Philosophy of Science

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

What, if anything, is special about the method of the sciences? In what way, if any, does this method provide a sure route to knowledge production? Is there a single method of inquiry that characterizes modern science, or is it a simple grab-bag of ad hoc techniques whose only justification is that it produces results? We will explore these and other questions in this course. Some main themes: scientific explanation (do the sciences explain things? if so, how?); scientific theories (is there any such thing? what kind of thing is a scientific theory?); epistemology of science (what confidence should we have in the results of scientific inquiry? does science lead us to the truth about nature? is there a truth about nature?).