"To expect to reorganise our ideas of Time, Space, and Measurement without some discussion which must be ranked as philosophical is to neglect the teaching of history... it is well to understand the limitations to the meaning of philosophy in this connection. It has nothing to do with ethics or theology or the theory of aesthetics. It is solely engaged in determining the most general conceptions which apply to things observed by the senses. Accordingly it is not even metaphysics: it should be called pan-physics. Its task is to formulate those principles of science which are employed equally in every branch of natural science. ...The philosophy of science is the endeavour to formulate the most general characters of things observed. ...in human thought the particular precedes the general. Accordingly the philosophy will not advance until the branches of science have made independent progress. Philosophy then appears as a criticism and a corrective, and what is now to the purpose as an additional source of evidence in times of fundamental reorganisation."
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Alfred North Whitehead, The Principle of Relativity with Applications to Physical Science (1922) pp. 4-5.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
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Philosophy of science
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