User:Jon Awbrey/PROSM

Philosophical reflection on scientific method

Philosophy of science takes its cue from the moment when the play of inquiry is interrupted by a question about the activity of inquiry itself. The inquirer in question may have been, just a moment before, absorbed in a bit of data or immersed in the study of a problematic phenomenon — and throughout history it was normally that way — or maybe a curious bystander, or perhaps a person whose profession is philosophy. In any case, there are a number of questions that a reflective observer will typically think to ask about the conduct of scientific inquiry as a phenomenon that is interesting for its own sake.

What happens next depends on the attitude that the person who examines the phenomenon of science — quite literally the appearance of science — brings to the test. The attitude may be positive, taking the appearance of science at face value as a process that works as it seems to. Or the attitude may be negative, less disposed to accept appearances and more inclined to be critical or even skeptical of the possibilty that anything like science can work as it seems. These choices that any individual can make are also reflected in moments of history when one of the other tended to predominate, at least in particular circles of thought.

The philosophy of science has among its topics of interest the question of how far the actual practice of scientific researchers conforms to the espoused methods or the ostensible norms, to which the majority of them expressly or tacitly assent. In the process of subjecting the conventional assumptions to critically reflective examination, writers in these fields periodically generate controversies as to whether scientific knowledge is actually produced by a defined, describable, or determinate methodology (see, for instance, the writings of Feyerabend and Kuhn).