Related papers: Comments Regarding "On the Nature of Science"
The tension between qualitative theorizing and quantitative methods is pervasive in the social sciences, and poses a constant challenge to empirical research. But in science studies as an interdisciplinary specialty, there are additional…
Scientific progress is inherently sequential: collective knowledge is updated as new studies enter the literature. We propose the sequential meta-analysis research trace (SMART), which quantifies the influence of each study at the time it…
Existing physical theories do not predict every feature of our experience but only certain regularities of that experience. That difference between what could be observed and what can be predicted is one kind of limit on scientific…
We provide a new representation-independent formulation of Occam's razor theorem, based on Kolmogorov complexity. This new formulation allows us to: (i) Obtain better sample complexity than both length-based and VC-based versions of Occam's…
Using large-scale citation data and a breakthrough metric, the study systematically evaluates the inevitability of scientific breakthroughs. We find that scientific breakthroughs emerge as multiple discoveries rather than singular events.…
The task of parametric model selection is cast in terms of a statistical mechanics on the space of probability distributions. Using the techniques of low-temperature expansions, we arrive at a systematic series for the Bayesian posterior…
Bayesian methods since the time of Laplace have been understood by their practitioners as closely aligned to the scientific method. Indeed a recent champion of Bayesian methods, E. T. Jaynes, titled his textbook on the subject Probability…
In the quest to align deep learning with the sciences to address calls for rigor, safety, and interpretability in machine learning systems, this contribution identifies key missing pieces: the stages of hypothesis formulation and testing,…
The emergence of "big data" offers unprecedented opportunities for not only accelerating scientific advances but also enabling new modes of discovery. Scientific progress in many disciplines is increasingly enabled by our ability to examine…
The paper "Evaluation of Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey" [1] proposes a new, much shorter, version of the CLASS based on standard factor analysis. In this comment we explain why we believe the analysis that is used is…
The scientific method is the cornerstone of human progress across all branches of the natural and applied sciences, from understanding the human body to explaining how the universe works. The scientific method is based on identifying…
Research framed around issues of diversity and representation is often controversial. The question of what constitutes a valid critique of such research, or the appropriate manner of airing such a critique, thus has a heavy ideological and…
This paper provides an overview of work, published since the opening of the archives of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the end of the twentieth century, regarding the Vatican confronting evolution in the…
This article offers a short guide to the steps scientists can take to ensure that their data and associated analyses continue to be of value and to be recognized. In just the past few years, hundreds of scholarly papers and reports have…
In an information-rich world, people's time and attention must be divided among rapidly changing information sources and the diverse tasks demanded of them. How people decide which of the many sources, such as scientific articles or…
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may…
Metaphysics is traditionally conceived as aiming at the truth -- indeed, the most fundamental truths about the most general features of reality. Philosophical naturalists, urging that philosophical claims be grounded on science, have often…
This chapter argues that the general philosophy of science should learn metaphilosophical lessons from the case of metaphysical underdetermination, as it occurs in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Section 2 presents the traditional…
This paper is the first of several parts introducing a new powerful algebra: the algebra of the pseudo-observables. This is a C*-algebra whose set is formed by formal expressions involving observables. The algebra is constructed by applying…
In part one of the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant wrote that "the judgment of taste...is not a cognitive judgment, and so not logical, but is aesthetic."\cite{Kant} While the condition of aesthetic discernment has long been the subject…