These are some of the questions that the philosophy of science attempts to answer. In this course, we will examine the central issues raised in the philosophy of science. We begin by examining several attempts to distinguish science from pseudo- science. A careful and thorough examination of Popper's contention will form the basis of our inquiry.
Science attempts to explain certain phenomena.
One way in which science attempts to explain phenomena is by subsuming the phenomenon to be explained under laws of nature, which science is thought to have discovered. In the second section of the course, we will examine the nature of scientific explanation. The logical positivist tradition held that scientific explanation is deductive in character. Nomological model of scientific explanation is the most familiar positivistic account. We will examine it as well as its successor model, The Inductive-Statistical Model of scientific explanation.