Related papers: Comments Regarding "On the Nature of Science"
A 21st century view of the nature of science is presented. It attempts to show how a consistent description of science and scientific progress can be given. Science advances through a sequence of models with progressively greater predictive…
In 2007 an international conference engaged a reflection on the present conditions for sciences and scientific practice, to initiate a dialogue between science, philosophy, epistemology and sociology. Starting from many examples taken from…
This article describes epistemological distinctions between science and history. Science investigates models of natural law using repeatable experiments as the ultimate arbiter. In contrast, history investigates past events by considering…
"Rigor" is an often sought after but ill-defined concept in education. This work reviews several models of rigor from current literature before proposing a tool which is used to analyze science education throughout history. The…
The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism remains at a stalemate, making reconciliation seem hopeless. Yet, important work remains: exploring a common ground, even if only to uncover deeper points of disagreement and, ideally,…
Despite the extraordinary successes the two great bastions of $20^{th}$ century science (Quantum Theory and General Relativity) are troubled with serious conceptual and mathematical difficulties. As a result, further growth of fundamental…
In this essay, I argue that modern science is not the dichotomous pairing of theory and experiment that it is typically presented as, and I offer an alternative paradigm defined by its functions as a human endeavor. I also demonstrate how…
The nature of the scientific method is controversial with claims that a single scientific method does not even exist. However the scientific method does exist. It is the building of logical and self consistent models to describe nature. The…
Both religion and science start with basic assumptions that cannot be proved but are taken on faith. Here I note that one basic assumption that is rather common in both enterprises is the assumption that in comparing different hypotheses…
The fact that no evidence of new physics was found so far by LHC experiments has led some to call for the abandonment of the naturalness criterion. Others, on the contrary, have felt the need to break a lance in its defense by claiming that…
Many see modern science as having serious defects, intellectual, social, moral. Few see this as having anything to do with the philosophy of science. I argue that many diverse ills of modern science are a consequence of the fact that the…
In recent years, a series of high-profile retractions and fraud cases have arisen in physics, sparking a conversation about research integrity and replicability. Here, we discuss how the practice of science is shaped by the social and…
This paper's first aim is to prove a modernized Occam's razor beyond a reasonable doubt. To summarize the main argument in one sentence: If we consider all possible, intelligible, scientific models of ever-higher complexity, democratically,…
Some attack scientific rationality, others defend it, but both miss the point. What both parties take to be scientific rationality is actually a species of irrationality masquerading as scientific rationality. The current orthodox…
This paper proposes a new definition of science based on the distinction between the activity of scientists and the product of that activity: the former is denoted (lower-case) science and the latter (upper-case) Science. These definitions…
Prompted by misconceptions in the recent literature, we review the justifications for naturalness arguments and Occam's razor found in Bayesian statistics. We discuss the automatic Occam's razor that emerges in Bayesian formalism, bringing…
The crisis in the reproducibility of experiments invites a re-evaluation of methods of inquiry and validation procedures. The text challenges current assumptions of knowledge acquisition and introduces G-complexity for defining decidable…
As new classes of transients and variable stars are discovered, and theoretical models are established to work or not to work for a few members of the class, it is often the case that some researchers will make arguments on the basis of…
We attempt to provide a comprehensive model of evolution of science across millennia taking into account the contributions of other intellectual traditions, cultural value system and increasing in sophistication of humans in their study of…
Here we argue that the notion of falsifiability, a key concept in defining a valid scientific theory, can be quantified using Bayesian Model Selection, which is a standard tool in modern statistics. This relates falsifiability to the…