Philosophy of Science Underlying Engaged Scholarship

Abstract

Abstract Many of us are practitioners—not philosophers—of science. We don’t think much about ontology and epistemology so that we can get on with the craft of doing research instead of talking about it. But underlying any form of research is a philosophy of science that informs us of the nature of the phenomenon examined (ontology) and methods for understanding it (epistemology). Whether explicit or implicit, we rely on a philosophy of science to interpret the meanings, logical relations, and consequences of our observational and theoretical statements.