Introduction

TL;DRAbstract

Philosophy of science examines “scientific knowledge.” It tries to illuminate the specific characteristics of science, the way it is produced, the historical dimensions of science, and the normative criteria at play in appraising science. The discussions mostly take place with reference to the natural sciences, which are still at the core of the philosophy of science as a discipline. The examples used are often taken from one of the natural sciences (usually physics); and it is characteristic that the training of most contemporary philosophers of science has been – at least partly – in one of the natural sciences. The philosophy of the social sciences, on the other hand, traditionally deals with such problems as the role of understanding (Verstehen) in apprehending social phenomena, the status of rational choice theory, the role of experiments in the social sciences, the logical status of game theory, as well as whether there are genuine laws of social phenomena or rather social mechan

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