Questions on the Philosophical Foundations of Science

Does every a priori proposition necessarily have to be analytic? Does every a posteriori proposition necessarily have to be synthetic? Immanuel Kant does the conceptualization work of a priori and a posteriori propositions. He develops these concepts in the Critique of Pure Reason. Over time, Kant's propositions became the basic concepts of scientific methodology.

The questions above have occupied the world of philosophy for a long time. The Logical Positivist movement objected to Kant and became the focal point of the discussions. I have examined these discussions as much as possible, but there is another question that has been bothering me and I have not been able to find an answer to it. If every a priori proposition is necessarily analytic, are scientific disciplines that are both a priori and analytic closed to development and new discoveries? If some a posteriori and synthetic propositions have gained certainty based on experience over time, can they become a priori and analytic over time? When an analysis is made from this perspective, do branches such as analytical chemistry and analytical physics no longer have areas of new discoveries with their definite and stereotyped sets of rules?

University of Athens (Photo: Arda Tunca)

The fundamental discussion point of all the above questions centers around the question of method and it lays the common discussion foundations of all sciences. In other words, there is no method without philosophy and no science without method.

Science cannot be evolutionary and revolutionary without taking the information produced by science over centuries out of daily life or from the forms of expression with empirical values and analyzing its conceptual foundations. In other words, a scientific concept cannot be developed and the rules of nature cannot be defined without abstraction. Every study that has been deprived of the power to develop a concept means that it has lost all its scientific qualities and does not allow for new observations expressed by empirical values. In short, there is no concretization without abstraction.

Now, if we turn to another aspect of science and delve into Isaac Newton a bit, we come across a different view. Newton is a figure who discovered the law of gravity and has engraved his name in the history of science. It turns out that Newton was heavily interested in alchemy. In his correspondences with Robert Boyle, Newton states that no one should know that he is interested in alchemy. He asks Boyle to be his confidant on the matter.

Alchemy is a concept that goes far beyond the mere effort of transmuting different metals into gold and silver. It is a field that has its own symbols and philosophy, but does not have scientific properties. What led Newton to become interested in alchemy?

What is the philosophical basis of the conflict between social sciences and natural sciences? Thomas Henry Huxley, Charles Percy Snow, Auguste Comte and many other scientists have tried to answer this question.

Whether the concept of social science can really be included in the definition of science is a separate matter of debate.

Is there such a thing as social science? In other words, can economics and law, for instance, have anything to do with science? When there are different moral norms all over the world and when these norms can change in different places and at different times, how can the rules determined based on these norms make economics and law a science?

Social sciences can only develop rules that are in line with local norms by using some of the methods of science and internalizing them as much as possible. Even globalization has not yet been able to eliminate these local norms sufficiently. I am simply generating questions about scientific methods and the extent to which these methods thin or thicken the line between social sciences and natural sciences.

There is no end to these questions, and none of them have definitive answers yet. For now, they all serve as little more than a chance to do some thinking.