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The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, not the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of ...
Probability is the branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an event is to occur. [note 1] [1] [2] A simple example is the tossing of a fair (unbiased) coin. Since the ...
Bayesian epistemology is a formal approach to various topics in epistemology that has its roots in Thomas Bayes' work in the field of probability theory. [1] One advantage of its formal method in contrast to traditional epistemology is that its concepts and theorems can be defined with a high degree of precision.
Historically, attempts to quantify probabilistic reasoning date back to antiquity. There was a particularly strong interest starting in the 12th century, with the work of the Scholastics, with the invention of the half-proof (so that two half-proofs are sufficient to prove guilt), the elucidation of moral certainty (sufficient certainty to act upon, but short of absolute certainty), the ...
On Certainty is a series of notes made by Ludwig Wittgenstein just prior to his death. The main theme of the work is that context plays a role in epistemology. Wittgenstein asserts an anti-foundationalist message throughout the work: that every claim can be doubted but certainty is possible in a framework.
Arthur P. Dempster at the Workshop on Theory of Belief Functions (Brest, 1 April 2010).. The theory of belief functions, also referred to as evidence theory or Dempster–Shafer theory (DST), is a general framework for reasoning with uncertainty, with understood connections to other frameworks such as probability, possibility and imprecise probability theories.
Uncertainty in science, and science in general, may be interpreted differently in the public sphere than in the scientific community. [21] This is due in part to the diversity of the public audience, and the tendency for scientists to misunderstand lay audiences and therefore not communicate ideas clearly and effectively. [21]
Whereas it can be understood as an equivalent to "beyond reasonable doubt", in another sense, moral certainty refers to a firm conviction which does not correlate but rather opposes evidentiary certainty: [5] i.e. one may have a firm subjective gut feeling of guilt – a feeling of moral certainty – without the evidence necessarily justifying ...