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    What Is Science

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    What Is Science

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    riyazulla223344
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    What is science

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    What Is Science

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    What is Science?

    Janet D. Stemwedel

    Janet D. Stemwedel abandoned a career as a physical chemist to become a philosopher of


    science. Especially scientists had been asking him what the heck the philosophy of science is, and
    whether scientists have any need of it.
    There are lots of things philosophers of science study, but one central set of concerns is
    what is distinctive about science -- how science differs from other human activities, what grounds
    its body of knowledge, what features are essential to scientific engagement with phenomena, etc.
    This means philosophers of science have spent time trying to find the line between science and
    non-science, trying to figure out the logic with which scientific claims are grounded, working to
    understand the relation between theory and empirical data, and working out the common
    thread that unites many disparate scientific fields -- assuming such a common thread exists. *

    Frequently, the philosopher is concerned with "Science" rather than a particular field of
    science. As well, some philosophers are more concerned with an idealized picture of science as
    an optimally rational knowledge building activity -- something they will emphasize is quite
    different from science as actually practiced.

    Practicing scientists pretty much want to know how to attack questions in their particular
    field of science. If our goal is to understand the digestive system of some exotic bug, we may
    have no use at all for a subtle account of scientific theory change, let alone for a firm stand on the
    question of scientific anti-realism. We have much more use for information about how to catch
    the bug, how to get to its digestive system, what sorts of things you could observe measure or
    manipulate that could give you useful information about its digestive system, how to collect good
    data, how to tell when you've collected enough data to draw useful conclusions, appropriate
    methods for processing the data and drawing conclusions, and so forth.

    A philosophy of science course doesn't hand the entomologist any of those practical tools
    for studying the scientific problems around the bug's digestive system. But philosophy of science
    is aimed at answering different questions than the working scientist is trying to answer. The goal
    of philosophy of science is not to answer scientific questions, but to answer questions about
    science.

    A working scientist need not to have learned philosophy of science in order to get the
    scientific job done. Neither does a scientist need to have studied Shakespeare or history to be a
    good scientist -- but these still might be worthwhile endeavors for the scientist as a person. Every
    now and then it's nice to be able to think about something besides your day job.

    A scientist can do science while taking the methodology of his/her field for granted. But
    having to give a philosophical account of or a justification for that methodology deeper than "this
    is what we do and it works pretty well for the problems we want to solve" may render that
    methodology strange looking and hard to keep using.

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