Read the summary and the most important questions on Philosphy of science

• lecture 1

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• How to conceptualize the differences between natural sciences and humanities analyse the diversity of the social sciences?

  Using the concpets of nomothetic and idiographic approaches

• What is the nomothetic approach?

  Trying to make sense of the world
  

  • identifying regularities in the world(repetition of regularities)
  • formulating generalizations and laws to describe these regularities
  • deriving explanations of observed outcomes  from these generalizations and laws
  • typical of the natural sciences, but not unknown in humanities and social sciences

  
  
  
  strength: 
  identify similarities and structures that underlie apparently diverse cases, yield sweeping, general knowledge; yield economical knowledge (law of nature, how numbers describe the world) 
  uninformative. 
  
  Weakness: 
  erase the specificity of outcomes. 
  be reductive, mechanistic, positivistic. 
  what makes one outcome the same as the other more focussed on. 

• What is the ideographic approach?

  Understanding the meaning of contingent, unique, and often subjective outcomes. 
  
  Typical of humanities or the Geisteswissenschaften/ ''sciences of the spirit''
    
  following from form of creativity is not foreseeable.  
  
  strength: 
  reveal differences between apparently similar cases.
  yield detailed, context-sensitive knowlegde
  
  weakness: can be blind to general factors that constrain outcomes. It is not looking for general factors but for the differences.

• methodology of Analogies and Models

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• What are the components of analogy?

  • Source domain
    
  • domain of phenomena that supplies the terms of the analogy: typically more familiar to us.
  • target (directing our sources to this domain our target) domain
  • domain of phenomena to which we apply the analogy: typically less familiar to us.

  (the two domains of phenomena between which the analogy takes place.)
  
  

  • mapping (dictionary)
  • set of correspondences between terms in the source and terms in the target domain.
  • one or more relations
  • claims that, under the mapping, hold for both the source and the target domain.

• What are the three classes of heuristics of analogy?

  • Positive analogy
    
  • we know already that these relations hold in both the source and target domains.
  • negative analogy
  • we know that these relations hold in one domain but not in the other
  • neutral analogy
  • we known that these relations hold in the source domain, but we do not know if they hold in the target domain.

• What is a model?

  A structure intermediate between phenomena (what we study) and high-level scientific theories.
  many scientific models are based on analogies.
  
  a simplified representation of a domain of phenomena, and/or an application of a scientific theory to a particular case.
  
  or the way around. Making a specific application of a theory to a phenomena.

• What are the classes of models?

  • Abstract models (exist only vertualy/world of concepts and imaginations)
    
  • include fictional entities (perfectly rationally decision-maker) and mathematical equations
  • Model of the atom
  • material models
  • are concrete objects. They include scale models and wind tunnel models.
  • the MONIAC
  • computer simulations
  • equation-based simulations, e.g. Global climate models 
  • agent-based simulations (simulating a population with characteristics)
  • phenomenological models
  • represent only (empirical) data or observable properties
  • they do not postulate underlying mechanisms
  • also known as ''data models''

• quantitative and qualitative approaches

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• What are quantitative methods?

  Many instances, few variables
  ''large N'' methods
   usually in a social science research project.
  
  Use cross-case analysis to perform causal inference. Involve collection (quasi-)numerical data on a relatively few variables from relatively many instances and analyzing them often by statistics.
  
  e.g. Experimental and quasi-experimental methods in social science.

• what are qualitative methods?

  Few instances, many variables
  ''small N'' methods
  
  Use within-case analysis to reconstruct causal pathways individual cases
  Involve in-depth study of relatively many variables in relatively few instances. 
  e.g. Case study method. 
  gathering in-depth knowledge.

• What is causal inference?

  It is the reasoning between causes and effects in order to get links between causes and effects.
  This can be done in two ways: quantitative and qualitative.
  
  

  • quantitative methods
  • forward causal inference-- reasoning from causes to effects
  • qualitative methods
  • reverse causal inference --reasoning from effects to causes.  
    
  • forward and reverse chronologically, thus from cause to effects.