PHIL 2180 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Steven Shapin, Empiricism, Science Wars
26 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
Science wars: intellectual debates between scientists and science critics in the 90"s. Physics and molecular biology are arguably the most central examples of science today. Science: derived from the latin word scientia, meaning the results of logical demonstrations that revealed truths. Understanding of how humans gain knowledge of the world. Understanding of what makes the work from the scientific revolution different from other kinds of investigations of the world. Epistemology: philosophy concerned with questions about knowledge, evidence, and rationality. Metaphysics: deals with general questions about the nature of reality. (both overlap in ph of sc). Descriptive theory: an attempt to describe what actually goes on or what something is like, without making value judgements. Normative theory: makes value judgments, talks about what should go on or should be like. Claims about whether existence of something is independent of our minds. Much 20th century philosophy of science aimed at describing the logical structure of science.
