Empirical Science Methodology of the empirical sciences

The quest for theoretical self-awareness in the empirical sciences has led to interest in methodological and foundational problems as well as to attempts to axiomatize different empirical theories. Moreover, general methodological problems, such as the nature of scientific explanations, have been discussed intensively among philosophers of science. In all of these endeavours, logic plays an important role. By and large, there are here three different lines of thought. (1) Often, only the simplest parts of logic--e.g., propositional logic--are appealed to (over and above the mere use of logical notation). Sometimes, claims regarding the usefulness of logic in the methodology of the empirical sciences are, in effect, restricted to such rudimentary applications. This restriction is misleading, however, for most of the interesting and promising connections between methodology and logic lie on a higher level, especially in the area of model theory. In econometrics, for instance, a special case of the logicians' problems of definability plays an important role under the title "identification problem." On a more general level, logicians have been able to clarify the concept of a model as it is used in the empirical sciences. In addition to those employing simple logic, two other contrasting types of theorists can be distinguished: (2) philosophers of science, who rely mostly on first-order formulations, and (3) methodologists (e.g., Patrick Suppes, a U.S. philosopher and behavioral scientist), who want to use the full power of set theory and of the mathematics based on it. Both approaches have advantages. Usually realistic axiomatizations and other reconstructions of actual scientific theories are possible only in terms of set theoretical and other strong mathematical conceptualizations (theories conceived of as "set-theoretical predicates"). In spite of the oversimplification that first-order formulations often entail, however, they can yield theoretical insights because first-order logic (including its model theory) is mastered by logicians much more thoroughly than is set theory. Many empirical sciences, especially the social sciences, use mathematical tools borrowed from probability theory and statistics, together with such outgrowths of these as decision theory, game theory, utility theory, and operations research. A modest but not uninteresting beginning in the study of their foundations has been made in modern inductive logic.

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