Abstract

French scientist Henri Poincaré is one of the leading thinkers in the field of philosophy of science with his determinations on science and scientific activity. Poincare's understanding of science is expressed as conventionalist because he asserts that all sciences, including mathematics, consist of conventions and definitions. In this article, Poincare's views on how scientists should evaluate the data obtained from observation and experiment in their studies and the hypotheses that describe the relationships between these data are discussed. In the article, it is also thought that especially Poincare's claims about the structure of science and the nature of scientific activity are important in terms of understanding some scientific views that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century.