| Ontology: |
An account of what there is (e.g., what kinds of
objects, what kinds of forces, what kinds of laws of nature, etc.) |
| Metaphysics: |
The branch of philosophy dealing with how things
really are (which includes ontology – what kind of stuff there really is). |
| Epistemology: |
The branch of philosophy dealing with what we can
know and how we can come to know it. |
| Epistemic/ epistemological: |
Having to do with knowledge or knowing. |
| Rationality: |
Acting for good reasons. (We might need to
provide a further account of what exactly counts as a “good reason”.) |
| Logical consistency: |
(Of a scientific theory) Not giving
rise to contradictory conclusions (P and not-P). |
| Empirical adequacy: |
(Of a scientific theory) Matches all
the empirical data. (Weaker sense: Matches all the empirical
data collected so far. Stronger sense: Matches all the
empirical data, including data yet to be collected or observed.) |
| Realism: |
The view that scientific theories aim to give a literally
true account of what kind of stuff is in the world, how that stuff evolves
over time, and how that stuff interacts. |
| Antirealism(1): |
The disbelief in the mind-independent existence of
a class of entities. |
| Antirealism(2) |
The claim that our scientific theories do not
need to aim at telling a literally true story of what the world is like. |
| Descriptive: |
A claim about how things are. |
| Normative: |
A claim about how things ought to be (regardless
of how they actually are). |
| Subjective: |
Having to do with how things seem to a particular
person. |
| Objective: |
Having to do with how things actually are.
Something any person could see, regardless of who they are. |
| Relativism: |
The view that there is no single or objectively special
set of standards entitled to govern a domain of practice. |
| Paradigm: |
An impressive achievement which inspires people and
provides a basis for further work; or, an achievement + a body of work based
on the achievement taken to give insight into some of the workings of the
world (we could call this an exemplar); or all of the above + shared
values of the scientists working within a paradigm. |
| Normal science tradition: |
A paradigm-guided body of work. |
| Anomaly: |
A puzzle which consistently resists solution. |
| Crisis: |
A period of instability generated by the persistent
failure of the best people in the field to solve the puzzles they’re trying
to solve. |