Category:Philosophy of Science

This category collects work on the philosophy, method and sociology of science — what makes a theory scientific, what counts as evidence, and how scientific communities actually behave.

The subject has particular weight on this wiki, since researchers working outside the mainstream have both a practical and an intellectual stake in it. Recurring themes include: the demand that physical models be causal and physical rather than purely mathematical; the complaint that mathematical formalism has displaced physical understanding; falsifiability and the observation that nothing in science is ever proven, only corroborated so far; Kuhn's account of paradigms and of the assumptions that go unexamined because they seem obviously true; the role of consensus and its limits as evidence; and first-hand accounts of how peer review, funding and publication operate for dissenting work.

Readers should note that arguments in this category can cut both ways: a strict falsificationism applies as forcefully to the alternatives proposed here as to the theories they oppose. See also Category:Philosophy.