IB Philosophy 6.1 Nature and Methodologies of Science Key Definitions

Consciousness: the state of subjective awareness in which an individual experiences thoughts, sensations, and perceptions with a first-person, qualitative character: the 'what it is like' quality of mental life.

The deductive-nomological model, developed by Carl Hempel, explains an event by showing that it follows logically from general laws and specific initial conditions. If the laws and conditions are true, the event to be explained must occur as a deductive consequence.

The demarcation problem is the philosophical question of what criteria distinguish genuine scientific theories from pseudo-scientific claims, non-scientific beliefs, and other forms of inquiry.

Falsificationism is the view, developed by Karl Popper, that a theory is scientific if and only if it makes predictions that could, in principle, be shown to be false through observation or experiment.

Induction is the method of reasoning that moves from particular observations to general conclusions, as when repeated instances of a phenomenon lead us to formulate a universal law. Hume famously argued that induction cannot be rationally justified without circularity, since any defence of induction presupposes the very uniformity of nature it seeks to establish, a problem that remains central to the philosophy of science.

in Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science, the overarching framework of shared assumptions, methods, and exemplary problems that governs normal scientific practice within a discipline. Paradigms are socially and historically conditioned, and a paradigm shift occurs when anomalies accumulate to the point that the scientific community adopts a radically new framework.

Post-positivism emerged as a corrective to logical positivism, accepting that all observation is theory-laden and that scientific knowledge is fallible and revisable rather than built on indubitable foundations. Influenced by Kuhn, Popper, and Lakatos, the movement retains a commitment to empirical inquiry while acknowledging the role of paradigms, background assumptions, and social context in shaping scientific practice.

Science is the systematic study of the natural world through observation, experimentation, and the formulation of testable theories, distinguished from other forms of inquiry by its commitment to empirical evidence and methodological rigor.

Scientific anti-realism challenges the claim that our best scientific theories describe mind-independent reality as it truly is, arguing instead that theories are instruments for predicting observations rather than mirrors of unobservable entities. The position, defended in various forms by van Fraassen and instrumentalists, holds that we should remain agnostic about the existence of entities such as electrons or quarks that lie beyond direct observation.

Scientific realism is the view that science aims to produce true descriptions of the world, and that the entities posited by successful scientific theories (such as electrons and genes) genuinely exist.

A scientific theory is a systematic, empirically grounded explanation of a range of phenomena, consisting of interconnected hypotheses, laws, and principles that have been tested through observation and experiment.

Unification in the philosophy of science refers to the ideal of combining disparate theories or phenomena under a single, more fundamental explanatory framework, as when Newton unified terrestrial and celestial mechanics under universal gravitation. The drive toward unification is taken by many philosophers to be a hallmark of scientific progress, though others caution that forcing diverse domains into a single theory can obscure important differences.