ABSTRACT
Traditionally, philosophy has attempted to describe the nature of the world in terms of utmost generality. Philosophy has also taken as its domain the critical examination of the specific sciences. Science collects the results of observations, results framed in the terms ultimately derived from the language of everyday experience. Philosophy, in contrast, asks about the legitimacy of such extrapolation beyond the realm of the observable into the realm of the unobservable. Philosophy of science is often characterized as reserving for itself issues in the realm of methodology. The fact that the scientific theories are themselves based on thinking of a philosophical sort, whether this is explicit in the scientific history or only implicit and waiting for the historian and philosopher to dig it out, means also that one must be wary of too naive an attempt to resolve traditional philosophical issues by referring to the results of science.
