The Philosophy of Biology’. What, they ask, is there to philosophise about in ...
Search Results 1 - 25 of 165. Results contain 969 matches
Overview
Physics, philosophy of
The philosophy of physics forms a central discipline of the philosophy of science, which itself can claim to be central to metaphysics and epistemology (see Science, philosophy of). ...
Overview
Science, philosophy of
Science grew out of philosophy; and, even after recognizable, if flexible, interdisciplinary boundaries developed, the most fruitful philosophical investigations have often been made in close connection with science ...
Thematic
Action at a distance
Action at a distance is typically characterized in terms of some cause producing a spatially separated effect in the absence of any medium by which the causal interaction ...
Thematic
Alchemy
Alchemy is the quest for an agent of material perfection, produced through a creative activity (opus), in which humans and nature collaborate. It exists in many cultures (China, ...
Thematic
Archaeology, philosophy of
Questions about the scientific status of archaeology have been central to field-defining debates since the late nineteenth century and have frequently involved appeals to philosophical sources. With the ...
Thematic
Archē
Archē, or ‘principle’, is an ancient Greek philosophical term. Building on earlier uses, Aristotle established it as a technical term with a number of related meanings, including ‘originating ...
Thematic
Atomism, ancient
Ancient Greek atomism, starting with Leucippus and Democritus in the fifth century bc, arose as a response to problems of the continuum raised by Eleatic philosophers. In ...
Thematic
Bayesian cognitive science
Bayesian cognitive science is a research programme that relies on modelling resources from Bayesian statistics for studying and understanding mind, brain, and behaviour. Conceiving of mental capacities as ...
Thematic
Bell’s theorem
Bell’s theorem is concerned with the outcomes of a special type of ‘correlation experiment’ in quantum mechanics. It shows that under certain conditions these outcomes would be restricted ...
Thematic
Biological function
Biologists ascribe functions to biological traits. For example, they tell us that it is the function of the heart to pump blood and that it is a function ...
Thematic
Causal explanation
An explanation is an answer to a why-question, and so a causal explanation is an answer to ‘Why X?’ that says something about the causes of X. For ...
Thematic
Causality and necessity in Islamic thought
Discussions of causality and necessity in Islamic thought were the result of attempts to incorporate the wisdom of the Greeks into the legacy of the Qur‘‘an, and specifically ...
Thematic
Causation and laws in biology
Physicalism appears to undermine the autonomy of ‘special sciences’ such as biology, and to leave little room for proprietary biological laws or causation. Mendel’s ‘Laws’ are so-called because ...
Thematic
Causation, Indian theories of
Causation was acknowledged as one of the central problems in Indian philosophy. The classical Indian philosophers’ concern with the problem basically arose from two sources: first, the cosmogonic ...
Thematic
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is the name given to the scientific investigation of mathematically simple systems that exhibit complex and unpredictable behaviour. Since the 1970s these systems have been used ...
Thematic
Chemistry, philosophical aspects of
Chemistry, like all theoretical sciences, is deeply rooted in philosophical inquiry. Early Greek atomism was a response to Parmenides’ argument that the very concept of change is unintelligible. ...
Thematic
Colour, theories of
The world as perceived by human beings is full of colour. The world as described by physical scientists is composed of colourless particles and fields. Philosophical theories of ...
Thematic
Computer science
At first sight, computers would seem to be of minimal philosophical importance; mere symbol manipulators that do the sort of things that we can do anyway, only faster ...
Thematic
Computer simulations in science
Since the advent of digital computers around 1950, the method of computer simulation (simulation, for short) has enriched the repertoire of scientific methods. A computer simulation traces the ...
Thematic
Confirmation theory
The result of a test of a general hypothesis can be positive, negative or neutral. The first, qualitative, task of confirmation theory is to explicate these types of ...
Thematic
Conservation principles
In antiquity ‘self-evident’ principles were used to argue for the conservation of certain quantities. The concept of quantitative conservation laws, such as those of mass and energy, is ...
Thematic
Constructivism
Originally proposed by sociologists of science, constructivism or social constructivism is a view about the nature of scientific knowledge held by many philosophers of science. Constructivists maintain that ...
Thematic
Conventionalism
How is it known that every number has a successor, that straight lines can intersect each other no more than once, that causes precede their events, and that ...
Thematic
Cosmology
The term ’cosmology’ has three main uses. At its most general, it designates a worldview, for example, the Mayan cosmology. In the early eighteenth century, shortly after the ...