philosophy-of-science

Historians infer past facts from present evidence. Would this practice — and the truth-conditions of historical claims — differ under presentism, eternalism, or the growing-block theory? In ...

Nancy Cartwright, professor of philosophy at Durham University and the University of California, San Diego, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities. The award, sponsored by the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) Foundation, was given to Professor Cartwright in recognition of “her use of philosophy to strengthen scientific ration…

Note: crossposted from Mathoverflow version of this question . Problem statement. Principia Mathematica's Introduction & Chapter 1 covers the definition of elementary proposition and elementary ...

I argue that the epistemic aim of scientific theorizing (EAST) is producing theories with the highest possible number and degree of theoretical virtues (call this “TV-EAST”). I trace TV-EAST’s logical empiricist origins and discuss its close connections to Kuhn’s and Laudan’s problem-solving accounts of the aim of science. Despite TV-EAST’s antirealist roots, I argue that if one adopts the realis…

Human computers and micro-observers were scientific workers who performed calculations or reduced and analysed data before the advent of electronic computers. They were a staple of big science during the nineteenth and early to mid twentieth century. Despite their prevalence within big science, their epistemic roles remain unexamined by philosophy of science. This paper investigates the epistemic…

I use Swampman to illuminate the role of thought experiments in philosophy of science. Against Millikan and others, I argue that even outlandish thought experiments can shed light on science and scientific kinds, so long as we understand them as illustrations of scientific reasoning , not as examples of scientific kinds . The logic of thought experiments, understood as illustrations, is analogous…

I present a heretofore untheorized form of lay science, called extitutional science , whereby lay scientists, by virtue of their collective experience, are able to detect errors committed by institutional scientists and attempt to have them corrected. I argue that the epistemic success of institutional science is enhanced to the extent that it takes up this extitutional criticism. Because this up…

Comparativists (about mass) eliminate absolute masses from the fundamental ontological picture by virtue of a principle of economy, the “Comparative Razor,” which requires that only mass-relations, which are invariant under (metrical) symmetries, be considered fundamental. I show how this weapon backfires. If mass-relations are endowed with a standard (multiplicative) concatenation structure, pow…

Philosophers have spilled much ink over the discovery of ideas in the classical “context of discovery.” However, there has been little engagement with the question of what constitutes a discovery of “things in the world.” A much-overlooked answer to this question is provided by T. S. Kuhn. In this article, I show that discoveries awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics over the past 53 years accord wi…

TL;DR: This thread is a review of the book Our Mathematical Universe. This thread is a review of Max Tegmark's book Our Mathematical Universe. The thesis of Our Mathematical Universe is that not only does mathematics perfectly describe the universe, the universe is mathematics.. In... Read more

The standard method for justifying a mathematical theorem is to provide a proof. However, mathematicians are human and sometimes their proofs might contain errors that are not so obvious, and aren't ...

physics, mathematical physics, philosophy of physics theory (physics), model (physics) experiment, measurement, computable physics Axiomatizations Tools Structural phenomena Types of quantum field thories examples The spinning string is a variant of the string in direct analogy (but one worldvolume dimension higher) to how the spinning particle is a variant of the particle. (Which means that “spi…

When a hypothesis is structured to be unfalsifiable or undetectable, such as a hidden intervening agent, the common response is that we simply can’t assign it a probability. But it seems like this ...

Cat, Jordi (2025) Failure in Practice and Dialectic in Theory: More Value, Context, Relativity and Plurality in Shadow Science. [Preprint]

The production of theoretical frameworks is becoming easier than their selection. In several areas of contemporary fundamental inquiry, including quantum foundations, high-energy theory, cosmology, and consciousness studies, multiple sophisticated frameworks can remain compatible with limited or indirect empirical constraints. The rise of AI-assisted research is likely to intensify this condition…

_Argumenta_. forthcomingContemporary philosophical theories are often evaluated on the basis of their fit with the judgments we naturally make about hypothetical cases. According to Timothy Williamson, this method has led to absurd results because some of these natural pre-theoretical judgments are bad data points, generated by heuristics operating outside their safe zones. Increasingly complex t…

Pre-Cosmic Generative Constraint Theory (PCGCT) establishes the substrate-level conditions that make any universe or generative architecture possible. The theory identifies a minimal set of pre-cosmic constraints that determine which configurations are admissible, which are coherent, and which can instantiate as full generative structures. PCGCT treats constraints as logically prior to any config…

Abstract The Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC) is the first cosmological system in human history to achieve a genuine and complete union of philosophy and science — a philosophical-scientific revolution. Grounded in Chapters 25 and 42 of the Dao De Jing as dual core propositions, it integrates modern astrophysics (Galactic Habitable Zone; solar system formation; lunar stabilization mechanism), th…

_Studia Hegeliana_:81-100. 2026Wechselwirkung does not mean the same thing for Kant, Fichte and Hegel, but plays a different role for each of their systematic arguments at distinct structural joints. Firstly, Kant’s ‘Third Analogy’ presents a problematic conflation of pseudo-causal influence and the logical requirement for the totalization of experience. Then, Fichte takes Wechselbestimmung to ch…

Contemporary metaphysical frameworks often resolve foundational tensions by privileging a single explanatory register, whether physical, structural, mental, or formal. Such resolutions achieve theoretical unity at the cost of ontological closure, treating reality as in principle exhaustible by the categories through which it is explained. This paper resists that tendency by presenting the axiomat…