Metaphysics of science

Holism is the interdisciplinary idea that systems possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts. The aphorism "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts", is often given as a summary of this proposal. The concept of holism can inform the methodology for a broad array of scientific fields and lifestyle practices. When applications of holism are said to reveal properties of a whole system beyond those of its parts, these qualities are referred to as emergent properties of that system. Holism in all contexts is often placed in opposition to reductionism, a d

statement based on repeated experimental observations that describes some aspects of the universe

interpretation of quantum mechanics which denies the collapse of the wavefunction

scientific term

philosophical worldview rejecting 'supernatural or supernaturalism' and holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences

In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is the position that the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality. In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed.

Retrocausality, or backwards causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one. In quantum physics, the distinction between cause and effect is not made at the most fundamental level and so time-symmetric systems can be viewed as causal or retrocausal. Philosophical considerations of time travel often address the same issues as retrocausality, as do treatments of the subject in fiction, but the two phenomena are distinct.

a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole

Conceptual issue in the philosophy of mind

philosophical view that no individual statement can be confirmed or disconfirmed by an empirical test, but only a set of statements (a whole theory)

the property of stretching out or taking up space