Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T19:47:33.404Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Philosophy of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions: Remarks on the VPI Program for Testing Philosophies of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Alan W. Richardson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For a number of years now, we, as philosophers of science, have been enjoined by more and more of our colleagues to understand the task of developing a philosophy of science to be itself a scientific task. We are told that if we want to understand science we have no better (and perhaps indeed no other) path to such an understanding than the path of science itself. We should view ourselves as ultimately attempting to arrive at a relatively complete theoretical understanding of how science proceeds. This is a call to naturalize philosophy of science.

Somewhat more recently some philosophers of science have become impatient even with those who have taken up the naturalist banner. It isn’t enough, they tell us, to arrive at an understanding of the nature of philosophy of science that proclaims it to be one science among many.

Type
Part I. Methodology and Explanation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 36 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

A prior version of this paper was read at the 1990 Minnesota Philosophical Association Meetings. I would like to thank my audience there and especially my commentator, James D. Fetzer, for helpful comments. I would like to thank also the University of Minnesota Naturalized Philosophers of Science: Ron Giere, Charles Wallis, Geoffrey Gorham, and Jerry Smerchansky, for inspiration, criticism, comments, and research materials. None of these philosophers should be held responsible for my errors in this paper.

References

Carnap, R. (1932), “Über Protokolsätze”, Erkenntnis 3:215-228. (Translated as Carnap 1987.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnap, R.. (1987), “On Protocol Sentences”, Nous 21: 457-470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, M. (1981), “Theoretical Explanation”, in Reduction, Time, and Reality, Healey, R. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-16.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. (1991), “The Re-evaluation of Logical Positivism”, Journal of Philosophy 88:505-519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. (1985), “Philosophy of Science Naturalized”, Philosophy of Science 52: 331-356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. (1988), Explaining Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, C. (1980), Theory and Evidence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1989), Science as Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. (1991), “The Road Since Structure”, in PSA 1990, volume 2, Fine, A., Forbes, M. , and Wessels, L. (eds.). East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 3-13.Google Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1978a), “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”, in his Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 8-101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1978b), “History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions”, in his Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 102-138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1987) , “Progress or Rationality? The Prospects for Normative Naturalism”, American Philosophical Quarterly 24: 19-31.Google Scholar
Laudan, L. (1990), “Normative Naturalism”, Philosophy of Science 57:44-59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. Donovan, A., Laudan, R., Barker, P., Brown, H., Leplin, J., Thagard, P., and Wykstra, S. (1986), “Scientific Change: Philosophical Models and Historical Research”, Synthese 69:141-223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, R.L. and Donovan, A. (1988), “Testing Theories of Scientific Change”, in Scrutinizing Science, Donovan, A., Laudan, L. and Laudan, R. (eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 3-44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickles, T. (1986), “Remarks on the Use of History as Evidence”, Synthese 69:253-266.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. (1920), Relativitatstheorie und Erkenntnis A Priori. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reisch, G. (1991), “Did Kuhn Kill Logical Empiricism?”, Philosophy of Science 58: 264-277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Fraassen, B., (1981), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar