# kb

id: science-studies-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies-0.md
category: reference
title: Science studies
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:09.263367+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-studies-20260505-0
summary:
Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the production, representation and reception of scientific knowledge and its epistemic and semiotic role. Similarly to cultural studies, science studies are defined by the subject of their research and encompass a large range of different theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. The interdisciplinary approach may include and borrow methods from the humanities, natural and formal sciences, from scientometrics to ethnomethodology or cognitive science. Science studies have a certain importance for evaluation and science policy. Overlapping with the field of science, technology and society, practitioners study the relationship between science and technology, and the interaction of expert and lay knowledge in the public realm. == Scope == The field started with a tendency toward navel-gazing: it was extremely self-conscious in its genesis and applications. From early concerns with scientific discourse, practitioners soon started to deal with the relation of scientific expertise to politics and lay people. Practical examples include bioethics, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), pollution, global warming, biomedical sciences, physical sciences, natural hazard predictions, the (alleged) impact of the Chernobyl disaster in the UK, generation


id: science-studies-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies-1.md
category: reference
title: Science studies
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:09.263367+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-studies-20260505-0
summary:
Until now there has been no science that describes the means for making discoveries and inventions, and the generality of people, as well as many people of learning, believe that there never will be. This is an error. Someday a science of making discoveries and inventions will exist and will render services. It will arise not all at once; first only its general outline will appear, which subsequent researchers will correct and elaborate, and which still later researchers will apply to individual branches of knowledge. It is striking that, while early 20th-century sociologist proponents of a discipline to study science and its practitioners wrote in general theoretical terms, Prus had already half a century earlier described, with many specific examples, the scope and methods of such a discipline. Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) increased interest both in the history of science and in science's philosophical underpinnings. Kuhn posited that the history of science was less a linear succession of discoveries than a succession of paradigms within the philosophy of science. Paradigms are broader, socio-intellectual constructs that determine which types of truth claims are permissible. Science studies seeks to identify key dichotomies – such as those between science and


id: science-studies-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies-2.md
category: reference
title: Science studies
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:09.263367+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-studies-20260505-0
summary:
Donovan et al. (2012) used social studies of volcanology to investigate the generation of knowledge and expert advice on various active volcanoes. It contains a survey of volcanologists carried out during 2008 and 2009 and interviews with scientists in the UK, Montserrat, Italy and Iceland during fieldwork seasons. Donovan et al. (2012) asked the experts about the felt purpose of volcanology and what they considered the most important eruptions in historical time. The survey tries to identify eruptions that had an influence on volcanology as a science and to assess the role of scientists in policymaking. A main focus was on the impact of the Montserrat eruption 1997. The eruption, a classical example of the black swan theory directly killed (only) 19 persons. However the outbreak had major impacts on the local society and destroyed important infrastructure, as the island's airport. About 7,000 people, or two-thirds of the population, left Montserrat; 4,000 to the United Kingdom. The Montserrat case put immense pressure on volcanologists, as their expertise suddenly became the primary driver of various public policy approaches. The science studies approach provided valuable insights in that situation. There were various miscommunications among scientists. Matching scientific uncertainty (typical of volcanic unrest)


id: actor-network-theory-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory-0.md
category: reference
title: Actor–network theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:10.578747+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: actor-network-theory-20260505-0
summary:
Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. It posits that nothing exists outside those relationships. All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level, and thus there are no external social forces beyond what and how the network participants interact at present. Thus, objects, ideas, processes, and any other relevant factors are seen as just as important in creating social situations as humans. ANT holds that social forces do not exist in themselves, and therefore cannot be used to explain social phenomena. Instead, strictly empirical analysis should be undertaken to "describe" rather than "explain" social activity. Only after this can one introduce the concept of social forces, and only as an abstract theoretical concept, not something which genuinely exists in the world. Although it is best known for its controversial insistence on the capacity of nonhumans to act or participate in systems or networks or both, ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional and critical sociology. Developed by science and technology studies (STS) scholars Michel Callon, Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour, the sociologist John


id: actor-network-theory-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory-1.md
category: reference
title: Actor–network theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:10.578747+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: actor-network-theory-20260505-0
summary:
==== Human actors ==== Human normally refers to human beings and their human behaviors. ==== Nonhuman actors ==== Traditionally, nonhuman entities are creatures including plants, animals, geology, and natural forces, as well as a collective human making of arts, languages. In ANT, nonhuman covers multiple entities including things, objects, animals, natural phenomena, material structures, transportation devices, texts, and economic goods. But nonhuman actors do not cover entities such as humans, supernatural beings, and other symbolic objects in nature. === Actor-Network === As the term implies, the actor-network is the central concept in ANT. The term "network" is somewhat problematic in that it, as Latour notes, has a number of unwanted connotations. Firstly, it implies that what is described takes the shape of a network, which is not necessarily the case. Secondly, it implies "transportation without deformation," which, in ANT, is not possible since any actor-network involves a vast number of translations. Latour, however, still contends that network is a fitting term to use, because "it has no a priori order relation; it is not tied to the axiological myth of a top and of a bottom of society; it makes absolutely no assumption whether a specific locus is macro- or


id: actor-network-theory-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory-2.md
category: reference
title: Actor–network theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:10.578747+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: actor-network-theory-20260505-0
summary:
=== Quasi-object === For the rethinking of social relations as networks, Latour mobilizes a concept from Michel Serres and expands on it in order “to locate the position of these strange new hybrids”. Quasi-objects are simultaneously quasi-subjects – the prefix quasi denotes that neither ontological status as subject or object is pure or permanent, but that these are dynamic entities whose status shifts, depending on their respective momentous activity and their according position in a collective or network. What is decisive is circulation and participation, from which networks emerge, examples for quasi-objects are language, money, bread, love, or the ball in a soccer game: all of these human or non-human, material or immaterial actants have no agency (and thus, subject-status) in themselves, however, they can be seen as the connective tissue underlying – or even activating – the interactions in which they are enmeshed. In Reassembling the Social, Latour refers to these in-between actants as “the mediators whose proliferation generates, among many other entities, what could be called quasi-objects and quasi-subjects.” Actor–network theory refers to these creations as tokens or quasi-objects which are passed between actors within the network. As the token is increasingly transmitted or passed through the network,


id: actor-network-theory-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory-3.md
category: reference
title: Actor–network theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:10.578747+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: actor-network-theory-20260505-0
summary:
=== International relations === Actor–network theory has become increasingly prominent within the discipline of international relations and political science. Theoretically, scholars within IR have employed ANT in order to disrupt traditional world political binaries (civilised/barbarian, democratic/autocratic, etc.), consider the implications of a posthuman understanding of IR, explore the infrastructures of world politics, and consider the effects of technological agency. Empirically, IR scholars have drawn on insights from ANT in order to study phenomena including political violences like the use of torture and drones, piracy and maritime governance, and garbage. === Design === The actor–network theory can also be applied to design, using a perspective that is not simply limited to an analysis of an object's structure. From the ANT viewpoint, design is seen as a series of features that account for a social, psychological, and economical world. ANT argues that objects are designed to shape human action and mold or influence decisions. In this way, the objects' design serves to mediate human relationships and can even impact our morality, ethics, and politics. === Literary criticism === The literary critic Rita Felski has argued that ANT offers the fields of literary criticism and cultural studies vital new modes of interpreting and


id: actor-network-theory-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory-4.md
category: reference
title: Actor–network theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:10.578747+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: actor-network-theory-20260505-0
summary:
Nonhuman actors can be considered as a condition in human social activities. Through the human's formation of nonhuman actors such as durable materials, they provide a stable foundation for interactions in society. Reciprocally, nonhumans' actions and capacities serve as a condition for the possibility of the formation of society. In Latour's We Have Never Been Modern, his conceptual "parliament of things" consists of social, natural, and discourse together as hybrids. Although the interlocks between human actors and nonhumans effects the modernized society, this parliamentary setting based on nonhuman actors would eliminate such fake modernization, and changes the dichotomy between modern society and premodern society. Nonhuman actors can be considered as mediators. On the one hand, nonhumans could constantly modify relations between actors. On the other hand, nonhumans share the same features with other actors not solely as means for human actors. In this circumstance, nonhuman actors impact human interactions. It either creates an atmosphere for humans to agree with each other, or lead to conflict as the mediators. It is noticeable that the status of mediation is more affiliated with intermediaries or means as a stable presence in the corpus of ANT, while mediators function more powers to influence actors


id: actor-network-theory-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory-5.md
category: reference
title: Actor–network theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor–network_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:10.578747+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: actor-network-theory-20260505-0
summary:
== See also == Annemarie Mol Helen Verran Mapping controversies Science and technology studies (STS) Obligatory passage point (OPP) Social construction of technology (SCOT) Technology dynamics Theory of structuration (according to which neither agents nor social structure have primacy) Thing theory Outline of organizational theory == References == == Further reading == Carroll, N., Whelan, E., and Richardson, I. (2012). Service Science – an Actor Network Theory Approach. International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation (IJANTTI), Volume 4, Number 3, pp. 52–70. Carroll, N. (2014). Actor-Network Theory: A Bureaucratic View of Public Service Innovation. Chapter 7, p. 115-144. In Ed Tatnall (ed). Technological Advancements and the Impact of Actor-Network Theory, IGI Global. Online version of the article "On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications", in which Latour responds to criticisms. Archived 2021-04-26 at the Wayback Machine Introductory article "Dolwick, JS. 2009. The 'Social' and Beyond: Introducing Actor–Network Theory", which includes an analysis of other social theories ANThology. Ein einführendes Handbuch zur Akteur–Netzwerk-Theorie, von Andréa Belliger und David Krieger, transcript Verlag (German) Transhumanism as Actor-Network Theory "N00bz & the Actor-Network: Transhumanist Traductions" Archived 2010-10-08 at the Wayback Machine (Humanity+ Magazine) by Woody Evans. John Law (1992). "Notes on the Theory


id: against-method-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method-0.md
category: reference
title: Against Method
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:11.863288+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: against-method-20260505-0
summary:
Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge is a 1975 book by Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. The central thesis of the book is that science should become an anarchic enterprise. In the context of the work, the term "anarchy" refers to epistemological anarchy, which does not remain within one single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that any such method would restrict scientific progress. The work is notable in the history and philosophy of science partially due to its detailed case study of Galileo's hypothesis that the earth rotates on its axis and has since become a staple reading in introduction to philosophy of science courses at undergraduate and graduate levels. Against Method contains many verbatim excerpts from Feyerabend's earlier papers including "Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism", "How to be a Good Empiricist: A Plea for Tolerance in Matters Epistemological", and "Problems of Empiricism, Part I." Because of this, Feyerabend claims that "[Against Method] is not a book, it is a collage." Later editions of Against Method included passages from Science in a Free Society. == Publication, Translations, and Editions == Feyerabend began writing Against Method in 1968 and it was originally released as a long paper


id: against-method-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method-1.md
category: reference
title: Against Method
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:11.863288+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: against-method-20260505-0
summary:
=== Counterinduction === Feyerabend contends that for every methodological rule, there is a 'counter rule' – namely, a methodological rule that recommends the opposite of its counter – which also has value. As an example of this general hypothesis, Feyerabend defends 'counterinduction' as the counter rule to inductivism and "induction by falsification" as a valuable methodological rule. Counterinduction involves developing theories that are inconsistent with currently accepted empirical evidence, which is the opposite of the (then) commonly accepted rule that theories should be developed that are consistent with known facts. Feyerabend argues for counterinduction by showing that theories that conflict with known facts are useful for revealing 'natural interpretations' which must be made explicit so that they can be examined. Natural interpretations are interpretations of experience, expressed in language, that follow automatically and unconsciously from describing observations. After a theory has been accepted for a long period of time, it becomes habit to describe events or processes using certain concepts. Because, Feyerabend argues, observation underdetermines the ways we describe what we observe, theories that redescribe experience in new ways force us to make comparisons between old natural interpretations and new ones. This is the first step to evaluating the plausibility


id: against-method-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method-2.md
category: reference
title: Against Method
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:11.863288+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: against-method-20260505-0
summary:
=== Galileo case study === The primary case study in Against Method is Galileo's hypothesis that the earth rotates on its axis. According to Feyerabend's reconstruction, Galileo did not justify this hypothesis by reference to known facts, nor did he offer an unfalsified conjecture that had more empirical content than its predecessor. Rather, Galileo's hypothesis would rationally have been considered to be false by the existing evidence at the time, and it is lower in empirical content than Aristotelian theory of motion. Moreover, Galileo did not provide arguments to justify his contention but instead used propaganda. According to the existing evidence in the early 17th century, the position that the earth rotates on its axis would have rightly been regarded as false. For example, Galileo's theory of the tides suggested by the motion of the earth was inaccurate and the differences "were big enough to be known even to the most bleary-eyed sailor." In addition, the motion of the earth on its axis leads to the wrong predictions of the relative brightness of Mars and Venus when measured with the naked eye. To correct for these mistakes, Galileo introduces new evidence through his telescope. However, the telescope was not theoretically


id: against-method-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method-3.md
category: reference
title: Against Method
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:11.863288+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: against-method-20260505-0
summary:
=== Discovery/justification distinction === Herbert Feigl criticizes Feyerabend's earlier work, including the paper edition of Against Method, for conflating the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. According to this distinction, formulated by Hans Reichenbach and Karl Popper, there is no logic about how scientists develop scientific theories but there should be a logic of confirming or disconfirming scientific theories. Once this distinction is accepted, then Feyerabend's claim that 'anything goes' would be a truism and would not run against logical empiricism. Feyerabend's response in Against Method is to reject the validity of the discovery/justification distinction. He argues that while the distinction can be maintained abstractly, it does not find a "point of attack" in scientific practice. This is because the two contexts are not separated in different phases of scientific research but are always comingled. Discounting evidence, for example is often necessary for scientific discovery but is rejected when seeking justification. Justifying scientific theories has implications for what research is conducted and, therefore, questions about what is justified also affects the paths open to discovery. === Criticism of Lakatos === The first edition of Against Method contains a chapter devoted to critically discussing Lakatos' methodology


id: against-method-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method-4.md
category: reference
title: Against Method
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:11.863288+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: against-method-20260505-0
summary:
== Aftermath == Feyerabend responded to these criticisms in several follow-up publications, many of which he collected in Science in a Free Society. He was extremely frustrated by the quality of the reviews of Against Method, leading him to accuse them of illiteracy and a lack of competence. In his autobiography, he writes that he sometimes wishes that "he had never written that fucking book." This response led to Feyerabend's gradual removal from the academic community which also corresponded to changes of research topics in his work in the 1980s. == References == == Further reading == The first, 1970 edition, is available for download in pdf form from the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science (part of the University of Minnesota). Follow this link path: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science > 4. Analyses of Theories & Methods of Physics and Psychology. 1970. Editors: M. Radner and S. Winokur > Open Access > Under the "Whoops!" message click 'Download' From the resulting file '4_Theories&Methods.zip' you need the three Feyerabend sections, 4_2_1_Feyerabend.pdf, 4_2_2_Feyerabend.pdf, 4_2_3_Feyerabend.pdf and the immediate following article on A Picture Theory of Theory Meaning (sic) (4_3_Hanson.pdf) in order to get the complete set of footnotes. Discussion of


id: applied-epistemology-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_epistemology-0.md
category: reference
title: Applied epistemology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_epistemology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:13.103463+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: applied-epistemology-20260505-0
summary:
Applied epistemology refers to the study that determines whether the systems of investigation that seek the truth lead to true beliefs about the world. A specific conceptualization cites that it attempts to reveal whether these systems contribute to epistemic aims. It is applied in practices outside of philosophy like science and mathematics. Once applied epistemology is described as a method in an epistemological search, it implies that the methodology is supported by an epistemological foundation. == Background == Applied epistemology forms part of the concept of "applied philosophy" as theorists begin to distinguish it from "applied ethics". It is argued that "applied philosophy" is a broader field, and that it has parts that are not subdisciplines of applied ethics. The emergence of "applied philosophy" gained traction after it was proposed that philosophy can be applied to contemporary issues. Applied epistemology emerged from epistemologists routine examinations that determine whether truth-seeking practices like science and mathematics are capable of delivering truths. It draws from epistemological theorizing to address pressing epistemic matters of practical value. An epistemological question assumes a philosophical form once it deals with the type of knowledge or justification that is presupposed in most ordinary contexts. In its infancy, applied


id: applied-epistemology-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_epistemology-1.md
category: reference
title: Applied epistemology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_epistemology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:13.103463+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: applied-epistemology-20260505-0
summary:
=== Informal logic === According to Mark Battersby, the method of critical thinking or informal logic can be considered a form of applied epistemology. This method involves the assessment of the strength of evidences that afford conclusions can only be made if the domain within which the argument is presented is taken into account. For Battersby, this constitutes applied epistemology, since it is about grounding assessments of arguments as they occur within them. Mark Weinstein maintained that a focus on the account of how acceptability is transmitted from premises to conclusion show close theoretical parallel between informal logic and applied epistemology. It is argued that rather than rules of logic, epistemological norms constitute the philosophical core of informal logic and that there is a close parallel between informal logic and applied ethics. Based on these factors, scholars such as Battersby and Weinstein maintain that informal logic should be classified as applied epistemology instead of logic. === Social issues === It has been suggested by scholars such as Jennifer Lackey that applied epistemology provides the tools in contemporary epistemology's evaluation of the issues of social concern. It is relevant to issues affecting social groups since it helps in answering the recurring


id: biology-and-political-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Biology and political science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:14.832004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: biology-and-political-science-20260505-0
summary:
The interdisciplinary study of biology and political science is the application of theories and methods from the field of biology toward the scientific understanding of political behavior. The field is sometimes called biopolitics, a term that will be used in this article as a synonym although it has other, less related meanings. More generally, the field has also been called "politics and the life sciences". == History == During the 19th century, some scholars and philosophers made attempts to apply concepts derived from the natural sciences in the understanding of society and politics. This was greatly influenced by positivism and Darwinism. In The Social Organism (1860), Herbert Spencer compares society fo a living organism, he states that just like biological species evolve through natural selection, societies evolve through analogous processes. Another proponent of Social Darwinism, was Francis Galton, Darwin's nephew, whose ideas were the basis of behaviourial genetics and eugenics. He claimed that mental qualities (genius and talent), just like physical traits, where inherited among generations of people. He claimed that society should change so that heredity was a conscious decision, to avoid both over-breeding by less fit members of society and the under-breeding of the more fit ones. In


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:16.007133+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Bold hypothesis (or bold conjecture, the terms are used interchangeably) is a concept originally created by the liberal philosopher Karl Popper when he tried to define the meaning of scientific thinking and scientific progress. It was first explained in his debut The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935) and subsequently elaborated in writings such as Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Objective knowledge: an evolutionary approach (1972), and Replies to my critics (1974). In successive texts written in the course of four decades, Popper added some nuances to the definition of the concept. Broadly speaking, the idea of a bold hypothesis refers to a new, testable theoretical proposition (or theoretical claim) made within a subject area which, if it is true, would be able to explain and predict much more about the subject than was previously possible. It would significantly alter existing scientific understandings about the subject, in a positive way. The new idea would be very useful for scientific research about the subject. This contrasts with other types of scientific claims which, if they turn out to be true, make little difference to what scientists already know about the subject. The contrary of a bold hypothesis is


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:16.007133+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
”There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. (…) The boldness can be gauged by the distance between the world of appearance and the conjectured reality, the explanatory hypotheses. But there is another, a special kind of boldness – the boldness of predicting aspects of the world of appearance which so far have been overlooked but which it must possess if the conjectured reality is (more or less) right, if the explanatory hypotheses are (approximately) true. It is this more special kind of boldness which I have usually in mind when I speak of bold scientific conjectures. It is the boldness of a conjecture which takes a real risk – the risk of being tested and refuted; the risk of clashing with reality. Thus my proposal was, and is, that it is this second boldness, together with the readiness to look out for tests and refutations, which distinguishes “empirical” science from nonscience, and especially from prescientific myths and metaphysics.” This passage makes it very clear, that


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:16.007133+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Is boldness always a good thing in scientific hypothesizing? How we assess the degree of boldness may just be a subjective matter (it may depends on how you care to look at it). Some new ideas, although they are rather modest in themselves, can make a very large difference to the advancement of scientific research. At a more concrete level, the degree of "boldness" could refer (i) to the content of the hypothesis (considered relative to other possible hypotheses), or (ii) to the manner or context in which the hypothesis is presented, (iii) to its expected importance for research, or (iv) to the attitude involved. The degree of boldness could be downplayed for the sake of credibility or compatibility with established ideas, or it could be exaggerated to create the image of a "big scientific breakthrough" (to obtain research funding). The timing of the evaluation of a hypothesis is also important: a hypothesis which does not seem "bold" right now, could be judged "very bold" later, when historians know much more about the full impact it turned out to have (and vice versa). Alan F. Chalmers comments that “What rates as a bold conjecture at one stage in the history


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:16.007133+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A falsified conjecture shows the scientist only "what he does not know" or what cannot be the case. However, in reality scientists are more interested in knowing what is the case, and what they can know. That is, scientists are interested mainly in gaining positive new knowledge, which can be used for practical purposes. Scientists are not primarily interested in “knowing that they don't know things”, or in "knowing what is not the case" (other than to rule out possibilities). Scientists want to know what really is the case. Scientific statements according to this Lakatosian perspective are not falsifiable statements, as Karl Popper claimed, but fallible statements. There is an important difference. Falsifiable ideas are testable ideas which can be definitely proved to be false. Fallible statements are testable statements that could be wrong. Fallible statements include both testable propositions and statements of which it is known that they could be wrong, although currently we do not know how to test them yet for their truth or falsity (or, the possible tests are technically not yet feasible). According to Lakatos, all scientific statements are in reality fallible hypotheses, which scientists at the very least intend or aim to test for


id: boundary-work-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary-work-0.md
category: reference
title: Boundary-work
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary-work
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:22.248543+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: boundary-work-20260505-0
summary:
Boundary-work is part of science studies. In boundary-work, boundaries, demarcations, or other divisions between fields of knowledge are created, advocated, attacked, or reinforced. Such delineations often have high stakes for the participants, and carry the implication that such boundaries are flexible and socially constructed. == Thomas F. Gieryn == The original use of the term "boundary-work" for these sorts of issues has been attributed to Thomas F. Gieryn, a sociologist, who initially used it to discuss the problem of demarcation, the philosophical difficulty of coming up with a rigorous delineation between what is "science" and what is "non-science". Gieryn defined boundary-work as the "attribution of selected characteristics to [an] institution of science (i.e., to its practitioners, methods, stock of knowledge, values and work organization) for purposes of constructing a social boundary that distinguishes some intellectual activities as [outside that boundary]." Gieryn suggests that Philosophers and sociologists of science, such as Karl Popper and Robert K. Merton, long struggled to come up with a criterion which would distinguish science as unique from other knowledge-generating activities, but never were able to come up with one that was stable, transhistorical, or worked reliably. Gieryn's 1983 article on boundary-work and demarcation highlighted that the


id: conquest-of-abundance-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Abundance-0.md
category: reference
title: Conquest of Abundance
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Abundance
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:23.506916+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: conquest-of-abundance-20260505-0
summary:
Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being is the last book by the Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, published posthumously by the University of Chicago Press in 1999. It is edited by Bert Terpstra and includes a foreword from Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend, Feyerabend's 4th and final wife. The book was uncompleted due to Feyerabend's death in 1994 and was written to fulfill a promise made to Borrini-Feyerabend. The unfinished manuscript was published alongside several other previously published papers that engaged with the core themes of the book. == Translations == Conquest of Abundance has been translated into four languages: Spanish translation by Radamés Molina and César Mora: La conquista de la abundancia: La abstracción frente a la riqueza del ser, Paidós: Barcelona and Buenos Aires 2001, 336 pp. Italian translation by P. Adamo: Conquista dell'abbondanza: Storie dello scontro fra astrazione e ricchezza dell'essere, Raffaello Cortina: Milan 2002, 350 pp. German translation by Volker Böhnigk and Rainer Noske: Die Vernichitung der Vielfalt: Ein Bericht, Peter Engelmann (ed.), Passagen: Vienna 2005, 344 pp. Portuguese translation by Cecília Prada and Marcelo Rouanet: A Conquista da Abundância, Unisinos: São Leopoldo 2005. == Content == Conquest of Abundance contains two


id: consilience-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience-0.md
category: reference
title: Consilience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:24.808010+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: consilience-20260505-0
summary:
In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence is significantly so on its own. Most established scientific knowledge is supported by a convergence of evidence: if not, the evidence is comparatively weak, and there will probably not be a strong scientific consensus. The principle is based on unity of knowledge; measuring the same result by several different methods should lead to the same answer. For example, it should not matter whether one measures distances within the Giza pyramid complex by laser rangefinding, by satellite imaging, or with a metre-stick – in all three cases, the answer should be approximately the same. For the same reason, different dating methods in geochronology should concur, a result in chemistry should not contradict a result in geology, etc. The word consilience was originally coined as the phrase "consilience of inductions" by William Whewell (consilience refers to a "jumping together" of knowledge). The word comes from Latin com- "together" and -siliens


id: consilience-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience-1.md
category: reference
title: Consilience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:24.808010+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: consilience-20260505-0
summary:
== Deviations == Consilience does not forbid deviations: in fact, since not all experiments are perfect, some deviations from established knowledge are expected. However, when the convergence is strong enough, then new evidence inconsistent with the previous conclusion is not usually enough to outweigh that convergence. Without an equally strong convergence on the new result, the weight of evidence will still favor the established result. This means that the new evidence is most likely to be wrong. Science denialism (for example, AIDS denialism) is often based on a misunderstanding of this property of consilience. A denier may promote small gaps not yet accounted for by the consilient evidence, or small amounts of evidence contradicting a conclusion without accounting for the pre-existing strength resulting from consilience. More generally, to insist that all evidence converge precisely with no deviations would be naïve falsificationism, equivalent to considering a single contrary result to falsify a theory when another explanation, such as equipment malfunction or misinterpretation of results, is much more likely. == In history == Historical evidence also converges in an analogous way. For example: if five ancient historians, none of whom knew each other, all claim that Julius Caesar seized power in Rome


id: consilience-book-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)-0.md
category: reference
title: Consilience (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:26.131815+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: consilience-book-20260505-0
summary:
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is a 1998 book by the biologist E. O. Wilson, in which the author discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences and might in the future unite them with the humanities. Wilson uses the term consilience to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor. == Definition of consilience == This book defines consilience as "Literally a 'jumping together' of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation." The word is borrowed from Whewell's phrase the consilience of inductions in his book Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Whewell posited that this consilience of inductions occurs when an induction obtained from one class of facts coincides with an induction obtained from a different class. In this way a consilience is a test of the truth of a theory. == Examples of consilience discussed by Wilson == === Chapter 1 The Ionian enchantment === The New Synthesis of Darwin's theory of evolution with genetics is an example of unification. The conviction that the world has a unified order and can be explained by natural laws, was dubbed by Gerald Holton


id: consilience-book-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)-1.md
category: reference
title: Consilience (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:26.131815+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: consilience-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Chapter 7 From genes to culture === The relationship between genes and culture. Wilson posits that the basic element of culture is the meme. When a meme exists in a brain it has the form of a neuronal network that allows the meme to function within semantic memory. The link from genes to culture is that our genes shape our brains (in cooperation with the environment) and our brains allow us to work with memes as the basic units of culture. === Chapter 8 - 12 === The remaining chapters are titled Chapter 8 The fitness of human nature, Chapter 9 The social sciences, Chapter 10 The arts and their interpretation, Chapter 11 Ethics and religion, Chapter 12 To what end? == See also == Wendell Berry wrote a comprehensive critique of Consilience in his essay Life is a Miracle in his book with the same title. Philosophy of science The Two Cultures by C. P. Snow The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox by Stephen Jay Gould == External links == Vogel Carey, Toni (2013). "Consilience. Toni Vogel Carey on discovering interconnections". philosophynow.org. Philosophy now. A magazine of ideas, issue 95. Retrieved 25 January 2022. Consilience' is


id: demarcation-problem-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-0.md
category: reference
title: Demarcation problem
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:27.454881+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: demarcation-problem-20260505-0
summary:
In philosophy of science and epistemology, the demarcation problem is the question of how to distinguish between science and non-science. It also examines the boundaries between science, pseudoscience and other products of human activity, like art and literature and beliefs. The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields. The debate has consequences for what can be termed "scientific" in topics such as education and public policy. == The ancients == An early attempt at demarcation can be seen in the efforts of Greek natural philosophers and medical practitioners to distinguish their methods and their accounts of nature from the mythological or mystical accounts of their predecessors and contemporaries. Aristotle described at length what was involved in having scientific knowledge of something. To be scientific, he said, one must deal with causes, one must use logical demonstration, and one must identify the universals which 'inhere' in the particulars of sense. But above all, to have science one must have apodictic certainty. It is the last feature which, for Aristotle, most clearly distinguished the scientific way of knowing. G. E. R. Lloyd noted that there was a sense in which the


id: demarcation-problem-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-1.md
category: reference
title: Demarcation problem
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:27.454881+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: demarcation-problem-20260505-0
summary:
== Kuhnian postpositivism == Thomas Kuhn, an American historian and philosopher of science, is often associated with what has been termed postpositivism or postempiricism. In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn divided the process of doing science into two different endeavors, which he termed normal science and extraordinary science (sometimes known as "revolutionary science"), the latter of which introduces a new "paradigm" that solves new problems while continuing to provide solutions to the problems solved by the preceding paradigm. Finally, and this is for now my main point, a careful look at the scientific enterprise suggests that it is normal science, in which Sir Karl's sort of testing does not occur, rather than extraordinary science which most nearly distinguishes science from other enterprises. If a demarcation criterion exists (we must not, I think, seek a sharp or decisive one), it may lie just in that part of science which Sir Karl ignores. Kuhn's view of demarcation is most clearly expressed in his comparison of astronomy with astrology. Since antiquity, astronomy has been a puzzle-solving activity and therefore a science. If an astronomer's prediction failed, then this was a puzzle that he could hope to solve for instance


id: demarcation-problem-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-2.md
category: reference
title: Demarcation problem
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:27.454881+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: demarcation-problem-20260505-0
summary:
== Laudan == Larry Laudan concluded, after examining various historical attempts to establish a demarcation criterion, that "philosophy has failed to deliver the goods" in its attempts to distinguish science from non-science—to distinguish science from pseudoscience. None of the past attempts would be accepted by a majority of philosophers nor, in his opinion, should they be accepted by them or by anyone else. He stated that many well-founded beliefs are not scientific and, conversely, many scientific conjectures are not well-founded. He also stated that demarcation criteria were historically used as machines de guerre in polemical disputes between "scientists" and "pseudo-scientists". Advancing a number of examples from everyday practice of football and carpentry and non-scientific scholarship such as literary criticism and philosophy, he considered the question of whether a belief is well-founded or not to be more practically and philosophically significant than whether it is scientific or not. In his judgment, the demarcation between science and non-science was a pseudo-problem that would best be replaced by examining the distinction between reliable and unreliable knowledge, without bothering to ask whether that knowledge is scientific or not. He would consign phrases like "pseudo-science" or "unscientific" to the rhetoric of politicians or sociologists. ==


id: design-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Design science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:28.749850+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: design-science-20260505-0
summary:
Design science refers to a scientific, i.e. rational and systematic, approach to designing. An early concept of design science was introduced in 1957 by R. Buckminster Fuller who defined it as a systematic form of designing which he applied especially in innovative engineering design. The concept has been more broadly defined by the Design Science journal as “quantitative and qualitative research in the creation of artifacts and systems, and their embedding in our physical, virtual, psychological, economic, and social environment”. == Design-science relationship == There has been recurrent concern to differentiate design from science. Nigel Cross differentiated between scientific design, design science and a science of design. A science of design (the scientific study of design) does not require or assume that the acts of designing are themselves scientific, and an increasing number of research programs take this view. To some extent the two uses of the term design science (systematic designing and the study of designing) have co-mingled to the point where there can be some confusion, and design science sometimes may be referred to either as meaning a science of design or design as a science. == A science of design == Herbert A. Simon's The Sciences of


id: economics-of-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Economics of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:30.029864+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: economics-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
The economics of science aims to understand the impact of science on the advance of technology, to explain the behavior of scientists, and to understand the efficiency or inefficiency of scientific institutions and science markets. The importance of the economics of science is substantially due to the importance of science as a driver of technology and technology as a driver of productivity and growth. Believing that science matters, economists have attempted to understand the behavior of scientists and the operation of scientific institutions. == Science as a public good == Economists consider "science" as the search and production of knowledge using known starting conditions. Knowledge can be considered a public good, due to the fact that its utility to society is not diminished with additional consumption (non-rivalry), and once the knowledge is shared with the public it becomes very hard to restrict access to it or use of it (non-excludable). Traditional public economic theory asserts that competitive markets provide poor incentives for production of a public good because the producers cannot reap the benefits of use of their product, and thus costs will be higher than benefits. Economists have identified several possible reasons as to why producers of science might


id: economics-of-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_science-1.md
category: reference
title: Economics of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:30.029864+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: economics-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== The patent system === In the United States, the Patent and Trademark Office issues patents that give the holder of the patent exclusive, defined property rights to their product for 20 years. From an economic perspective, the value of the patent is that it increases the marginal benefit of the firm that is producing the scientific knowledge. To graphically display this concept, the accompanying figure depicts the marginal benefit and marginal cost curves of a firm in the market for science. The vertical axis displays the marginal cost and marginal benefit of each additional dollar spent on research and development. The horizontal axis displays the amount of money spent on research and development in total. Research and development is assumed to have diminishing returns. For simplicity's sake, all curves are assumed to be linear, and the marginal cost curve is assumed to be constant. A firm will maximize their profits by producing where marginal cost intersects marginal benefit. In the absence of any government intervention, the firm will produce where at RD0, where private marginal benefit (MB0) intersects MC. However, if scientific knowledge is assumed to be a public good, then RD0 is too low a quantity to satisfy


id: economics-of-scientific-knowledge-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_scientific_knowledge-0.md
category: reference
title: Economics of scientific knowledge
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_scientific_knowledge
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:31.260792+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: economics-of-scientific-knowledge-20260505-0
summary:
The economics of scientific knowledge is an approach to understanding science which is predicated on the need to understand scientific knowledge creation and dissemination in economic terms. The approach has been developed as a contrast to the sociology of scientific knowledge, which places scientists in their social context and examines their behavior using social theory. The economics of scientific knowledge typically involves thinking of scientists as having economic interests with these being thought of as utility maximisation and science as being a market process. Modelling strategies might use any of a variety of approaches including the neoclassical, game theoretic, behavioural (bounded rationality) information theoretic and transaction costs. Boumans and Davis (2010) mention Dasgupta and David (1994) as being an interesting early example of work in this area. == See also == Economics of science == References ==


id: the-emperor-s-new-drugs-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Drugs-0.md
category: reference
title: The Emperor's New Drugs
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Drugs
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:32.497590+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-emperor-s-new-drugs-20260505-0
summary:
The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth is a 2009 book by Irving Kirsch, arguing that the chemical imbalance theory of depression is wrong and that antidepressants have little or no direct effect on depression but, because of their common or serious side-effects, they are powerful active placebos. == Author == Kirsch is Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and a lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and professor emeritus of psychology at the Universities of Hull and Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and the University of Connecticut in the United States. His research interests include placebo effects, antidepressants, expectancy, and hypnosis. He is the originator of response expectancy theory. == Argument == While analyzing antidepressant trials as part of his research into the placebo effect, Kirsch realised that drug companies do not publish all of their disappointing antidepressant trial results, but most decisions about the efficacy of an antidepressant are based only on published results. Using the Freedom of Information Act, he and his colleagues acquired from the US Food and Drug Administration the unpublished trial results for six antidepressants. When the results from both published and unpublished


id: encyclop-die-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-0.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
The Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (French for 'Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts'), better known as the Encyclopédie (French: [ɑ̃siklɔpedi]), was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, an index, and translations. It had many contributors, known among contemporaries as the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The Encyclopédie is most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment. According to Diderot in the article "Encyclopédie", the Encyclopédie's aim was "to change the way people think" and to allow people to inform themselves. Diderot hoped the Encyclopédie would disseminate a vast amount of knowledge to the present and future generations. Thus, it is an example of democratization of knowledge, though the high price of the first edition especially (980 livres) prevented it from being bought by much of the middle class. The Encyclopédie was also the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors, and it was the first general encyclopedia to describe the mechanical arts in much detail. In the first edition, seventeen folio volumes of text were


id: encyclop-die-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-1.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
The work consisted of 28 volumes, with approximately 71,818 articles and 2,784 plates of illustrations (the exact numbers depend on one's definition of an "article" and a "plate"). The first seventeen volumes were published between 1751 and 1765; eleven volumes of plates were finished by 1772. The first edition had a pressrun of 4,225 copies, well above the average pressrun for French books at the time, which was around 2000 copies., and it earned the four publishers profits of more than two million livres. Because of its sometimes radical contents, the Encyclopédie stirred up controversy in conservative circles, and after the publication of the second volume, it was briefly suspended by a royal edict of 1752 accusing it of "destroying royal authority, fomenting a spirit of independence and revolt, and ... laying the groundwork for error, for the corruption of morals, and for irreligion and atheism." In 1759, following the publication of the seventh volume, on the initiative of the Parlement of Paris, the French government suspended the encyclopedia's privilege. Nevertheless, work continued "in secret," partially because the project had highly placed supporters, including the minister Malesherbes and the royal mistress Madame de Pompadour. French authorities deliberately ignored the continuation


id: encyclop-die-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-2.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
From almost the beginning of the publication of volume i in June 1751, many contemporaries took to calling the collaborators by the term "Encyclopedists" and assumed that they were a cohesive group of religious and political reformers in close-knit association.... But, as we shall see, the Encyclopedists were not a company of obedient soldiers led by a few generals in a campaign to destroy the Old Regime. They were instead a varied collection of men of letters, physicians, scientists, craftsmen, scholars, and others, each frequently following his own bent with little central direction. The Encyclopédie became not a party statement, but a great compendium of knowledge filled with contradictions, a mélange of ideas, some progressive and some conservative. The Encyclopédie was the first encyclopedia to credit contributors within articles in a systematic way. This it accomplished for regular contributors by appending symbols (sometimes called "signatures") at the ends of articles. An "O" at the end of an article indicated D'Alembert as responsible, for example, just as an "L" did the anatomist Pierre Tarin. The symbols were set forth in the "Preliminary Discourse." From the beginning, however, some articles were anonymous, whether because of oversight or because no one dared to


id: encyclop-die-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-3.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
=== Structure === The introduction to the Encyclopédie, D'Alembert's "Preliminary Discourse", is considered an important exposition of Enlightenment ideals. Among other things, it presents a taxonomy of human knowledge (see Fig. 3). The idea of presenting a taxonomy of knowledge in the introduction to an alphabetical encyclopedia arose with the Cyclopaedia. More specific inspiration for the one in the Encyclopédie came from Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning. The three main branches of knowledge were: "Memory"/History, "Reason"/Philosophy, and "Imagination"/Poetry. In this taxonomy and elsewhere, D'Alembert's "Preliminary Discourse" made human reason, and not religious or other authority, the measure of knowledge. According to the “Preliminary Discourse,” the purpose of the tree of knowledge was to allow users of the Encyclopédie to relate articles they consulted to the entirety of knowledge. Accordingly, the first article in the Encyclopédie, on the letter “A,” began, following the headword, with a parenthetical indication of its place in the tree of knowledge. Notice the abbreviations in italics, which correspond to levels in the tree of knowledge: A, a & a s.m. (ordre Encyclopéd. Entend. Science de l'homme, Logique, Art de communiquer, Gramm.) caractere ou figure de la premiere lettre de l'Alphabet, en latin, en françois, &


id: encyclop-die-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-4.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
=== Overall scope === The Encyclopédie was narrower in scope than nineteenth- and twentieth-century encyclopedias (which covered history lavishly), and much narrower in scope than Wikipedia (which also covers popular culture lavishly). Like the Cyclopaedia, its model, it was a dictionary of the arts and sciences – or, rather, to quote its subtitle, a dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts. In contemporary parlance, dictionaries of the arts and sciences were often contrasted with historical dictionaries, the former concentrating on areas of knowledge that could be understood as rational systems, the latter concentrating on contingent facts. Dictionaries of the arts and sciences had been encroaching on historical knowledge since their beginnings in the late seventeenth century, and the process continued with the Encyclopédie, which covered geography more thoroughly than the Cyclopaedia or any previous dictionary of the arts and sciences. It covered history only patchily, however, and the omission reflected not simply an oversight but a conviction that historical knowledge belonged in a different kind of work. In the article 'Encyclopédie', Diderot wrote that “the purpose of an encyclopedia is to bring together knowledge scattered across the surface of the earth.” At the beginning of the work, neither Diderot nor


id: encyclop-die-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-5.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
== Influence == By 1789, in its various editions, some 25,000 sets of the Encyclopédie had been sold throughout Europe. Chambers' (and then Abraham Rees's) much smaller Cyclopaedia went through more editions (including translations) and presumably sold in more sets, since at least one of the pressruns was as high as those of the Encyclopédie. Still, the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was almost as large as the Encyclopédie, sold 13,000 sets, half as many as the Encyclopédie, and the only eighteenth-century encyclopedia that was bigger than the Encyclopédie, the Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (1732–50), seems to have sold only 1,500 sets. Unlike the Cyclopaedia, the Encyclopédie was never published in a comprehensive translation, though attempts at such a translation were made in English and German. In part, French, unlike Chambers’ English, was understood by elites throughout Europe and elsewhere. More importantly, extracts were published in several languages, including the "Preliminary Discourse." In Russian, at least twenty-nine works were published between 1767 and 1805 based on articles from the Encyclopédie. In the history of encyclopedias, the Encyclopédie was significant in several respects. It was the first encyclopedia known to have been written by numerous contributors, and it pioneered the


id: encyclop-die-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-6.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
=== Bibliography === Blom, Philipp. Enlightening the World: Encyclopédie, the Book that changed the Course of History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1-4039-6895-0. Birn, Raymond. "Encyclopedie." In Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. Ed. Alan Charles Kors. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003. 1: 403-409. Birn, Raymond. “Les Mots et les images: L’Encyclopédie, le projet de Diderot et la stratégie des éditeurs.” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 35 (1988): 637-51. Boussuge, Emmanuel. "La chronologie de l'Encyclopédie interdite: Les dix derniers volumes: Tomes VIII a XVII (1762-1765)." Dix-huitième siècle 52 (2020): 287-302. Bradshaw, Lael Ely. “Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia.” In Notable Encyclopedias of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Frank A. Kafker. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation: 1981. 123-40. Brewer, Daniel (1993). The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521414838.. Brewer, Daniel. "The Encyclopédie: Innovation and Legacy." In New Essays on Diderot. Ed. James Fowler, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ISBN 0-521-76956-6. Chinard, Gilbert. "L'Encyclopédie et le rayonnement de l'esprit encyclopédique en Amérique." Cahiers de l'AIEF 1-2 (1951): 3-22. Curran, Andrew S. The Anatomy of Blackness: Science & Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Curran, Andrew


id: encyclop-die-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie-7.md
category: reference
title: Encyclopédie
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopédie
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:33.670090+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: encyclop-die-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == D'Alembert, Jean Le Rond. Preliminary discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, translated by Richard N. Schwab, 1995. ISBN 0-226-13476-8 Darnton, Robert. "The Encyclopédie Wars of Prerevolutionary France." American Historical Review 78 (1973): 1331–52. online ENCICLOPEDIA DEGLI ILLUMINISTI - Antologia tecnica e scientifica (in Italian language), edited by Claudio Pierini, Cierre Grafica, Verona 2022. ISBN 978-883-210-2635 Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Editions Flammarion, 1993. ISBN 2-08-070426-5 Grimsley. Ronald. Jean d'Alembert (1963) Hazard, Paul. European thought in the Eighteenth Century from Montesquieu to Lessing (1954). pp. 199–224 Lough, John. Essays on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert. Oxford UP, 1968. Pannabecker, John R. Diderot, the Mechanical Arts, and the Encyclopédie, 1994. == External links == Media related to Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers at Wikimedia Commons Texts on Wikisource: "Encyclopédie". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. "Encyclopédie". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. 1907. French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers Digitized version of the Encyclopédie Diderot – search engine in tribute to Diderot University of Chicago on-line version with an English interface and the dates of publication


id: expertise-finding-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expertise_finding-0.md
category: reference
title: Expertise finding
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expertise_finding
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:39.545902+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: expertise-finding-20260505-0
summary:
Expertise finding is the use of tools for finding and assessing individual expertise. In the recruitment industry, expertise finding is the problem of searching for employable candidates with certain required skills set. In other words, it is the challenge of linking humans to expertise areas, and as such is a sub-problem of expertise retrieval (the other problem being expertise profiling). == Importance of expertise == It can be argued that human expertise is more valuable than capital, means of production or intellectual property. Contrary to expertise, all other aspects of capitalism are now relatively generic: access to capital is global, as is access to means of production for many areas of manufacturing. Intellectual property can be similarly licensed. Furthermore, expertise finding is also a key aspect of institutional memory, as without its experts an institution is effectively decapitated. However, finding and "licensing" expertise, the key to the effective use of these resources, remain much harder, starting with the very first step: finding expertise that you can trust. Until very recently, finding expertise required a mix of individual, social and collaborative practices, a haphazard process at best. Mostly, it involved contacting individuals one trusts and asking them for referrals, while hoping


id: expertise-finding-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expertise_finding-1.md
category: reference
title: Expertise finding
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expertise_finding
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:39.545902+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: expertise-finding-20260505-0
summary:
== Approaches for creating expertise content == Manual, either by experts themselves (e.g., Skillhive) or by a curator (Expertise Finder) Automated, e.g., using software agents (e.g., MIT's ExpertFinder) or a combination of agents and human curation (e.g., ResearchScorecard ) In industrial expertise search engines (e.g., LinkedIn), there are many signals coming into the ranking functions, such as, user-generated content (e.g., profiles), community-generated content (e.g., recommendations and skills endorsements) and personalized signals (e.g., social connections). Moreover, user queries might contain many other aspects rather required expertise, such as, locations, industries or companies. Thus, traditional information retrieval features like text matching are also important. Learning to rank is typically used to combine all of these signals together into a ranking function == Collaborator discovery == In academia, a related problem is collaborator discovery, where the goal is to suggest suitable collaborators to a researcher. While expertise finding is an asynchronous problem (employer looking for employee), collaborator discovery can be distinguished from expertise finding by helping establishing more symmetric relationships (collaborations). Also, while in expertise finding the task often can be clearly characterized, this is not the case in academic research, where future goals are more fuzzy. == References == == Further reading


id: farewell-to-reason-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_to_Reason-0.md
category: reference
title: Farewell to Reason
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_to_Reason
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:40.719785+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: farewell-to-reason-20260505-0
summary:
Farewell to Reason is a 1987 book by the Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. The book includes some reprinted essays published in other venues and was published by Verso Books, which also published Against Method and Science in a Free Society. The primary goal of the book is to trace the historical origins of "rationalism" and argue for a version of relativism and cultural diversity. == Translations == Farewell to Reason has been translated into numerous languages: Spanish translation by José R. de Rivera: Adios a la razón, Tecnos: Madrid 1984, 300 pp. French translation by Baudouin Jurdant: Adieu à la raison, Seuil: Paris 1989, 373 pp. German translation by Jürgen Blasius: Irrwege der Vernunft, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main 1989, 471 pp. Reprinted 1990. Italian translation by Marcello D'Agostino: Addio alla ragione, Armando: Roma 1990, 320 pp. Japanese translation: Risei yo saraba, Hoseidaigakushuppankyoku: Tokyo 1992, 34+399 pp. Portuguese translation: Adeus à razão, UNESP: São Paulo 2010, 399 pp. The book was reprinted in 1988, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, and 1999. A 2nd edition was released including a new preface by Feyerabend. == Content == Farewell to Reason begins with a lengthy chapter on relativism. He distinguishes it from absolutism,


id: feminist-technoscience-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience-0.md
category: reference
title: Feminist technoscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:42.012246+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: feminist-technoscience-20260505-0
summary:
Feminist technoscience is a transdisciplinary branch of science studies which emerged from decades of feminist critique on the way gender and other identity markers are entangled in the combined fields of science and technology. The term technoscience, especially in regard to the field of feminist technoscience studies, seeks to remove the distinction between scientific research and development with applied applications of technology while assuming science is entwined with the common interests of society. As a result, science is suggested to be held to the same level of political and ethical accountability as the technologies which develop from it. Feminist technoscience studies continue to develop new theories on how politics of gender and other identity markers are interconnected to resulting processes of technical change, and power relations of the globalized, material world. Feminist technoscience focuses less on intrapersonal relationships between men and women, and more on broader issues concerning knowledge production and how bodies manifest and are acknowledged in societies. Feminist technoscience studies are inspired by social constructionist approaches to gender, sex, intersectionalities, and science, technology and society (STS). It can also be referred to as feminist science studies, feminist STS, feminist cultural studies of science, feminist studies of science and


id: feminist-technoscience-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience-1.md
category: reference
title: Feminist technoscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:42.012246+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: feminist-technoscience-20260505-0
summary:
== Feminist technologies and technoscience studies == Feminist technoscience studies have become intrinsically linked with practices of Technofeminism and the development of feminist technologies in cultural and critical vernacular. Feminist technoscience studies explore the coded social and historical implications of science and technology on the development of society, including how identity constructs and is constructed by these technologies. Technofeminism emerged in the early 1980s, leaning on the different feminist movements. Feminist scholars reanalyzed the Scientific Revolution, and stated that the resulting science was based on the masculine ideology of exploiting the Earth and control. During this time, nature and scientific inquiry were modelled after misogynous relationships to women. Femininity was associated with nature and considered as something passive to be objectified. This was in contrast to culture, which was represented by objectifying masculinity. This analysis depended on the use of gender imagery to conceptualize the nature of technoscientific masculine ideology. Judy Wajcman draws parallels between Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and the construction of technology. Butler conceives gender as a performative act as opposed to a naturalized condition one is born into. Through a fluctuating process achieved in daily social interaction, gender identity is acted and constructed through relational


id: feminist-technoscience-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience-2.md
category: reference
title: Feminist technoscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:42.012246+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: feminist-technoscience-20260505-0
summary:
=== Bioethics and capitalism === The development of reproductive technologies blur the lines between nature and technology, allowing for the reconfiguration of life itself. Through the advances of genetic technologies, the controlling of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood has become increasingly possible through intrusive means. These advances in biotechnology are serving to develop life as a commodity and deepen monetary inequality - a link made by feminist theorists such as Donna Haraway. Genetic engineering also brings about questions in eugenics, leading early radical feminist analysis to declare and attempt to reclaim motherhood as a foundation of female identity. The idea of a green, natural motherhood was popularized by ecofeminists who celebrated the identification of women with nature, and natural life. Haraway instead chooses to embrace technology as feminist instead of reverting to this idea of naturalized femininity. By embracing the image of the cyborg, an amalgamation that is neither human/animal nor machine, Haraway explores the ideas of technoscience and gender, conceptualizing a space where gender is an arbitrary, unnecessary construct. The corporatization of biology through the alteration of nature through technology is also a theme explored by Haraway. The OncoMouse is a laboratory mouse genetically modified to carry a specific gene


id: funding-bias-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_bias-0.md
category: reference
title: Funding bias
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_bias
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:43.301935+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: funding-bias-20260505-0
summary:
Funding bias, also known as sponsorship bias, funding outcome bias, funding publication bias, and funding effect, is a tendency of a scientific study to support the interests of the study's financial sponsor. This phenomenon is recognized sufficiently that researchers undertake studies to examine bias in past published studies. Funding bias has been associated, in particular, with research into chemical toxicity, tobacco, and pharmaceutical drugs. It is an instance of experimenter's bias. == Causes == === Human nature === The psychology text Influence: Science and Practice describes the act of reciprocity as a trait in which a person feels obliged to return favors. This trait is embodied in all human cultures. Human nature may influence even the most ethical researchers to be affected by their sponsors, although they may genuinely deny it. === Misconduct === Scientific malpractice involving shoddy research or data manipulation does occur in rare instances. Often, however, the quality of manufacturers' studies are at least as good as studies that were not funded by a special interest. Therefore, bias usually occurs for other reasons. === Predetermined conclusion === Research results can be selected or discarded to support a predetermined conclusion. The tobacco industry, for example, would publish their


id: beno-t-godin-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoît_Godin-0.md
category: reference
title: Benoît Godin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoît_Godin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:44.616227+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: beno-t-godin-20260505-0
summary:
Benoît Godin was a Canadian political scientist and sociologist. == Biography == Benoît Godin is mostly known for his research into the history of statistics, statistics of innovation, and of the ideological roots of the concept of innovation. After a first degree at the Université Laval (1984) in Québec (CA), he obtained a PhD at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) the University of Sussex (UK) in 1994). From February 1993 until his death he was professor at Institut national de la recherche scientifique INRS, Québec (CA). == Work == The work of Benoît Godin covers both the history of quantification and that of innovation. He worked on measurement statistics in science, on the history of science proper, as well as that of technology and innovation. In the last years of his life he focused on the intellectual history of innovation, noting how the ‘superlative’ connotation of the term innovation is recent, in relative terms, as it had a rather negative connotation until the late 1960s or early 1970s. == Books == Godin, Benoit (2020). The idea of technological innovation : a brief alternative history. Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham. ISBN 978-1-83910-400-8. OCLC 1152021488.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)


id: higher-superstition-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Superstition-0.md
category: reference
title: Higher Superstition
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Superstition
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:45.939664+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: higher-superstition-20260505-0
summary:
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science is a 1994 book about the philosophy of science by the biologist Paul R. Gross and the mathematician Norman Levitt. == Summary == Levitt states he is a leftist trying to save the "academic left" from itself by exposing misuses and abuses of science to advance political goals. Topics discussed include: cultural constructivism or social constructivism, the strong programme, the science criticism of Stanley Aronowitz and Bruno Latour, post-modernism and deconstructionism and their influence on American academia, the science criticism of Andrew Ross, feminist science criticism, environmentalist science criticism and "apocalyptic naturism", Jeremy Rifkin's influential "pseudoscientific alarmism", attacks on medical research connected with AIDS activism and animal rights advocacy, and Afrocentrism. The book also questions human activity's relationship with climate change. The authors find it unfortunate that social scientists and literary critics often consider themselves qualified to criticize the natural sciences without learning much about them in detail, and worry about what would replace Enlightenment ideals of universalism and rationalism, and objective truths about the natural world as ascertained by a scientific methodology of repeatable experiments, if these were to be discredited, as many science critics in the humanities wish


id: history-of-scholarship-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scholarship-0.md
category: reference
title: History of scholarship
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scholarship
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:47.285974+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-scholarship-20260505-0
summary:
The history of scholarship is the historical study of fields of study which are not covered by the English term "science" (cf., history of science), but are covered by, for example, the German term "Wissenschaft" (i.e., all kinds of academic studies). Examples include the history of classical studies, philosophy, religion, biblical studies, historiography, music, art, and literature. It is a field which has recently undergone a complete renewal and is now a major branch of research. In 2015, the Society for the History of the Humanities was established, coinciding with the launch of the journal History of Humanities in 2016. Both developments reflect the field’s growing institutional presence and international scholarly collaboration. == Classical scholarship == Rudolph Pfeiffer (1968) describes the history of classical scholarship from its revival inspired by Petrarch to the achievements of the Italian humanists and the independent movement in Holland (including Erasmus) and the German scholar-reformers. Pfeiffer traces the development of classical scholarship in the countries of Western Europe through the next two centuries, with particular attention to sixteenth-century France and eighteenth-century England. Finally he provides an account of the new approach made by Winckelmann and his successors in Germany. == Philosophers, scholars, polymaths, and scientists


id: history-of-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-0.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Protoscience, early sciences, and natural philosophies such as alchemy and astrology that existed during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, declined after the emergence of modern sciences during the Scientific Revolution. The earliest roots of scientific thinking and practice can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. These civilizations' contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine influenced later Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, wherein formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Latin-speaking Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but continued to thrive in the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. Aided by translations of Greek texts, the Hellenistic worldview was preserved and absorbed into the Arabic-speaking Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th


id: history-of-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-1.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
In prehistoric times, knowledge and technique were passed from generation to generation in an oral tradition. For instance, the domestication of maize for agriculture has been dated to about 9,000 years ago in southern Mexico, before the development of writing systems. Similarly, archaeological evidence indicates the development of astronomical knowledge in preliterate societies. The oral tradition of preliterate societies had several features, the first of which was its fluidity. New information was constantly absorbed and adjusted to new circumstances or community needs. There were no archives or reports. This fluidity was closely related to the practical need to explain and justify a present state of affairs. Another feature was the tendency to describe the universe as just sky and earth, with a potential underworld. They were also prone to identify causes with beginnings, thereby providing a historical origin with an explanation. There was also a reliance on a "medicine man" or "wise woman" for healing, knowledge of divine or demonic causes of diseases, and in more extreme cases, for rituals such as exorcism, divination, songs, and incantations. Finally, there was an inclination to unquestioningly accept explanations that might be deemed implausible in more modern times while at the same time


id: history-of-science-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-2.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
The ancient Mesopotamians had extensive knowledge about the chemical properties of clay, sand, metal ore, bitumen, stone, and other natural materials, and applied this knowledge to practical use in manufacturing pottery, faience, glass, soap, metals, lime plaster, and waterproofing. Metallurgy required knowledge about the properties of metals. Nonetheless, the Mesopotamians seem to have had little interest in gathering information about the natural world for the mere sake of gathering information and were far more interested in studying the manner in which the gods had ordered the universe. Biology of non-human organisms was generally only written about in the context of mainstream academic disciplines. Animal physiology was studied extensively for the purpose of divination; the anatomy of the liver, which was seen as an important organ in haruspicy, was studied in particularly intensive detail. Animal behavior was also studied for divinatory purposes. Most information about the training and domestication of animals was probably transmitted orally without being written down, but one text dealing with the training of horses has survived. ==== Mesopotamian medicine ==== The ancient Mesopotamians had no distinction between "rational science" and magic. When a person became ill, doctors prescribed magical formulas to be recited as well as medicinal


id: history-of-science-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-3.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
The earliest traces of mathematical knowledge in the Indian subcontinent appear with the Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 3300 – c. 1300 BCE). The people of this civilization made bricks whose dimensions were in the proportion 4:2:1, which is favorable for the stability of a brick structure. They also tried to standardize measurement of length to a high degree of accuracy. They designed a ruler—the Mohenjo-daro ruler—whose length of approximately 1.32 in (34 mm) was divided into ten equal parts. Bricks manufactured in ancient Mohenjo-daro often had dimensions that were integral multiples of this unit of length. The Bakhshali manuscript contains problems involving arithmetic, algebra and geometry, including mensuration. The topics covered include fractions, square roots, arithmetic and geometric progressions, solutions of simple equations, simultaneous linear equations, quadratic equations and indeterminate equations of the second degree. In the 3rd century BCE, Pingala presents the Pingala-sutras, the earliest known treatise on Sanskrit prosody. He also presents a numerical system by adding one to the sum of place values. Pingala's work also includes material related to the Fibonacci numbers, called mātrāmeru. Indian astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata (476–550), in his Aryabhatiya (499) introduced the sine function in trigonometry and the number 0. In 628,


id: history-of-science-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-4.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
==== Logic ==== The development of Indian logic dates back to the Chandahsutra of Pingala and anviksiki of Medhatithi Gautama (c. 6th century BCE); the Sanskrit grammar rules of Pāṇini (c. 5th century BCE); the Vaisheshika school's analysis of atomism (c. 6th century BCE to 2nd century BCE); the analysis of inference by Gotama (c. 6th century BCE to 2nd century CE), founder of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy; and the tetralemma of Nagarjuna (c. 2nd century CE). Indian logic stands as one of the three original traditions of logic, alongside the Greek and the Chinese logic. The Indian tradition continued to develop through early to modern times, in the form of the Navya-Nyāya school of logic. In the 2nd century, the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna refined the Catuskoti form of logic. The Catuskoti is also often glossed Tetralemma (Greek) which is the name for a largely comparable, but not equatable, 'four corner argument' within the tradition of Classical logic. Navya-Nyāya developed a sophisticated language and conceptual scheme that allowed it to raise, analyse, and solve problems in logic and epistemology. It systematised all the Nyāya concepts into four main categories: sense or perception (pratyakşa), inference (anumāna), comparison or similarity


id: history-of-science-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-5.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
To better prepare for calamities, Zhang Heng invented a seismometer in 132 CE which provided instant alert to authorities in the capital Luoyang that an earthquake had occurred in a location indicated by a specific cardinal or ordinal direction. Although no tremors could be felt in the capital when Zhang told the court that an earthquake had just occurred in the northwest, a message came soon afterwards that an earthquake had indeed struck 400 to 500 km (250 to 310 mi) northwest of Luoyang (in what is now modern Gansu). Zhang called his device the 'instrument for measuring the seasonal winds and the movements of the Earth' (Houfeng didong yi 候风地动仪), so-named because he and others thought that earthquakes were most likely caused by the enormous compression of trapped air. There are many notable contributors to early Chinese disciplines, inventions, and practices throughout the ages. One of the best examples would be the medieval Song Chinese Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a polymath and statesman who was the first to describe the magnetic-needle compass used for navigation, discovered the concept of true north, improved the design of the astronomical gnomon, armillary sphere, sight tube, and clepsydra, and described the use of drydocks


id: history-of-science-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-6.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Pre-socratics === The earliest Greek philosophers, known as the pre-Socratics, provided competing answers to the question found in the myths of their neighbors: "How did the ordered cosmos in which we live come to be?" The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales (640–546 BCE) of Miletus, identified by later authors such as Aristotle as the first of the Ionian philosophers, postulated non-supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. For example, that land floats on water and that earthquakes are caused by the agitation of the water upon which the land floats, rather than the god Poseidon. Thales' student Pythagoras of Samos founded the Pythagorean school, which investigated mathematics for its own sake, and was the first to postulate that the Earth is spherical in shape. Leucippus (5th century BCE) introduced atomism, the theory that all matter is made of indivisible, imperishable units called atoms. This was greatly expanded on by his pupil Democritus and later Epicurus. === Plato and Aristotle === Plato and Aristotle produced the first systematic discussions of natural philosophy, which did much to shape later investigations of nature. Their development of deductive reasoning was of particular importance and usefulness to later scientific inquiry. Plato founded the Platonic Academy in 387 BCE,


id: history-of-science-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-7.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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=== Hellenistic medicine === There was not a defined societal structure for healthcare during the age of Hippocrates. At that time, society was not organized and knowledgeable as people still relied on pure religious reasoning to explain illnesses. Hippocrates introduced the first healthcare system based on science and clinical protocols. Hippocrates' theories about physics and medicine helped pave the way in creating an organized medical structure for society. In medicine, Hippocrates (c. 460–370 BCE) and his followers were the first to describe many diseases and medical conditions and developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, still relevant and in use today. Hippocrates' ideas are expressed in The Hippocratic Corpus. The collection notes descriptions of medical philosophies and how disease and lifestyle choices reflect on the physical body. Hippocrates influenced a Westernized, professional relationship among physician and patient. Hippocrates is also known as "the Father of Medicine". Herophilos (335–280 BCE) was the first to base his conclusions on dissection of the human body and to describe the nervous system. Galen (129 – c. 200 CE) performed many audacious operations—including brain and eye surgeries— that were not tried again for almost two millennia. === Greek mathematics === In Hellenistic Egypt, the mathematician Euclid


id: history-of-science-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-8.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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=== Greek scholarship under Roman rule === During the rule of Rome, famous historians such as Polybius, Livy and Plutarch documented the rise of the Roman Republic, and the organization and histories of other nations, while statesmen like Julius Caesar, Cicero, and others provided examples of the politics of the republic and Rome's empire and wars. The study of politics during this age was oriented toward understanding history, understanding methods of governing, and describing the operation of governments. The Roman conquest of Greece did not diminish learning and culture in the Greek provinces. On the contrary, the appreciation of Greek achievements in literature, philosophy, politics, and the arts by Rome's upper class coincided with the increased prosperity of the Roman Empire. Greek settlements had existed in Italy for centuries and the ability to read and speak Greek was not uncommon in Italian cities such as Rome. Moreover, the settlement of Greek scholars in Rome, whether voluntarily or as slaves, gave Romans access to teachers of Greek literature and philosophy. Conversely, young Roman scholars also studied abroad in Greece and upon their return to Rome, were able to convey Greek achievements to their Latin leadership. And despite the translation of a


id: history-of-science-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-9.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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==== Preservation of Greek heritage ==== The fall of the Western Roman Empire led to a deterioration of the classical tradition in the western part (or Latin West) of Europe during the 5th century. In contrast, the Byzantine Empire resisted the barbarian attacks and preserved and improved the learning. While the Byzantine Empire still held learning centers such as Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch, Western Europe's knowledge was concentrated in monasteries until the development of medieval universities in the 12th centuries. The curriculum of monastic schools included the study of the few available ancient texts and of new works on practical subjects like medicine and timekeeping. In the sixth century in the Byzantine Empire, Isidore of Miletus compiled Archimedes' mathematical works in the Archimedes Palimpsest, where all Archimedes' mathematical contributions were collected and studied. John Philoponus, another Byzantine scholar, was the first to question Aristotle's teaching of physics, introducing the theory of impetus. The theory of impetus was an auxiliary or secondary theory of Aristotelian dynamics, put forth initially to explain projectile motion against gravity. It is the intellectual precursor to the concepts of inertia, momentum and acceleration in classical mechanics. The works of John Philoponus inspired Galileo Galilei ten centuries


id: history-of-science-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-10.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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==== Advancements in mathematics ==== Most of the achievements by Islamic scholars during this period were in mathematics. Arabic mathematics was a direct descendant of Greek and Indian mathematics. For instance, what is now known as Arabic numerals originally came from India, but Muslim mathematicians made several key refinements to the number system, such as the introduction of decimal point notation. Mathematicians such as Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–850) gave his name to the concept of the algorithm, while the term algebra is derived from al-jabr, the beginning of the title of one of his publications. Islamic trigonometry continued from the works of Ptolemy's Almagest and Indian Siddhanta, from which they added trigonometric functions, drew up tables, and applied trigonometry to spheres and planes. Many of their engineers, instruments makers, and surveyors contributed books in applied mathematics. It was in astronomy where Islamic mathematicians made their greatest contributions. Al-Battani (c. 858–929) improved the measurements of Hipparchus, preserved in the translation of Ptolemy's Hè Megalè Syntaxis (The great treatise) translated as Almagest. Al-Battani also improved the precision of the measurement of the precession of the Earth's axis. Corrections were made to Ptolemy's geocentric model by al-Battani, Ibn al-Haytham, Averroes and


id: history-of-science-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-11.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
==== Medieval universities ==== An intellectual revitalization of Western Europe started with the birth of medieval universities in the 12th century. These urban institutions grew from the informal scholarly activities of learned friars who visited monasteries, consulted libraries, and conversed with other fellow scholars. A friar who became well-known would attract a following of disciples, giving rise to a brotherhood of scholars (or collegium in Latin). A collegium might travel to a town or request a monastery to host them. However, if the number of scholars within a collegium grew too large, they would opt to settle in a town instead. As the number of collegia within a town grew, the collegia might request that their king grant them a charter that would convert them into a universitas. Many universities were chartered during this period, with the first in Bologna in 1088, followed by Paris in 1150, Oxford in 1167, and Cambridge in 1231. The granting of a charter meant that the medieval universities were partially sovereign and independent from local authorities. Their independence allowed them to conduct themselves and judge their own members based on their own rules. Furthermore, as initially religious institutions, their faculties and students were protected


id: history-of-science-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-12.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
==== Medieval science ==== The first half of the 14th century saw much important scientific work, largely within the framework of scholastic commentaries on Aristotle's scientific writings. William of Ockham emphasized the principle of parsimony: natural philosophers should not postulate unnecessary entities, so that motion is not a distinct thing but is only the moving object and an intermediary "sensible species" is not needed to transmit an image of an object to the eye. Scholars such as Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme started to reinterpret elements of Aristotle's mechanics. In particular, Buridan developed the theory that impetus was the cause of the motion of projectiles, which was a first step towards the modern concept of inertia. The Oxford Calculators began to mathematically analyze the kinematics of motion, making this analysis without considering the causes of motion. In 1348, the Black Death and other disasters sealed a sudden end to philosophic and scientific development. == Renaissance == === Printing and discovery === The introduction and rapid spread of the movable type printing press during the 2nd half of the 15th century ended the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages, where facts were few and far between, and replaced it with a


id: history-of-science-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-13.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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=== Scientific societies and journals === A critical innovation was the creation of permanent scientific societies and their scholarly journals, which dramatically sped the diffusion of new ideas. Typical was the founding of the Royal Society in London in 1660 and its journal in 1665 the Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society, the first scientific journal in English. 1665 also saw the first journal in French, the Journal des sçavans. Science drawing on the works of Newton, Descartes, Pascal and Leibniz, science was on a path to modern mathematics, physics and technology by the time of the generation of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783). Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772 brought this new understanding to a wider audience. The impact of this process was not limited to science and technology, but affected philosophy (Immanuel Kant, David Hume), religion (the increasingly significant impact of science upon religion), and society and politics in general (Adam Smith, Voltaire). === Developments in geology === Geology did not undergo systematic restructuring during the Scientific Revolution but instead existed as a cloud of isolated, disconnected ideas about rocks, minerals, and landforms long before it


id: history-of-science-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-14.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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=== Developments in mathematics === In mathematics, the notion of complex numbers finally matured and led to a subsequent analytical theory; they also began the use of hypercomplex numbers. Karl Weierstrass and others carried out the arithmetization of analysis for functions of real and complex variables. It also saw rise to new progress in geometry beyond those classical theories of Euclid, after a period of nearly two thousand years. The mathematical science of logic likewise had revolutionary breakthroughs after a similarly long period of stagnation. But the most important step in science at this time were the ideas formulated by the creators of electrical science. Their work changed the face of physics and made possible for new technology to come about such as electric power, electrical telegraphy, the telephone, and radio. === Developments in chemistry === In chemistry, Dmitri Mendeleev, following the atomic theory of John Dalton, created the first periodic table of elements. Other highlights include the discoveries unveiling the nature of atomic structure and matter, simultaneously with chemistry – and of new kinds of radiation. The theory that all matter is made of atoms, which are the smallest constituents of matter that cannot be broken down without losing


id: history-of-science-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-15.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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=== Founding of psychology === Psychology as a scientific enterprise that was independent from philosophy began in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research (in Leipzig). Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in memory studies), Ivan Pavlov (who discovered classical conditioning), William James, and Sigmund Freud. Freud's influence has been enormous, though more as cultural icon than a force in scientific psychology. === Modern sociology === Modern sociology emerged in the early 19th century as the academic response to the modernization of the world. Among many early sociologists (e.g., Émile Durkheim), the aim of sociology was in structuralism, understanding the cohesion of social groups, and developing an "antidote" to social disintegration. Max Weber was concerned with the modernization of society through the concept of rationalization, which he believed would trap individuals in an "iron cage" of rational thought. Some sociologists, including Georg Simmel and W. E. B. Du Bois, used more microsociological, qualitative analyses. This microlevel approach played an important role in American sociology, with the theories of George Herbert Mead and his student Herbert Blumer resulting in the creation of the symbolic interactionism approach to sociology. In


id: history-of-science-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-16.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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In the early 20th century, the study of heredity became a major investigation after the rediscovery in 1900 of the laws of inheritance developed by Mendel. The 20th century also saw the integration of physics and chemistry, with chemical properties explained as the result of the electronic structure of the atom. Linus Pauling's book on The Nature of the Chemical Bond used the principles of quantum mechanics to deduce bond angles in ever-more complicated molecules. Pauling's work culminated in the physical modelling of DNA, the secret of life (in the words of Francis Crick, 1953). In the same year, the Miller–Urey experiment demonstrated in a simulation of primordial processes, that basic constituents of proteins, simple amino acids, could themselves be built up from simpler molecules, kickstarting decades of research into the chemical origins of life. By 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick clarified the basic structure of DNA, the genetic material for expressing life in all its forms, building on the work of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, suggested that the structure of DNA was a double helix. In their famous paper "Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids" In the late 20th century, the possibilities of genetic engineering became practical


id: history-of-science-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-17.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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=== Applications === In terms of applications, a massive number of new technologies were developed in the 20th century. Technologies such as electricity, the incandescent light bulb, the automobile and the phonograph, first developed at the end of the 19th century, were perfected and universally deployed. The first car was introduced by Karl Benz in 1885. The first airplane flight occurred in 1903, and by the end of the century airliners flew thousands of miles in a matter of hours. The development of the radio, television and computers caused massive changes in the dissemination of information. Advances in biology also led to large increases in food production, as well as the elimination of diseases such as polio by Dr. Jonas Salk. Gene mapping and gene sequencing, invented by Drs. Mark Skolnik and Walter Gilbert, respectively, are the two technologies that made the Human Genome Project feasible. Computer science, built upon a foundation of theoretical linguistics, discrete mathematics, and electrical engineering, studies the nature and limits of computation. Subfields include computability, computational complexity, database design, computer networking, artificial intelligence, and the design of computer hardware. One area in which advances in computing have contributed to more general scientific development is by


id: history-of-science-20260505-18
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science-18.md
category: reference
title: History of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:48.795283+00:00
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parent: history-of-science-20260505-0
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== 21st century == In the early 21st century, some concepts that originated in 20th century physics were proven. On 4 July 2012, physicists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle greatly resembling the Higgs boson, confirmed as such by the following March. Gravitational waves were first detected by astronomers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory on 14 September 2015. One of the first direct images of a black hole, taken by the Event Horizon Telescope in April of 2017, was released to the public on April 10, 2019. The Human Genome Project was declared complete in 2003. The CRISPR gene editing technique developed in 2012 allowed scientists to precisely and easily modify DNA in living organisms and led to the development of new medicine. Advances in synthetic biology with computer assistance led to the creation of artificial microbial life, such as JCVI-syn3.0 in 2016 and xenobots in 2020. Positive psychology is a branch of psychology founded in 1998 by Martin Seligman that is concerned with the study of happiness, mental well-being, and positive human functioning, and is a reaction to 20th century psychology's emphasis on mental illness and dysfunction. Starting around


id: international-encyclopedia-of-unified-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Encyclopedia_of_Unified_Science-0.md
category: reference
title: International Encyclopedia of Unified Science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Encyclopedia_of_Unified_Science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:50.048664+00:00
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parent: international-encyclopedia-of-unified-science-20260505-0
summary:
The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (IEUS) was a series of publications devoted to unified science. The IEUS was conceived at the Mundaneum Institute in The Hague in the 1930s, and published in the United States beginning in 1938. It was an ambitious project that was never completed. The IEUS was an output of the Vienna Circle to address the "growing concern throughout the world for the logic, the history, and the sociology of science..." Only the first section Foundations of the Unity of Science (FUS) was published; it contains two volumes for a total of nineteen monographs published from 1938 to 1969. == International Congresses for the Unity of Science == Creation of the IEUS was facilitated by the International Congresses for the Unity of Science organized by members of the Vienna Circle. After a preliminary conference in Prague in 1934, the First International Congress for the Unity of Science was held at the Sorbonne, Paris, 16–21 September 1935. It was attended by about 170 people from over twenty different countries. With the active involvement of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (Poland), Susan Stebbing (England), and Federigo Enriques (Italy) the scope of the project for an IEUS was considerably expanded. The congress


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-0.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
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parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
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Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (published 1985) is a book by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. It examines the debate between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes over Boyle's air-pump experiments in the 1660s. In 2005, Shapin and Schaffer were awarded the Erasmus Prize for this work. On a theoretical level, the book explores the acceptable methods of knowledge production, and societal factors related to the different knowledge systems promoted by Boyle and Hobbes. The "Leviathan" in the title is Hobbes's book on the structure of society, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil and the "Air-Pump" is Robert Boyle's mechanical instrument. The book also contains a translation by Schaffer of Hobbes's Dialogus physicus de natura aeris. It attacked Boyle and others who founded the society for experimental research, soon known as the Royal Society. == Intention of the work == Shapin and Schaffer state in their first chapter, "Understanding Experiment", that they wish to answer the question, "Why does one do experiments in order to arrive at scientific truth?" Their aim is to use a historical account of the debate over the validity of Boyle's air pump experiments,


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-1.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
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parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
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== Chapter II: Seeing and Believing: The Experimental Production of Pneumatic Facts == Chapter Two outlines Boyle's theory of knowledge production, which revolves around the creation of the "matter of fact". This refers to an experimentally generated piece of knowledge separate from a universal theory and that was based on probability. This is in direct opposition to Hobbes (discussed in chapter 3), who required "absolute certainty" based on "logic and geometry" to consider a phenomenon a fact. In the eyes of Boyle and his colleagues, the abandonment of absolute certainty was not "a regrettable retreat from more ambitious goals; it was celebrated as a wise rejection of a failed project". Thus, because "matters of fact" did not have to be absolute, universal assent was not necessary for the production of knowledge. Boyle made use of three knowledge-producing technologies in order to produce knowledge: "a material technology embedded in the construction and operation of the air-pump; a literary technology by means of which the phenomena produced by the pump were made known to those who were not direct witnesses; and a social technology that incorporated the conventions that experimental philosophers should use in dealing with each other and considering knowledge-claims". Importantly,


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-2.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
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parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
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== Chapter III: Seeing Double: Hobbes's Politics of Plenism before 1660 == The third chapter centers on Hobbes' side of the debate for the effective production of knowledge. However, unlike Boyle, Hobbes denies that natural philosophy can be separated from politics and religion. In the previous chapter, Boyle's "matter of fact" worked towards separation from church and state by remaining objective and probabilistic. For Hobbes, however, "the boundaries Boyle proposed to erect and maintain were guarantees of continued disorder, not remedies to philosophical dissension". Hobbes also argued for "proper metaphysical language", in contrast to Boyle's reluctance to address the issue of a vacuum and his vague concept of air "pressure." Hobbes was motivated by three things in his attack on Boyle: (1) to save his own reputation as a natural philosopher, (2) to develop a system of knowledge production that secured order and maintained proper goals for natural philosophy (namely precision instead of probability) and (3) to be sensitive to the needs of Restoration society (discussed in more detail in chapter 7). Hobbes' denial of a vacuum stems in part from a need for political stability. It follows logically that if there can be a space which is devoid of


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-3.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
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parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
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Hobbes criticized Boyle's experimental space for being private (as it was exclusive to everyone but empiricists) and insisted that the space had a "master" - which undermined Boyle's concept of free discourse and consensus to generate matters of fact. Also he criticized the fact that, since the whole experimental community must come into agreement before a "matter of fact" can be produced, the whole experimental community must view the same demonstration at the same time. This was an obvious impossibility and was problematic for Boyle because "If they were not witnessed simultaneously and together, then in what ways was the evaluation of experimental testimony different from the evaluation of testimony generally?" Hobbes also criticized the air-pump itself, saying that "the physical integrity of the machine was massively violated." He asserted that "it was impossible to understand the air-pump experiments 'unless the nature of the air is known first.'" This was important for three reasons: (1) because Hobbes said the fluidity of the air ruled out the ability to produce an impermeable seal (2) because describing the air as mixture allowed Hobbes to explain the pumps actions (drawing out the course aspects of the air and leaving behind the more subtle


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-4.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
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parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
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== Chapter V: Boyle's Adversaries: Experiment Defended == While the previous chapter focuses on the attacks of Boyle's main opponent (Hobbes), this chapter focuses on Boyle's actions in the face of more general adversity. The three main opponents to Boyle were Hobbes, Linus and More, and Boyle's response to each in turn reflects his opinion of their ideas and shows what parts of his own ideas he deemed essential and what parts he deemed less so. The figures can be divided into two groups: Linus - who conformed to the model of the experimental programme but did not agree with Boyle's explanation of the air-pump experiments, and Hobbes and More - who attacked the experimental programme as an institution. "Linus said there was no vacuum in the Torricellian space. This was apparent because one could see through that space; if there were a vacuum, 'no visible species could proceed either from it, or through it, unto the eye." Linus offered a nonmechanical solution to the sustained height of the liquid in the Torricellian apparatus. He suggested that "a certain internal thread (funiculus) whose upper extremity was attached to the finger [blocking the top of the inverted tube] and whose lower


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-5.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
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parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
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== Chapter VI: Replication and Its Troubles: Air-Pumps in the 1660s == Chapter 6 is an evaluation of the technologies stated in chapter 2 and their role in replication - namely replication of the material technology and the utility of virtual witnessing. The chapter focuses on the propagation of the pump via the experimental community. The air-pump was first developed in Oxford and London with the help of the Royal Society (and in response to Hobbes criticism) beginning in 1659. It was during its development that Robert Moray wrote to Christiaan Huygens (Holland) detailing the changes Boyle would be making to the original design of his pump. Huygens rejected Boyle's changes and set about making his own alterations. "Christiaan Huygens was the only natural philosopher in the 1660s who built an air-pump that was outside the direct management of Boyle and Hooke." At the end of Huygens development, Huygens claimed that "my pneumatic pump was begun to work since yesterday, and all that night a bladder stayed inflated within it [which was a test for the goodness of a pump]...which Mr. Boyle was not able to effect." Indeed, he discovered a phenomenon called anomalous suspension (the suspension of water in


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-6.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
summary:
== Chapter VIII: The Polity of Science: Conclusions == In the final chapter of Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Shapin and Schaffer condense their vastly complicated picture of Restoration society and how it interacted with the development of modern science to three points. "First, scientific practitioners have created, selected, and maintained a polity within which they operate and make intellectual product; second, the intellectual product made within that polity has become an element in political activity and in the state; third, there is a conditional relationship between the nature of the polity occupied by scientific intellectual and the nature of the wider polity." In proving those three points they say they had three things to connect: "(1) the polity of the intellectual community; (2) the solution to the practical problem of making and justifying knowledge; and (3) the polity of the wider society" and that they did so by connecting three things: "(1) that the solution to the problem of knowledge is political...(2) that the knowledge thus produced and authenticated become an element in political action in the wider polity...[and] (3) that the contest among alternative forms of life and their characteristic forms of intellectual product depend on the political success


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-7.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
summary:
=== English editions === (Hardcover) Shapin, Steven; Schaffer, Simon (1985). Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life : including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer (1st ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08393-2. OCLC 12078908. (Paperback) Shapin, Steven; Schaffer, Simon (1989) [1985]. Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life : including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer (1st Princeton paperback printing, with corrections ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02432-4. OCLC 21974013. (eBook) Shapin, Steven; Schaffer, Simon (2011). Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life : with a new introduction by the authors (2nd ed.). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-3849-3. OCLC 759907750. (Paperback) Shapin, Steven; Schaffer, Simon (2017). Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (First Princeton Classics paperback ed.). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17816-5. OCLC 984327399. === Translations === Shapin, Steven; Schaffer, Simon (1993). Leviathan et la pompe à air: Hobbes et Boyle entre science et politique (in French). Translated by Piélat, Thierry; Barjansky, Sylvie. Paris: Ed. La Découverte. ISBN 978-2-7071-2273-5.


id: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump-8.md
category: reference
title: Leviathan and the Air-Pump
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: leviathan-and-the-air-pump-20260505-0
summary:
=== Other === Abbri, Ferdinando (January 1987). "Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, Princeton, Princeton University Press 1985, XIV + 440 pp". Nuncius. 2 (1): 241–244. doi:10.1163/182539177X00935. ISSN 0394-7394. Hackmann, W. D. (May 1986). "Fuss over nothing". Nature. 321 (6069): 480. Bibcode:1986Natur.321..480H. doi:10.1038/321480a0. ISSN 1476-4687. S2CID 38738481. Hankins, T. L. (23 May 1986). "A Debate over Experiment: Leviathan and the Air-Pump". Science. 232 (4753): 1040–1042. doi:10.1126/science.232.4753.1040. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17759318. Kargon, Robert (Winter 1986). "Steven Shapin & Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press. 1985. Pp. xiv, 440. $60.00". Albion. 18 (4): 665–666. doi:10.2307/4050153. ISSN 0095-1390. JSTOR 4050153. Jacob, Margaret C. (December 1986). "Review of Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life". Isis. 77 (4): 719–720. doi:10.1086/354315. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 233211. Hall, M. B. (1 November 1986). "Reviews". Ambix. 33 (3): 157–167. doi:10.1179/amb.1986.33.2-3.153. ISSN 0002-6980. Hall, M. B. (1986). "Book reviews". Annals of Science. 43 (6): 575–576. doi:10.1080/00033798600200381. ISSN 0003-3790. PMID 8416581. Jones, Harold W. (January 1987). "Review of 'Leviathan' and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Including a Translation of Thomas Hobbes, 'Dialogus


id: limiting-case-philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limiting_case_(philosophy_of_science)-0.md
category: reference
title: Limiting case (philosophy of science)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limiting_case_(philosophy_of_science)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:57.360522+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: limiting-case-philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
In the philosophy of science, under the correspondence principle, a limiting case theory is an earlier theory which becomes incorporated into a later, usually broader theory; that is to say, the earlier (limiting case) theory proves to be a special or limited case of the later theory. Technically, a theory is said to be a limiting case of another, later theory when and if the later theory subsumes the theoretical relations and apparent referents of the earlier one. For example, physicists agree that classical mechanics constitutes a low-energy limiting case of relativity theory. In words of Larry Laudan, realist philosophers use this phrase in the sense that the theory "T1 can be a limiting case of [the theory] T2 only if (a) all the variables (observable and theoretical) assigned a value in T1 are assigned a value by T2 and (b) the values assigned to every variable of T1 are the same as, or very close to, the values T2 assigns to the corresponding variable when certain initial and boundary conditions—consistent with T2—are specified". The idea that a theory (in our previous example, Newtonian mechanics) that is close to being true (i.e., that is verisimil) converges as a limiting case


id: memex-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex-0.md
category: reference
title: Memex
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:58.676263+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: memex-20260505-0
summary:
A memex (a portmanteau of "memory" and "index") is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think". Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of their books, records, and communications, "mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility". The individual was supposed to use the memex as an automatic personal filing system, making the memex "an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory". The concept of the memex influenced the development of early hypertext systems and personal knowledge base software. The hypothetical implementation depicted by Bush for the purpose of concrete illustration was based upon a document bookmark list of static microfilm pages and lacked a true hypertext system, where parts of pages would have internal structure beyond the common textual format. == Development == === An electromechanical memex device === In "As We May Think", Vannevar Bush describes a memex as an electromechanical device enabling individuals to develop and read a large self-contained research library, create and follow associative trails of links and personal annotations, and recall these trails at any time to share them with


id: memex-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex-1.md
category: reference
title: Memex
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:58.676263+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: memex-20260505-0
summary:
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. ... The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail that stops only on the salient items and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trailblazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were


id: memex-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex-2.md
category: reference
title: Memex
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:58.676263+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: memex-20260505-0
summary:
== 1967 Memex revisited == Vannevar Bush published the retrospective article "Memex Revisited" in his 1967 book Science Is Not Enough. Over two decades after his initial conception of the Memex, Bush details the various technological advancements that have made his vision a possibility. Specifically, Bush cites photocells, transistors, cathode ray tubes, magnetic and videotape, "high-speed electric circuits", and "miniaturization of solid-state devices" such as the TV and radio. The article claims that magnetic tape would be central to the creation of a modern Memex device. The erasable quality of the tape is of special significance, as this would allow for modification of information stored in the proposed Memex. In the article, Bush stresses the continued importance of supplementing "how creative men think" and relates that the systems for indexing data are still insufficient and rely too much on linear pathways rather than the association-based system of the human brain. Bush writes that a machine with the "speed and flexibility" of the brain is not attainable, but improvements could be made in regard to the capacity to obtain informational "permanence and clarity". Bush also relates that, unlike digital technology, Memex would be of no significant aid to business or profitable


id: mental-models-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Models-0.md
category: reference
title: Mental Models
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Models
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:36:59.848818+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mental-models-20260505-0
summary:
Mental Models is a book published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., in 1983 ISBN 0-89859-242-9. It was edited by Dedre Gentner and Albert L. Stevens, both employees of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc. at the time. It appeared at about the same time as a book by the same name by Philip Johnson-Laird. According to the acknowledgment of the book, it resulted from a workshop on mental models held at the University of California, San Diego in October 1980, that was jointly sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and the Sloan Foundation. == Chapters == Some Observations on Mental Models — Donald A. Norman, UCSD Dr. Norman describes the properties of mental models — that they can be contradictory, incomplete, superstitious, erroneous, and unstable, varying in time. So the job of system designers is to help users form an accurate and useful mental model of a system. And the job of researchers is to set up experiments to learn to understand actual mental models, even though they may be messy and incomplete. Phenomenology and the Evolution of Intuition — Andrea diSessa, MIT Surrogates and Mappings: Two Kinds of Conceptual Models for Interactive Devices — Richard M. Young, Medical Research


id: mundaneum-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum-0.md
category: reference
title: Mundaneum
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:01.058134+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mundaneum-20260505-0
summary:
The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system known as the Universal Decimal Classification. It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. The Mundaneum has been identified as a milestone in the history of data collection and management, and, albeit more tenuously, as a precursor to the Internet. In the 21st century, the Mundaneum is a non-profit organisation based in Mons, Belgium, that runs an exhibition space, website, and archive, which celebrate the legacy of the original Mundaneum. == History == The Mundaneum was created in 1910, following an initiative begun in 1895 by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, as part of their work on documentation science. Otlet first called it the Palais Mondial ("World Palace"), and it occupied the left wing of the Cinquantenaire Palace, a government building in Brussels. Otlet and La Fontaine organized an International Conference of International Associations, which was the origin of the Union of International Associations (UIA). Otlet regarded the project as the centrepiece of a new "world city"—a centrepiece, which eventually became an archive with more


id: olympia-academy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_Academy-0.md
category: reference
title: Olympia Academy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_Academy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:02.341108+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: olympia-academy-20260505-0
summary:
The Olympia Academy (German: Akademie Olympia) was a group of friends in Bern, Switzerland, who met – usually at Albert Einstein's apartment – to discuss philosophy and physics. == Overview == The group was founded in 1902 by Einstein, Conrad Habicht, and Maurice Solovine, and played a significant role in Einstein's intellectual development. Before his "miracle year" (1905), when Einstein was a patent clerk in Bern, the group of friends met to debate books in the fields of physics and philosophy. The group's origin lay in Einstein's need to offer private lessons in mathematics and physics in order to make a living (in 1901, before he took up his post at the patent office in Bern). Solovine, a Romanian philosophy student, answered Einstein's newspaper advertisement. In fact neither the tutorials nor any payment materialised; instead, the two began to meet regularly to discuss their shared interest in physics and philosophy. They were soon joined by the mathematician Habicht, who was Einstein's neighbour at Schaffhausen; in 1902 they named themselves the Akademie Olympia, and though a friend would occasionally join them in one of their meetings, the Academy remained essentially just the trio of Einstein, Habicht, and Solovine until the latter


id: ortega-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortega_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Ortega hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortega_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:03.610887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ortega-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Ortega hypothesis holds that average or mediocre scientists contribute substantially to the advancement of science. According to this hypothesis, scientific progress occurs mainly by the accumulation of a mass of modest, narrowly specialized intellectual contributions. On this view, major breakthroughs draw heavily upon a large body of minor and little-known work, without which the major advances could not happen. == Citation research == The Ortega hypothesis is widely held, but a number of systematic studies of scientific citations have favored the opposing "Newton hypothesis", which says that scientific progress is mostly the work of a relatively small number of great scientists (after Isaac Newton's statement that he "stood on the shoulders of giants"). The most important papers mostly cite other important papers by a small number of outstanding scientists, suggesting that the breakthroughs do not actually draw heavily on a large body of minor work. Rather, the pattern of citations suggests that most minor work draws heavily on a small number of outstanding papers and outstanding scientists. Even minor papers by the most eminent scientists are cited much more than papers by relatively unknown scientists; and these elite scientists are clustered mostly in a small group of elite departments


id: the-oxford-book-of-modern-science-writing-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oxford_Book_of_Modern_Science_Writing-0.md
category: reference
title: The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oxford_Book_of_Modern_Science_Writing
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:05.060415+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-oxford-book-of-modern-science-writing-20260505-0
summary:
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is an anthology of scientific writings, arranged and introduced by Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford. Published first in March 2008, it contains 83 writings on many topics from a diverse variety of authors, which range in length from one to eight pages. All inclusions are dated post-1900, and include poetry, anecdotes, and general philosophical musings. == Contents == The book is divided into four segments. The following is a list of pieces included in each segment. === What Scientists Study === from: The Mysterious Universe by James Jeans Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees Creation Revisited by Peter Atkins The Ant and the Peacock by Helena Cronin The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection by R. A. Fisher Mankind Evolving by Theodosius Dobzhansky Adaptation and Natural Selection by G. C. Williams Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature by Francis Crick Genome by Matt Ridley "Theoretical Biology in the Third Millennium" by Sydney Brenner The Language of the Genes by Steve Jones "On Being the Right Size", an essay by J. B. S. Haldane The Explanation of Organic Diversity by Mark Ridley "The Importance of the Nervous System in the Evolution of Animal


id: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy-0.md
category: reference
title: Patronage in astronomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:06.257744+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-0
summary:
Patronage in astronomy is an approach which one can use to examine the history of astronomy from a cultural standpoint. Rather than simply focusing on the findings and discoveries of individual astronomers, this approach emphasizes the importance of patronage in shaping the field of astronomy. == Importance to the history of science == An often overlooked dimension in the history of science, the patronage system and the realities that existed within such a system played an important role in the lives of many of science's icons and heroes. The history of astronomy in particular is filled with examples demonstrating the relationship between patron and client, including that of Galileo Galilei and his ties to the Medici family. Many historians have begun to examine the importance of examining scientific history through this relatively forgotten lens. Dr. Robert Smith, in an article examining patronage in the early history of NASA, begins with the assertion that “the history of space astronomy is usually written from the perspective of the remarkable scientific findings garnered by space astronomers and the ways these findings have enriched and guided new views of the universe.” But, as Barker and Goldstein ensure, “following the groundbreaking work of Robert Westman


id: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy-1.md
category: reference
title: Patronage in astronomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:06.257744+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Nicholas Jardine === In his article titled The Places of Astronomy in Early-Modern Culture, Nicholas Jardine looks to examine how the system of patronage and the codes of courtly conduct shaped a new agenda for astronomy: the quest for the true world system. Jardine begins his article by noting that astronomy “did not then make up a specialty or discipline in anything like the modern sense… rather, it comprised a whole series of practices widely diffused through the various social sites and strata.” The focus of University teachings on astronomy was “predominantly practical and utilitarian, directed towards the calendrical, navigational, agricultural, and above all, medical applications of the subject… [p]lanetary models were on the whole considered as fictions devised for predictive purposes.” But, during the course of the sixteenth century “there arose an entirely new kind of princely and aristocratic involvement in astronomy, an involvement in which astronomical observations, instruments, models, and ultimately world systems themselves became objects of courtly production, exchange, and competition.” Some notable places of this “new courtly culture of astronomy were the court of Landgraf Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel, Tycho Brahe’s island of Hven (held in fief from Frederick II of Denmark) and, some decades


id: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy-2.md
category: reference
title: Patronage in astronomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:06.257744+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Mario Biagioli === In his book, Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Mario Biagioli looks to shed light on the ways in which a society characterized by patronage relationships affected one of astronomy's, and modern science's, greatest heroes: Galileo Galilei. Biagioli looks to uncover aspects of Galileo's life by “vividly [presenting] the pioneer physicist to us through the active social relations he experienced with persons in the different courts with which he was connected.” The book reveals how Galileo “used patronage to obtain his teaching position in Pisa… [and] maneuvered his transfer from Padua to the “home court” of the Medicis... used contacts with Prince Cesi and other well-placed persons in Roman circles to become an Academian, and a person of influence, and how all of this turned to dust for Galileo, when he lost the patronage of Urban VIII, one of his two most special patrons”. In a review of Biagioli's work, Larry Wolff noted Biagioli as demonstrating Galileo's legitimacy as a direct consequence of “his ‘career strategies’” and not just “his ‘cognitive attitudes’” and that Galileo is shown to be a master of attaining power and a seventeenth-century career in science The


id: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy-3.md
category: reference
title: Patronage in astronomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_astronomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:06.257744+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patronage-in-astronomy-20260505-0
summary:
[H]e saw the telescope more as an instrument of patronage than as an instrument of astronomy. When Galileo, having seized what the moon and stars could quickly offer, had turned his telescope on the next brightest object in the evening sky, Jupiter, early in January, Venus was visible in the predawn sky. For a Copernican, Venus was in a critical part of its orbit, past maximum elongation, approaching superior conjunction, and thus exhibiting a shape incompatible with the Ptolemaic system. As we have seen, however, Jupiter had offered something quite different, an incomparable present to the grand duke, and Galileo had not paused to look further. Westfall questions Galileo's commitment to Copernicanism, and instead views Galileo as being more concerned with finding discoveries that could help further his patronage relationship, and that Galileo was prepared to try to monopolize the telescope in order to do so. == See also == History of Science History of Astronomy Age of Enlightenment Galileo Galilei Galileo Affair Johannes Kepler Tycho Brahe Nicolaus Copernicus == Notes == == References == Barker, Peter, and Bernard R. Goldstein. "Patronage and the Production of De Revolutionibus." Journal for the History of Astronomy (ISSN 0021-8286), Vol. 34, Part 4,


id: performativity-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity-0.md
category: reference
title: Performativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:07.568610+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: performativity-20260505-0
summary:
Performativity is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and have the effect of change. The concept has multiple applications in diverse fields such as anthropology, social and cultural geography, economics, gender studies (social construction of gender), law, linguistics, performance studies, history, management studies and philosophy. The concept is first described by philosopher of language John L. Austin when he referred to a specific capacity: the capacity of speech and communication to act or to consummate an action. Austin differentiated this from constative language, which he defined as descriptive language that can be "evaluated as true or false". Common examples of performative language are making promises, betting, performing a wedding ceremony, an umpire calling a foul, or a judge pronouncing a verdict. The concept of performance has been developed by such scholars as Richard Schechner, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Erving Goffman, John Austin, John Searle, Pierre Bourdieu, Stern and Henderson, and Judith Butler. == Defining performance == Performance is a bodily practice that produces meaning. It is the presentation or 're-actualization' of symbolic systems through living bodies as well as lifeless mediating objects, such as architecture. In the academic field, as opposed to the domain


id: performativity-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity-1.md
category: reference
title: Performativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:07.568610+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: performativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== J. L. Austin === The term derives from the founding work in speech act theory by ordinary language philosopher J. L. Austin. In the 1950s, Austin gave the name performative utterances to situations where saying something was doing something, rather than simply reporting on or describing reality. The paradigmatic case here is speaking the words "I do". Austin did not use the word performativity. Breaking with analytic philosophy, Austin argued in How to Do Things With Words that a "performative utterance" cannot be said to be either true or false as a constative utterance might be: it can only be judged either "happy" or "infelicitous" depending upon whether the conditions required for its success have been met. In this sense, performativity is a function of the pragmatics of language. Having shown that all utterances perform actions, even apparently constative ones, Austin famously discarded the distinction between "performative" and "constative" utterances halfway through the lecture series that became the book and replaced it with a three-level framework: locution (the actual words spoken, that which the linguists and linguistic philosophers of the day were mostly interested in analyzing) illocutionary force (what the speaker is attempting to do in uttering the locution)


id: performativity-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity-2.md
category: reference
title: Performativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:07.568610+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: performativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Jacques Derrida === Philosopher Jacques Derrida drew on Austin's theory of performative speech act while deconstructing its logocentric and phonocentric premises and reinscribing it within the operations of generalized writing. In contrast to structuralism's focus on linguistic form, Austin had introduced the force of speech acts, which Derrida aligns with Nietzsche's insights on language. In "Signature, Event, Context," Derrida focused on Austin's privileging of speech and the accompanying presumptions of the presence of a speaker ("signature") and the bounding of a performative's force by an act or a context. In a passage that would become a touchstone of poststructuralist thought, Derrida stresses the citationality or iterability of any and all signs.Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the current sense of this opposition), in a small or large unit, can be cited, put between quotation marks; in doing so it can break with every given context, engendering an infinity of new contexts in a manner which is absolutely illimitable. This does not imply that the mark is valid outside of a context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center or absolute anchorage [ancrage]. This citationality, this duplication or duplicity, this iterability of


id: performativity-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity-3.md
category: reference
title: Performativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:07.568610+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: performativity-20260505-0
summary:
== Various applications == Performance offers a tremendous interdisciplinary archive of social practices. It offers methods to study such phenomena as body art, ecological theatre, multimedia performance and other kinds of performance arts. Performance also provides a new registry of kinaesthetic effects, enabling a more conscientious observation of the moving body. The changing experience of movement, for example as a result of new technologies, has become an important subject of research. Moreover, the performative turn has helped scholars to develop an awareness of the relations between everyday life and stage performances. For example, at conferences and lectures, on the street and in other places where people speak in public, performers tend to use techniques derived from the world of theatre and dance. Performance allows us to study nature and other apparently 'immovable' and 'objectified' elements of the human environment (e.g. architecture) as active agents, rather than only as passive objects. Thus, in recent decades environmental scholars have acknowledged the existence of a fluid interaction between man and nature. The performative turn has provided additional tools to study everyday life. A household for example may be considered as a performance, in which the relation between wife and husband is a role


id: performativity-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity-4.md
category: reference
title: Performativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:07.568610+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: performativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Video art === Theories of performativity have extended across multiple disciplines and discussions. Notably, interdisciplinary theorist José Esteban Muñoz has related video to theories of performativity. Specifically, Muñoz looks at the 1996 documentary by Susana Aiken and Carlos Aparicio, "The Transformation." Although historically and theoretically related to performance art, video art is not an immediate performance; it is mediated, iterative and citational. In this way, video art raises questions of performativity. Additionally, video art frequently puts bodies and display, complicating borders, surfaces, embodiment, and boundaries and so indexing performativity. == Issues and debates == Despite cogent attempts at definition, the concept of performance continues to be plagued by ambiguities. Most pressing seems to be the paradox between performance as the consequence of following a script (cf. Schechners restored behaviour) and performance as a fluid activity with ample room for improvisation. Another problem involves the discrepancy between performance as a human activity that constructs culture (e.g. Butler and Derrida) on the one hand and performance as a representation of culture on the other (e.g. Bourdieu and Schechner). Another issue, important to pioneers such as Austin but now deemed irrelevant by postmodernism, concerns the sincerity of the actor. Can performance be


id: performativity-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity-5.md
category: reference
title: Performativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:07.568610+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: performativity-20260505-0
summary:
== Bibliography and further reading == Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Austin, J. L. 1970. "Performative Utterances." In Austin, "Philosophical Papers", 233–52. London: Oxford University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Discourse in the Novel", The dialogic imagination : four essays; edited by Michael Holquist; translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist Austin: University of Texas Press, c1981. Bamberg, M., Narrative. State of the Art (2007). Barad, Karen. 2003. "Posthumanist Performativity: Toward and Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28.3: 801–831. Boldyrev, Ivan and Svetlova, Ekaterina. 2016. Enacting Dismal Science: New Perspectives on the Performativity of Economics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bourdieu, P., Outlines of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge 1972). Burke, Peter, 'Performing history: the importance of occasions', in: Rethinking history 9 afl. 1 (2005), pp. 35–52. Brickell, Chris. 2005. "Masculinities, Performativity, and Subversion: A Sociological Reappraisal." Men and Masculinities 8.1: 24–43. Brisset, Nicolas. 2017. "On performativity: Option Theory and the Resistance of Financial Phenomena". Journal of the History of Economic Thought. 39(4) : 549–569. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837217000128 Brisset, Nicolas. 2019. Economics and Performativity. Exploring limits,Theories and Cases. Routledge INEM Advances in Economic Methodology. Butler, Judith. 1993.


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
Philosophy of science (also theory of science) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose and meaning of science as a human endeavour. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of scientific practice, and overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, logic, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and the concept of truth. Philosophy of science is both a theoretical and empirical discipline, relying on philosophical theorising as well as meta-studies of scientific practice. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than the philosophy of science. Many of the central problems concerned with the philosophy of science lack contemporary consensus, including whether science can infer truth about unobservable entities and whether inductive reasoning can be justified as yielding definite scientific knowledge. Philosophers of science also consider philosophical problems within particular sciences (such as biology, physics and social sciences such as economics and psychology). Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to reach conclusions about philosophy itself. While


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-1.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
A closely related question is what counts as a good scientific explanation. In addition to providing predictions about future events, society often takes scientific theories to provide explanations for events that occur regularly or have already occurred. Philosophers have investigated the criteria by which a scientific theory can be said to have successfully explained a phenomenon, as well as what it means to say a scientific theory has explanatory power. One early and influential account of scientific explanation is the deductive-nomological model. It says that a successful scientific explanation must deduce the occurrence of the phenomena in question from a scientific law. This view has been subjected to substantial criticism, resulting in several widely acknowledged counterexamples to the theory. It is especially challenging to characterize what is meant by an explanation when the thing to be explained cannot be deduced from any law because it is a matter of chance, or otherwise cannot be perfectly predicted from what is known. Wesley Salmon developed a model in which a good scientific explanation must be statistically relevant to the outcome to be explained. Others have argued that the key to a good explanation is unifying disparate phenomena or providing a causal mechanism.


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-2.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
Should science aim to determine ultimate truth, or are there questions that science cannot answer? Scientific realists claim that science aims at truth and that one ought to regard scientific theories as true, approximately true, or likely true. Conversely, scientific anti-realists argue that science does not aim (or at least does not succeed) at truth, especially truth about unobservables like electrons or other universes. Instrumentalists argue that scientific theories should only be evaluated on whether they are useful. In their view, whether theories are true or not is beside the point, because the purpose of science is to make predictions and enable effective technology. Realists often point to the success of recent scientific theories as evidence for the truth (or near truth) of current theories. Antirealists point to either the many false theories in the history of science, epistemic morals, the success of false modeling assumptions, or widely termed postmodern criticisms of objectivity as evidence against scientific realism. Antirealists attempt to explain the success of scientific theories without reference to truth. Some antirealists claim that scientific theories aim at being accurate only about observable objects and argue that their success is primarily judged by that criterion. ==== Real patterns ====


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-3.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
Instrumentalism became popular among physicists around the turn of the 20th century, after which logical positivism defined the field for several decades. Logical positivism accepts only testable statements as meaningful, rejects metaphysical interpretations, and embraces verificationism (a set of theories of knowledge that combines logicism, empiricism, and linguistics to ground philosophy on a basis consistent with examples from the empirical sciences). Seeking to overhaul all of philosophy and convert it to a new scientific philosophy, the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle propounded logical positivism in the late 1920s. Interpreting Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language, logical positivists identified a verifiability principle or criterion of cognitive meaningfulness. From Bertrand Russell's logicism they sought reduction of mathematics to logic. They also embraced Russell's logical atomism, Ernst Mach's phenomenalism—whereby the mind knows only actual or potential sensory experience, which is the content of all sciences, whether physics or psychology—and Percy Bridgman's operationalism. Thereby, only the verifiable was scientific and cognitively meaningful, whereas the unverifiable was unscientific, cognitively meaningless "pseudostatements"—metaphysical, emotive, or such—not worthy of further review by philosophers, who were newly tasked to organize knowledge rather than develop new knowledge. Logical positivism is commonly portrayed as taking the extreme position that scientific


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-4.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
That there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers."The basis for rationality is acceptance of an external objective reality." "Objective reality is clearly an essential thing if we are to develop a meaningful perspective of the world. Nevertheless its very existence is assumed." "Our belief that objective reality exist is an assumption that it arises from a real world outside of ourselves. As infants we made this assumption unconsciously. People are happy to make this assumption that adds meaning to our sensations and feelings, than live with solipsism." "Without this assumption, there would be only the thoughts and images in our own mind (which would be the only existing mind) and there would be no need of science, or anything else." That this objective reality is governed by natural laws; "Science, at least today, assumes that the universe obeys knowable principles that don't depend on time or place, nor on subjective parameters such as what we think, know or how we behave." Hugh Gauch argues that science presupposes that "the physical world is orderly and comprehensible." That reality can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.Stanley Sobottka said: "The assumption of external reality is necessary for


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-5.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994) argued that no description of scientific method could possibly be broad enough to include all the approaches and methods used by scientists, and that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science. He argued that "the only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes". Feyerabend said that science started as a liberating movement, but that over time it had become increasingly dogmatic and rigid and had some oppressive features, and thus had become increasingly an ideology. Because of this, he said it was impossible to come up with an unambiguous way to distinguish science from religion, magic, or mythology. He saw the exclusive dominance of science as a means of directing society as authoritarian and ungrounded. Promulgation of this epistemological anarchism earned Feyerabend the title of "the worst enemy of science" from his detractors. === Sociology of scientific knowledge methodology === According to Kuhn, science is an inherently communal activity which can only be done as part of a community. For him, the fundamental difference between science and other disciplines is the way in which the communities function. Others, especially Feyerabend and some post-modernist thinkers, have argued that there is


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-6.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
== Other topics == === Reductionism === Analysis involves breaking an observation or theory down into simpler concepts in order to understand it. Reductionism can refer to one of several philosophical positions related to this approach. One type of reductionism suggests that phenomena are amenable to scientific explanation at lower levels of analysis and inquiry. Perhaps a historical event might be explained in sociological and psychological terms, which in turn might be described in terms of human physiology, which in turn might be described in terms of chemistry and physics. Daniel Dennett distinguishes legitimate reductionism from what he calls greedy reductionism, which denies real complexities and leaps too quickly to sweeping generalizations. === Social accountability === A broad issue affecting the neutrality of science concerns the areas which science chooses to explore—that is, what part of the world and of humankind are studied by science. Philip Kitcher in his Science, Truth, and Democracy argues that scientific studies that attempt to show one segment of the population as being less intelligent, less successful, or emotionally backward compared to others have a political feedback effect which further excludes such groups from access to science. Thus such studies undermine the broad consensus required


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-7.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
Philosophy of biology deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology (e.g., Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz and even Kant), philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s. Philosophers of science began to pay increasing attention to developments in biology, from the rise of the modern synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953 to more recent advances in genetic engineering. Other key ideas such as the reduction of all life processes to biochemical reactions as well as the incorporation of psychology into a broader neuroscience are also addressed. Research in current philosophy of biology includes investigation of the foundations of evolutionary theory (such as Peter Godfrey-Smith's work), and the role of viruses as persistent symbionts in host genomes. As a consequence, the evolution of genetic content order is seen as the result of competent genome editors in contrast to former narratives in which error replication events (mutations) dominated. === Philosophy of medicine === Beyond medical ethics and bioethics, the philosophy of medicine is a branch


id: philosophy-of-science-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science-8.md
category: reference
title: Philosophy of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:37:09.106686+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: philosophy-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic and method of the social sciences, such as sociology and cultural anthropology. Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities between the social and the natural sciences, causal relationships between social phenomena, the possible existence of social laws, and the ontological significance of structure and agency. The French philosopher, Auguste Comte (1798–1857), established the epistemological perspective of positivism in The Course in Positivist Philosophy, a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. The first three volumes of the Course dealt chiefly with the natural sciences already in existence (geoscience, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasised the inevitable coming of social science: "sociologie". For Comte, the natural sciences had to necessarily arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. Comte offers an evolutionary system proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general 'law of three stages'. These are (1) the theological, (2) the metaphysical, and (3) the positive. Comte's positivism established the initial philosophical foundations for formal sociology and social research. Durkheim,


