Philosophy of science is an old and practiced discipline. Both Plato and Aristotle
wrote on the subject, and, arguably, some of the pre-Socratics did also. The Middle
Ages, both in its Arabic and high Latin periods, made many commentaries and
disputations touching on topics in philosophy of science. Of course, the new
science of the seventeenth century brought along widespread ruminations and
manifold treatises on the nature of science, scientific knowledge and method.
The Enlightenment pushed this project further trying to make science and its
hallmark method definitive of the rational life. With the industrial revolution,
“science” became a synonym for progress. In many places in the Western world,
science was venerated as being the peculiarly modern way of thinking. The nineteenth
century saw another resurgence of interest when ideas of evolution melded
with those of industrial progress and physics achieved a maturity that led some
to believe that science was complete. By the end of the century, mathematics
had found alternatives to Euclidean geometry and logic had become a newly
re-admired discipline.