مجله فلسفه علم
سال سیزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 25، بهار و تابستان 1402)

Philosophy is the art and science of thinking and gaining into the world and things. It seems important to identify the research fields and the scope of its subjects. This research was done with the aim of achieving a comprehensive understanding of the process and thematic structure of articles in the field of philosophy. The current research is descriptive with a scientometric approach that analyzes the content of texts using the co-occurrence of words and social network analysis. The statistical population includes articles in the field of philosophy that have been published in the Web of Science database for the 5-year period of 2017-2021 in the citation index of arts and humanities. Finally, 4829 articles were selected in order to comprehensively outline the intellectual structure of knowledge in the field of philosophy. R bibliometrix package was used for data analysis and scientific map drawing. The analysis of the data showed that the greatest increase in published documents occurred in the last 3 years, Fischer was the most prolific author in recent years. America and England are the top two countries in terms of receiving citations in the scientific field of philosophy. The most prominent organization is the INST philosophy. Studies in the field of philosophy are divided into four clusters; Philosophical schools of thought and pragmatism clusters were clusters with high density and developed and experimental philosophy and philosophy clusters were central clusters with high centrality and undeveloped. According to the findings and the high frequency of Kant's keyword and the relationship between this keyword and other keywords, it can be concluded that Kant's opinions and ideas are still of great importance in philosophical discussions. Also, according to the extracted clusters, it was observed that these researches do not have a high variety and many neglected philosophical topics still exist.By analyzing the topics related to the articles in the field of philosophy, scientific advances and trends in scientific cooperation in this field are highlighted, and this can help policy makers and researchers to understand the current state of philosophical research in addition to predicting and knowing the future.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, philosophers of science—both realist and anti-realist—have shown a special tendency toward the concept of ‘structure’, mainly to address certain problems in the process of understanding science (particularly some serious problems arising from successive and deep changes in scientific theories over time). In this regard, different forms of ‘structuralism’ have been developed thus far around the belief that science is only capable of revealing the structure of the world (and not the ontological characteristics of its objects). However, all structuralisms have been subjected to a very serious criticism known as ‘Newman's objection’, which states that if structure is supposed to be the most we know about the world, then the only thing we will actually know about the world is cardinality, i.e., the number of related objects.Given the importance of structuralism in the philosophy of science as well as the seriousness of Newman's objection, the goal of this paper is to introduce both realist and anti-realist scientific structuralism and examine and evaluate how successfully they respond to this criticism. The findings of this examination suggest that both of these structuralisms are incapable or at least substantially problematic in answering Newman's objection, mostly due to their structuralist nature and underlying ideas.

With regards to the inefficiencies and uncompromising situations within the humanities and social sciences field in Iran, the challenge of problematizing these sciences is inevitable. So far, numerous research analyzing humanities and social sciences’ problems in the Iranian academic system have been published. Considering the important role of humanities and social sciences in the modern Iranian society, we attempt to suggest a theoretical framework for the problematization of humanities and social sciences in Iran. The exploration of the main challenges facing humanities and social sciences in Iran from the community, academy and administration point of view, sparks three hypotheses. First, humanities and social sciences’ theories and teachings are not applied accurately. Second, the humanities and social sciences’ schools of thought are not chosen properly according to Iranian circumstances. And third, there are metaphysical differences between axioms and presupposition of humanities and social sciences having western origins and those with Islamic-Iranian culture.

In all periods of history, human has been trying to "understand". In order to understanding the natural world, scientists first observe samples and then classify them based on similarity. To figure out the actions of people, the matter seems different. To achieve this, we need to understand the intentions of people. Because intention has psychological nature, there is always a concern from empiricists that it may not be perceptible by third-person people. To some extent, many human actions are perceptible from a third-person point of view, and this causes them to be the subject of scientific investigations (with common scientific methods). However, there are cases that show the understanding of human activities from the third person of view has limitations.Stephen Grimm introduces a type of understanding and believes that by realising the specific goals of the person being understood as a desired action, we will achieve a deeper understanding. In this article, an attempt has been made to clarify the discussed issue first by proposing and interpreting Stephen Grimm's point of view, and then by proposing the problems and explaining the ambiguities of Grimm's idea, as an alternative formulation, we will show that the agent's decision for understanding or not understanding the actions of others, plays an important role. Empathy is known as a psychological capacity that can be understood in a different way by simulating the structure.Investigating and looking deeper into this issue will help us to judge it better as a method or an idea in social and human sciences.

At first, it seems that in Cartesian science which seeks to master the world based on its rationalistic and ontological foundations, there is no room for hypothesis of any kind; because whatever appears before the modern reason, is so clear that needs not to any assumption. This view is both correct and incorrect. The Cartesian tree of knowledge has three parts within first two parts of which, i. e. metaphysics as its root and physics as its trunk, only reason is absolute sovereign, while its third part, i. e. the triad branches including medicine, mechanics, and morals cannot be established without hypotheses. The main role of hypothesis is making this tree to be fruitful in its three branches. Experience as the phase of fruit-gathering from this tree is impossible without hypothesis, and this is the very turning-point of which Descartes speaks as his practical philosophy which “makes us the lords and masters of the world”. Hypothesis, as the linkage between reason and experience, is of so irreplaceable role without which Cartesian scientist cannot be successful in bridging the gap between reason, from one hand, and sensation and imagination, from the other.

The ontological problem of technical artifacts is: what makes an object count as a technical artifact? Most theories have investigated the ontology of artifacts in terms of ‘function’. A group of these theories has highlighted the physical structure of the artifact because of its causal role in realizing the function; Others, taking ‘function’ and ‘intention’ the same, have emphasized agents’ intention in the design and use of artifacts. Some have considered the evolution of artifacts, their history of selection and reproduction, to be effective in the constitution of their ontology. Due to the shortcomings of causal, intentional, and evolutionary theories, attempts have been made to present hybrid theories. This paper, along with an overview and evaluation of the most important theories of the ontology of technical artifacts, aims to spell out the problems which any adequate ontology of artifacts needs to answer.

Newton considered the dynamical effects exerted upon accelerating bodies (such as the concavity of the surface of the water in Newton’s bucket experiment, etc.) to be caused by their acceleration relative to absolute space. Following Mach’s ideas, Einstein, based on the thought that all motion is relative, knew very well that if he could show that the inertial effects are actually due to the acceleration relative to distant matter instead of absolute space, then he would be able to dispose of the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and motion. There is a widespread belief that the general theory of relativity get rid of the preferred (inertial) frames corresponding to Newtonian absolute space and time. In this article, by examining Einstein’s thought process in creating the general theory of relativity, the cl aim despite Einstein’s efforts and contrary to the name of the theory, Mach’s principle in the sense of “relativity of all motion” or “inertial forces are exerted by matter, not by absolute spacetime” is neither included in the principles of the general theory of relativity nor results from it, is confirmed. Therefore, the absolute elements such as “absolute rest and motion”, “absolute acceleration”, “absolute inertial forces” and “absolute spacetime” are yet essentially retained in the general theory of relativity. Due to the epistemological importance of Mach’s principle, the effort to provide an efficient physical theory based on this principle continues.