Science, Understanding, and Justice: The Philosophical Essays of Martin Eger

Martin Eger’s work is the most insightful exploration of the social context of the natural sciences since C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, and a vital contribution to contemporary debates over scientific literacy. This collection of essays deals with controversial and topical issues in philosophy of science, education, and morality. Also included are exchanges between Eger and leading philosophers, including a dialogue with Abner Shimony, who edits this volume and contributes an account of Eger’s life, work, and importance. A professional physicist, Eger found that hermeneutic philosophy, associated with Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas, had developed techniques for unpacking meanings and for analyzing human claims to knowledge that strikingly parallels the theses of post-empiricist philosophers of physics such as Thomas Kuhn. Eger’s application of hermeneutic methods enabled hermeneutics to be extended from social investigations to investigations of nature, and softened the attack of post-empiricist philosophers on the ideal of objective truth.