Optional Theme: Philosophy of Science
What is tested
Essays examine how science works, what distinguishes it from non-science, and whether its theories describe reality. You must handle historical cases and the normative question of method at once.
Core concepts
- Induction: Hume's problem; the uniformity of nature cannot be justified without circularity.
- Popper: falsifiability as the demarcation criterion; conjecture and refutation; no inductive logic.
- Kuhn: paradigms, normal science, anomaly, crisis, revolution, incommensurability.
- Lakatos: research programmes with a hard core and protective belt, judged progressive or degenerating; Feyerabend's "anything goes".
- Realism versus anti-realism: van Fraassen's constructive empiricism (accept theories that are empirically adequate); underdetermination; theory-laden observation (Hanson); Duhem–Quine holism.
- Explanation: Hempel's covering-law model and its critics; reductionism and emergence; values in science.
Worked example
"Falsification is the correct account of science." Reasoning: Popper contrasts Einstein's risky prediction with psychoanalysis, which cannot specify a refuting observation-so falsifiability marks science off from pseudo-science. Objection (Kuhn): scientists routinely protect core theories from anomaly, and revolutions are not simple refutations; moreover observations are theory-laden, so a "basic" falsifying statement is contestable. Evaluate: falsifiability works as a demarcation criterion and a normative ideal, but not as a description of scientific practice. Conclude accordingly.
Traps
Treating Popper and Kuhn as simply rivals about method when they answer different questions; ignoring the theory-ladenness of observation; calling a theory unfalsifiable without specifying the observation that would refute it.