Abstract

Meyerson is known as a philosopher who displayed an impressive erudition both in history of science and philosophy, some one who spent his lifetime in reading and writing. His readers can testify (and sometimes complain) that his philosophical claims were based on and tested against a wide range of historical episodes taken from a variety of sciences. Moreover it is clear that he had an intellectualist approach to science, as he was more concerned with theories than with scientific practices. Therefore it does not really matter that he was trained as a laboratory chemist and that he had practised industrial chemistry in his early career. These aspects are biographical details hardly mentioned as mere anecdotes. I would like to question the standard view that chemistry did not really matter or did act as an anti-model in Meyerson‘s philosophy. I will argue that not only chemistry provided a kind of entrance hall in the history and philosophy of science, as Meyerson himself often acknowledged, but it also shaped his philosophy.