The aim of this course is to discuss and assess the properties of theories which are characterized as scientific; the problems of scientific activity, the historical value of scientific theories; and the historical processes of conceptions of science as well as scientific activity from the viewpoints of different doctrines in the philosophy of science.

The historical development of natural science; the conceptions of nature and science; the epistemology of scientific cognition; epistemological problems concerning theoretical and empirical knowledge; the methodological problems of scientific inquiry. The subject-matters of this course are the following issues: i. The conceptions of nature in Ancient Greeks; ii. Aristotelian physics and his theory of science; iii. Medieval conceptions of nature and science; iv. The rise of modern science (Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton) and the critique of Aristotelian conceptions of nature and science; v. The conception of scientific knowledge in Hume, Kant and in the 19th century philosophers; vi. The rise of philosophy of science in the 20th century and the Logical Positivists; vii. Karl Popper and his falsificationism, the demarcation between science and pseudo-science; viii. structuralism and historicism in the philosophy of science; ix. Paul K. Feyerabend and his anarchist philosophy of science; x. Imre Lakatos and his methodology of scientific research programs.