What makes a claim scientific, and what science tells us about reality.
12 topics · 18 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution
Theodosius Dobzhansky · 1973
Argues that the diversity and apparent design of living things are unintelligible as a mere catalogue of facts and become coherent only when…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Science and Hypothesis
Henri Poincaré · 1902
Argues that the axioms of geometry and many principles of physics are conventions chosen for convenience rather than empirical facts or truths of…
+4 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
A System of Logic
John Stuart Mill · 1843
Argues that all inference is ultimately from particulars to particulars, and sets out the methods of agreement and difference by which a cause can be…
+11 more at this level
12 of 18 works
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Argues that the diversity and apparent design of living things are unintelligible as a mere catalogue of facts and become coherent only when organised by evolutionary descent.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Henri Poincaré
Argues that the axioms of geometry and many principles of physics are conventions chosen for convenience rather than empirical facts or truths of reason.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Richard Rudner
Argues that because no test ever proves a hypothesis with certainty, deciding when the evidence is strong enough to accept it is itself a value judgement, not a purely factual one.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Karl Popper
Proposes falsifiability as the mark of a genuinely scientific theory, contrasting it with Marxism, psychoanalysis and astrology, which he argues can explain away any observation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Thomas Kuhn
Argues that scientists choose between competing theories using shared values like accuracy and simplicity rather than an algorithm, which is why reasonable scientists can disagree.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Ian Hacking
Argues that experimenters come to believe in unobservable entities like electrons not through theory but by manipulating them directly to produce other effects.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John Stuart Mill
Argues that all inference is ultimately from particulars to particulars, and sets out the methods of agreement and difference by which a cause can be isolated from mere correlation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Pierre Duhem
Argues that a physical theory can only be tested as a whole bundle of hypotheses, so an anomalous result never tells an experimenter which single hypothesis to revise.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Karl Popper
Argues that no theory can be verified, only falsified, and that what makes a claim scientific is its exposure to a test that could in principle refute it.
Carl Hempel
Sets out formal conditions any adequate theory of confirmation must satisfy, and uses them to derive the raven paradox, in which a red herring confirms 'all ravens are black'.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Carl Hempel & Paul Oppenheim
Sets out the deductive-nomological model, on which a scientific explanation is a valid deduction of the fact to be explained from a general law plus the relevant initial conditions.
link checked 17 Sept 2026W. V. O. Quine
Attacks the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism, arguing that our beliefs face experience only as a connected whole, so no single statement can be confirmed or refuted in isolation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026This subject genuinely sits in more than one domain. These fields approach the same ground with different methods.