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Isaac Newton’s Empiricist Philosophy of Science
Some critics (or downplayers) of the philosophy of science (or philosophy generally) may argue that Isaac Newton didn’t actually have a philosophy of science at all. Instead, he simply did what he did. That is, no matter how complex and reasoned Newton’s maths, observations, experiments, etc. were, it was still “just science”.
“Empiricism is the epistemology which has tried to make sense of the role of observation in the certification of scientific knowledge.” — Alex Rosenberg (see source here)
It’s true that Isaac Newton never used the words “philosophy of science” about his own words and work. Indeed, he wasn’t overly self-conscious about the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of his science. But none of this means that Newton didn’t actually have a philosophy of science or that he didn’t uphold philosophical positions (i.e., as they were directly relevant to his work) on the nature of science itself.
In addition, the classification empiricist science may seem like a truism or even a tautology. At least it’s what many laypeople (though not really many scientists) take science to be anyway. That is, science is often deemed to be mainly (or even only) about observations and experiments… Or…
