Philosophical question of science

 Write in a clear, direct style. Give as much introduction as you think is needed (perhaps not much) and then get straight down to answering the question. Avoid discursive footnotes. It’s not necessary to do a lot of extra reading in order to do well. If you do want to read more, contact your tutor for suggestions. (Don’t hope for guidance from wandering the internet. Most philosophical material on the internet is not good.) Many empiricist philosophers, including the logical positivists of the early 20th century, have thought that the goal of science is to find rules or generalizations that describe patterns in our experience. A couple of times in lectures, and also in Theory and Reality Chapter 3 (round p. 42), I have used the hypothesis that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of most of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago as an example of a scientific theory. This theory does not look much like a rule for predicting experience. But how might this case be handled by someone who was convinced that theories are just tools for predicting experience? If you want to read more the dinosaur extinction, you might start here: https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/why-did-the-dinosaurs-die-out-1 But it’s not necessary to read more about the dinosaur case to answer the question.