These provocative essays by leading philosophers of science exemplify and illuminate the contemporary uncertainty and excitement in the field. The papers are rich in new perspectives, and their far-reaching criticisms challenge arguments long prevalent in classic philosophical problems of induction, empiricism, and realism. By turns empirical or analytic, historical or programmatic, confessional or argumentative, the authors’ arguments both describe and demonstrate the fact that philosophy of science is in a ferment more intense than at any time since the heyday of logical positivism early in the twentieth century.
Contents:
Thoroughly Modern Meno, Clark Glymour and Kevin Kelly
The Concept of Induction in the Light of the Interrogative Approach to Inquiry, Jaakko Hintikka
Aristotelian Natures and Modern Experimental Method, Nancy Cartwright
Genetic Inference: A Reconsideration of David Hume’s Empiricism, Barbara D. Massey and Gerald J. Massey
Philosophy and the Exact Sciences: Logical Positivism as a Case Study, Michael Friedman
Language and Interpretation: Philosophical Reflections and Empirical Inquiry, Noam Chomsky
Constructivism, Realism, and Philosophical Method, Richard Boyd
Do We Need a Hierarchical Model of Science? Diderik Batens
Theories of Theories: A View from Cognitive Science, Richard E. Grandy
Procedural Syntax for Theory Elements, Joseph D. Sneed
Why Functionalism Didn’t Work, Hilary Putnam
Physicalism, Hartry Field
This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.
