55 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Lawrence Krauss's popular book arguing that quantum cosmology explains how the universe could arise spontaneously from a quantum vacuum state — interpreted by some as undermining the cosmological argument for God.
American cognitive scientist who has collaborated with William Bechtel on connectionist cognitive science and mechanistic explanation.
German-American physicist who published the special theory of relativity (1905), the general theory of relativity (1915), and the photoelectric effect (Nobel Prize 1921) — demonstrating that space, time, mass, and energy are related, and transforming the foundations of physics.
Israeli philosopher of biology who has worked on the concept of biological race, biodiversity, and the philosophy of conservation biology.
Dutch-American philosopher of science who developed constructive empiricism — science aims at empirical adequacy, not truth about unobservable entities — challenging scientific realism.
Swedish logician who made early contributions to conditional deontic logic and the logic of preference.
Loosely organized Berlin group of philosophers and scientists associated with logical empiricism, centered on Hans Reichenbach and the journal Erkenntnis.
American formal epistemologist who has made technical contributions to confirmation theory, formal epistemology, and the logic of evidence.
German-American philosopher of science who developed the deductive-nomological (covering-law) model of scientific explanation and posed the raven paradox for the confirmation theory of science.
British philosopher who has developed a Bayesian account of scientific reasoning and defended probabilism against its critics.
American historian of philosophy who has written authoritative studies of Descartes and Leibniz and the relationship between early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution.
British philosopher who has developed an influential defense of physicalism about mind and a broadly naturalistic philosophy of science.
Israeli-British logician who has contributed to modal logic, temporal logic, labelled deductive systems, and is the editor of the most comprehensive reference work in philosophical logic.
The philosophical journal founded in 1930 as the organ of the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle, publishing logical empiricist philosophy of science; revived in 1975 and continuing to the present.
British philosopher who mounted one of the earliest and most sustained philosophical critiques of Freudian psychoanalysis as an irrefutable pseudo-science.
German philosopher who has worked on belief revision using ranking functions and on the formal epistemology of conditionals.
Italian-American philosopher who has developed a mechanistic account of computation — computation is a specific kind of physical process, not a merely formal or functional property — and applied it to the mind-body problem.
German philosopher of science who developed a frequency theory of probability, a pragmatic vindication of induction, and the philosophical analysis of relativity theory.
Canadian philosopher who has contributed to scientific realism, the philosophy of probability, the analysis of social construction, and the philosophy of mathematics.
Hungarian philosopher of science who developed the methodology of scientific research programmes — a more sophisticated account of scientific rationality than Popper's falsificationism — and Proofs and Refutations, a revolutionary philosophy of mathematics.
The thesis, associated with Kuhn and Feyerabend, that scientific theories in different paradigms are not fully comparable — key terms change meaning across paradigms, making direct translation or rational choice between them impossible.
American philosopher of science who developed the interventionist theory of causation — causation is analyzed in terms of what would happen under interventions (manipulations) on the cause variable.
American philosopher of physics who has made foundational contributions to the philosophy of spacetime, determinism, and Bayesian confirmation theory.
American philosopher of physics who has worked on Einsteinian physics, thought experiments, and developed a material theory of induction.
Austrian-British philosopher who proposed falsificationism as the criterion of scientific demarcation, argued against Marxism and Freudianism as unfalsifiable pseudosciences, and defended liberal democracy against historicist theories of history.
American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who argued that quantum cosmology shows that the universe can arise from 'nothing' — generating significant philosophical controversy about what 'nothing' means in physics.
Argentinian philosopher who has worked on the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, and the philosophy of thermodynamics.
Kuhn's concept of a revolutionary change in the framework assumptions of a scientific discipline — replacing one 'paradigm' (shared set of exemplars, methods, and worldview) with an incompatible one.
American philosopher who has worked on Bayesian confirmation theory and the epistemology of induction.
Canadian philosopher who has worked on analogy as a form of reasoning, probability, and formal epistemology.
Austrian philosopher of science who argued that there is no single scientific method — successful science has violated every proposed methodological rule — and that methodological anarchism ('anything goes') is the only defensible position.
American philosopher who developed a naturalistic account of mathematics — defending mathematical realism on empiricist grounds — and then moved to a second philosophy naturalizing the study of mathematical practice.
British philosopher who co-authored Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach with Colin Howson.
Australian philosopher who developed the conserved quantity (CQ) theory of causation — replacing Salmon's mark transmission criterion with the transmission of conserved physical quantities.
Aristotle's account of scientific knowledge as demonstration from first principles through syllogisms, distinguishing demonstrative knowledge from mere opinion.
British evolutionary biologist who popularized the gene-centred view of evolution and has been the most prominent New Atheist public intellectual.
American philosopher who developed Jeffrey conditionalization — Bayesian updating for uncertain observations — and defended radical probabilism, the view that probability is always subjective.
American philosopher who has worked on the nature of social kinds, race, and the philosophy of social science.
German-American philosopher and central figure of the Vienna Circle who developed logical empiricism, the linguistic framework theory of metaphysics, and intensional semantics.
Descartes's early unpublished work (Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii) outlining rules for the proper direction of the mind toward certain knowledge — the methodological foundation for his later Meditations.
British biologist who proposed morphic resonance — the hypothesis that natural systems inherit memory from previous similar systems through a morphic field — and has become the most prominent scientific heretic in contemporary biology.
Australian philosopher who has worked on the argument from authority in epistemology and on bioethics.
Rich Sutton's 2019 essay arguing that the history of AI research consistently shows that general methods leveraging massive computation outperform methods that incorporate human domain knowledge — the 'bitter lesson' being that AI researchers keep re-learning this.
Aristotle's detailed investigation of animal reproduction, embryology, and heredity — the most sustained ancient inquiry into developmental biology.
Rudolf Carnap's attempt to rationally reconstruct all empirical knowledge starting from phenomenal primitives using logical construction, demonstrating the systematic unity of science.
Karl Popper's massive attack on the intellectual foundations of totalitarianism — arguing that Plato, Hegel, and Marx are the philosophical ancestors of 20th-century tyranny through their shared commitment to historicism.
Charles Darwin's argument for evolution by natural selection — the most influential scientific work of the 19th century and the foundation of modern biology.
Aristotle's systematic treatment of animal morphology, arguing that biological explanation requires reference to function and final cause — the parts of animals are explained by what they do, not merely by their material composition.
Thomas Kuhn's 1962 landmark work proposing that science alternates between periods of 'normal science' (puzzle-solving within a paradigm) and 'scientific revolutions' (paradigm shifts) — the most influential philosophy of science text of the 20th century.
American philosopher and historian of science who revolutionized the philosophy of science with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions — introducing the concepts of paradigm, normal science, and scientific revolution.
American philosopher who has worked on the philosophy of evolutionary biology and Darwin's theory.
Viennese philosophical discussion group (1924-1936) led by Moritz Schlick that developed logical empiricism — the application of mathematical logic to scientific philosophy and the verificationist criterion of meaning.
American philosopher of science who developed the statistical relevance (SR) model of scientific explanation and a causal-mechanical account of explanation, arguing that genuine explanation requires identifying causal processes.
American philosopher of science who has developed the mechanistic account of scientific explanation and applied it to cognitive science and biology.
Lawrence Krauss's book traces the development of modern physics — from Galileo through quantum field theory — as a narrative of humanity replacing supernatural explanations with empirical discovery. The title ironically alludes to the Christian Gospel narrative, asserting that the scientific story of the universe surpasses it.