Philosophical Foundations of Science

The philosophers of ancient Greece began reflections on the role that sensory appearances, ideas and language play in the processes of knowledge. They also questioned the nature of being, entities and the ultimate constituents of matter. The philosophical foundations of modern science were elaborated much later by Galilei, Descartes and Newton. These philosopher-scientists, in addition to introducing and using the experimental method, placed mathematics in the forefront, postulating that the nature of reality had a geometric-mathematical texture. With Newton, physics began to be considered the primary source of knowledge (replacing philosophy and theology). This conception reached the highest level in the mechanistic and deterministic interpretations of reality. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new series of theories in the geometric-mathematical (non-Euclidean geometry) and physical (three-body problem, relativity and quantum mechanics) theories introduced the concepts of unpredictability (deterministic chaos) into scientific research through probability, and relativity of time and space, alongside the presence of some paradoxical aspects of the microphysical world (dual nature of elementary particles, uncertainty principle, non-locality phenomena). These discoveries have fueled philosophical reflection on the nature and methods of scientific research. Currently, one of the most widely shared approaches, defined as critical rationalism, is based on the hypothetical-deductive method integrated by falsificationism, or rather from the recognition of scientific status only to potentially refutable theories. This means that scientific research progresses by recognizing its own mistakes. Finally, in recent decades, philosophical reflection has rejected the idea of a hierarchical organization of scientific disciplines based on reductionist parameters, believing that each discipline, while connected to the others, is endowed with full autonomy, which is characterized by the presence of concepts that are not reducible to the physical-mathematical paradigm.