The scientific method

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"On the ground, research rarely looks like the model of the scientific method presented in the textbooks."

Preaching to the choir! Ha! I rarely see how many of the core philosophy of science concepts, like the difference between induction and deduction, help when figuring out what an IR spectrum is telling you. Well, I suppose it does if you get into the highly abstract, but in actual research it's pretty useless.

Scarlet A.pngpathetic16:20, 25 June 2013

Well, deduction and induction are logical concepts, not based in philosophy of science per se, although the latter makes heavy use of them. I think many of the more specialized areas of phil of sci can be useful to primary research though -- for example, work by philosophers of biology on units/levels of selection.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)22:05, 25 June 2013