"La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche", dopo più di mezzo secolo dalla sua pubblicazione, è ancora in grado di offrire un contributo alla pratica filosofica? In questo articolo, attraverso i concetti peirceani di Abito, Abduzione e Verità, si propone una lettura pragmaticista del testo di Kuhn che intende rilanciare un fecondo confronto, ancora poco considerato, tra i due filosofi.

_Abstract_: Fueled by the rapid development of neuroscientific tools and techniques, some scholars consider the shift from traditional cognitive psychology toward cognitive neuroscience to be a _revolution_ (most notably Boone and Piccinini). However, the term “revolution” in philosophy of science can easily be construed as involving a paradigm shift in the sense of Kuhn’s _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_. Is a Kuhnian account sound in the case at hand? To answer this question, we consider heuristic indicators of two features of (...) paradigm shifts: the incommensurability of ontologies; and a gap between scientific communities. Based on our evidence, we argue that no revolution has occurred (at least, not yet). _Keywords_: Cognitive Neuroscience; Cognitive Psychology; Philosophy of Science; Thomas Kuhn; Scientometrics _La “rivoluzione delle neuroscienze cognitive” non è una rivoluzione (in senso kuhniano). Evidenze scientometriche _ _Riassunto_:_ _Complice il rapido sviluppo di strumenti e tecniche in neuroscienze, alcuni studiosi (in particolare Boone e Piccinini) intendono il passaggio dalla psicologia cognitiva classica alla neuroscienza cognitiva nei termini di una _rivoluzione_. Tuttavia, il termine ‘rivoluzione’ in filosofia della scienza è strettamente associato alla nozione di successione di paradigmi esposta da Kuhn ne _La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche_. Obiettivo di questo lavoro è capire se effettivamente la concezione kuhniana offra una corretta descrizione di questa dinamica storica. In particolare, prenderemo in esame due indicatori euristici delle rivoluzioni kuhniane: l’incommensurabilità ontologica trai due paradigmi e la diversa composizione demografica delle comunità scientifiche. Sulla base delle evidenze scientometriche che prenderemo in esame, affermeremo che non è avvenuta nessuna rivoluzione (almeno per ora). _Parole chiave_: Neuroscienze cognitive; Psicologia cognitiva; Filosofia della scienza; Thomas Kuhn; Scientometria. (shrink)

Partendo da un corso sul cambiamento politico tenuto da Norberto Bobbio nel 1979 e ora trasformato in un libro postumo grazie ad alcuni studenti di allora, Vitale mette in luce quattro questioni su rivoluzione, riforma e altre forme di cambiamento nell’età moderna e contemporanea. In primo luogo, qual è oggi, nelle nostre società capitalistiche alle prese con i cambiamenti climatici e altri disastri ecologici, il rapporto tra rivoluzioni scientifiche e politiche? In secondo luogo, alla fine del secolo scorso (...) la prospettiva rivoluzionaria è stata abbandonata a favore di un più realistico riformismo, ma possiamo chiederci se questa scelta non abbia portato a un grande inganno, perché il riformismo era in effetti una forma di “dolce” resa alla società di mercato e ai suoi valori. In terzo luogo, ci sono nel nostro tempo gli ingredienti (principalmente, soggetto politico, leadership e un’ideologia ben strutturata) per trasformare la rabbia per l’ingiustizia e la disuguaglianza in un progetto rivoluzionario e non solo in sporadiche rivolte? In quarto luogo, quale ruolo gioca la guerra a livello del cambiamento geopolitico, con particolare riferimento all’attuale guerra in Ucraina che sembra prospettare una nuova situazione di “scontro di civiltà” tra Weltanschauung occidentale e orientale? (shrink)

Quali opzioni filosofiche contrassegnano il realismo? La questione della conoscenza del reale appartiene al pensiero filosofico di ogni tempo: nei dibattiti filosofici contemporanei essa si accende di varie tonalità, per il moltiplicarsi di forme di realismo e antirealismo. Il problema di fondo è se, conoscendo il reale, siamo consapevoli di ciò che comporti affermarsi conoscenti in termini personali e culturali. Quali concezioni della cultura possono accompagnare il sapere? Come affrontare i problemi attinenti al dialogo tra discipline? Il sapere, contrassegnato da (...) rivoluzioni scientifiche e da trasformazioni storico-culturali, può ancora ricomporsi attorno a un metodo? Quali attenzioni richiede il pluralismo delle culture? Domande e risposte di carattere epistemologico e metodologico s’intrecciano nel presente volume: esse sono state elaborate scavando soprattutto in alcuni contesti culturali contemporanei e attingendo alle proposte provenienti dal pensiero di B. Lonergan. Le esplorazioni presenti in ciascun capitolo appartengono a una ricerca interdisciplinare, criticamente affrontata da docenti universitari che hanno selezionato peculiari nuclei problematici, rappresentativi di alcune sfide attuali sui versanti del sapere. Contributi di: Carlo Cirotto, Valter Danna, Rosanna Finamore, Pasquale Giustiniani, Paolo Gherri, Giuseppe Guglielmi, Pierpaolo Triani. (shrink)

My paper moves from Kant's taxonomy for the arguments for the existence of God. After providing a brief survey of Kant's account, I claim that contemporary arguments from design fit Kant's characterization of the physico-theological argument. Then, in the second section, I deal with the logical frame of the argument from design. In the third section I introduce Berkeley's divine language argument (DLA), in order to demonstrate that DLA is an argument from design. Consequently, in the fourth section, I give (...) a refutation of Hooker's and Kline's reading of DLA. Finally, in the last section, I take Berkeley's DLA as a paradigmatic case of the argument from design, showing a fundamental difficulty the argument endorses. (shrink)

Having a conclusion in mind and then proceeding to bend the facts to support this conclusion is surely a fallacious procedure, but history of science exhibits many cases of such lucky fallacies and of hazardous forms of reasoning, where invention, cues, presuppositions and persuasion were determinant. But does this mean that Copernicus, Galileo, Harvey, Darwin are rhetoricians? The answer is: No. What the article tries to show is simply that science is not always based on an impressive array of facts (...) and that in turn scientific facts are not simply observed and measured. Demonstration exhibits a rhetorical foundation. Science should normatively be a search for a true proved knowledge, but actually it is a search for a consensual argumented knowledge. Accordingly, the article suggests the need for a rethinking of the relationship between the argumentative instrument of rhetoric and the demonstrative instrument of science. It also calls for a more logical foundation for argumentative theory and practice. /// Partir de uma conclusão e depois tentar adaptar os factos de modo a suportar essa conclusão é certamente um procedimento falaz, muito embora a História da Ciência nos ofereça numerosos exemplos tanto de falácias felizes como de perigosas formas de raciocinar, formas essas em que a invenção, a inspiração, os pressupostos e a persuasão se revelaram factores decisivos. Isso, porém, de forma alguma significa que Copérnico, Galileu, Harvey ou Darwin devam ser diminuídos na sua qualidade de cientistas e considerados como meros retóricos. Não, o que neste artigo se pretende demonstrar é que a ciência nem sempre se baseia numa série imponente de factos e que, por sua vez, os factos nem sempre são observáveis e mensuráveis. Na verdade, a intenção do autor do artigo é mostrar de que modo a demonstração em ciência está sempre marcada por um fundo retórico. Do ponto de vista normativo, a ciência deveria ser a procura de um saber verdadeiramente comprovado, ao passo que do ponto de vista factual, muitas vezes, ela é sobretudo um conhecimento baseado numa argumentação consensual. Ora, sendo este um dado histórico, o que se pretende com este artigo é propor a necessidade de se repensar a relação entre retórica e ciência, entre instrumentos argumentativos e instrumentos demonstrativos. Dessa forma se chegará a um fundamento mais lógico tanto para a teoria como para a prática da argumentação. (shrink)

The second half of the nineteenth century in Italy bore witness to a number of scientific projects of great cultural importance that were unique on the European landscape. The correspondence between Govi and Boncompagni testifies to a scientific partnership throughout the twenty years’ life of the «Bullettino di Bibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche». Both these scientists, as scholars of historical studies, bibliophiles and collectors, contributed to the spread of scientific literature and history. Nevertheless they did not (...) agree about the editorial style of the scientific works. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn was not only the greatest historian of science but also one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Faced with such a significant character, Giuseppe Giordano has decided to focus on Kuhn “the philosopher,” touching on the historian only indirectly. The book is roughly divided into two parts. The first one is devoted to a reconstruction of the genesis of Kuhn's most important ideas, focusing in particular on the essay “The Essential Tension” and on The Structure (...) of Scientific Revolutions. In the second part Giordano considers the reception of Kuhn's work within the philosophy of science community. Since the philosophical debate is almost entirely a post‐Structure phenomenon, the narrative proceeds more or less in chronological order, covering Kuhn's career from the beginning to the end. The story unfolds almost entirely in the realm of ideas, ignoring institutional matters such as Kuhn's role in the creation of a community of professional historians of science or his time as president of the Philosophy of Science Association.The better part of the book is the first. Here Giordano tells us how Kuhn turned from physics to the history of science and, most important, how the concept of “paradigm” evolved from a pedagogic device to a pathbreaking philosophical idea. He also sketches the intellectual background to Kuhn's work, especially the received views on science and on the role of history embodied in the logical positivism of the 1950s. Unfortunately, the author does not make use of recent work on Kuhn, Carnap, and the neopositivists by Peter Galison, Michael Friedman, and others. As a result, the contraposition between the “old” and the “new” philosophy of science is a fairly conventional and dated one. Developments in the historiography of science in the last two decades are also ignored: one would have liked to read something on Kuhn's influence on the new sociology of science, the birth of the micro history of science as a reaction to Kuhn's macro approach, and so forth.But of course no author can discuss everything, and Giordano has explicitly decided to focus on the relationship between Kuhn and the philosophers of his time. Chapter 3 deals with the controversy between Kuhn and Karl Popper. Giordano argues that whereas Popper never really questioned his own theses, Kuhn benefited from the debate, which prompted some significant changes in his position. In this chapter and the following one , Kuhn's thought is presented in its dynamic evolution, as he adjusted and reacted to criticism. In both chapters Kuhn is set at center stage, with the other characters playing supporting roles.The last chapter discusses Kuhn's “mature” views on theory change and scientific progress. It is a pity that nowhere in the book are we provided with a rigorous formulation of crucial concepts such as “progress” and “scientific rationality.” This is the main defect of the book, the philosophical depth and rigor of which is sometimes less than satisfactory. Other examples are a confusion between scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth , a sloppy formulation of the problem of induction , and the lack of a serious discussion of the Duhem‐Quine problem . Because of these problems, Giordano's book is valuable chiefly as a concise summary and discussion of the overall significance of Kuhn's philosophical work. The commentary is frequently interrupted by long quotations from Kuhn's texts, and the footnotes also quote widely from the secondary literature . This makes Giordano's book a peculiar piece of work, rather like a conflation of a textbook and a Kuhnian anthology.It must be recognized that to write yet another book on Kuhn is a challenging task. Kuhn's work has been dissected, criticized, and interpreted a number of times, and a truly novel analysis would require a truly novel approach. Other scholars have stretched the interpretation of known texts and facts until they have become “new” texts and facts. Giordano does not aim to be controversial and admirably abstains from such flamboyant exercises. However, he does not pursue the other route either: that of digging deeper into the past in order to discover something genuinely novel. A new book on Kuhn should be based, at the very least, on serious archival research in Kuhn's papers at MIT, and Giordano has not done that. Furthermore, he relies on a relatively small fraction of Kuhn's published writings, invariably the most widely known and celebrated ones. It is not surprising, then, that he ends up with a very familiar picture of Thomas Kuhn and his place in twentieth‐century philosophy of science. (shrink)

This is an Italian translation of a lecture on incommensurability given at the University of Genoa.