Between Experience and Metaphysics: Philosophical Problems of the Evolution of Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science Book 35)

## EDITORIAL PREF ACE and role of rationality undergo change as much as the tools, instruments, and purposes of the sciences. Stefan Amsterdamski has responded to these themes of historical and epistemological inquiry in a series of books and papers over many years. Along with so many others in the East European countries, he has been stimulated by the 'new' historical philosophers of science, by Feyerabend, Toulmin, Lakatos, and above all by Kuhn, and also by the critics of classical logical empiricism, and especially by Popper. His work also reflects that of his own colleagues, among them Eilstein, Pomian, Suszko and Mejbaum. We had his helpful participation in our Boston Colloquia during a long and pleasant part of his Research Fellowship in the United States during 1973-74, and it is our wish to bring Professor Amsterdamski's sober and reflective discussions of recent developments in the philosophy of science to a wider audience through this book. Professor Stefan Amsterdamski was born in 1929, and completed his higher education at the chemical faculty of the Poly technical Institute in Lodz and then, for doctoral studies in philosophy, at the University of Warsaw. His dissertation dealt with epistemological problems of the evolution of the notion of chemical element. His habilitation thesis dealt with the objective interpretation of the notion of probability. From 1954 to 1968, Amsterdamski was a member of the faculty of the University of Lodz, for the last four of those years as Chairman. Since 1970, he has been a member of the Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Science, at Warsaw. We append a selected list of Amsterdamski's published writings. Front Matter....Pages I-XVIII Radical Empiricism and the Anomalies in the Knowledge of Science....Pages 1-23 Troubles with the Problem of Demarcation....Pages 24-46 The Context of Discovery and the Context of Justification....Pages 47-68 Facts and Theories: Radical Empiricism....Pages 69-87 Facts and Theories: Conventionalism....Pages 88-114 Reformation and Counter-Reformation: Paradigms and Research Programs....Pages 115-143 Revolutions in Science: The Accumulation of Knowledge and the Correspondence of Theories....Pages 144-159 Revolutions in Science: Science and Philosophy....Pages 160-176 Back Matter....Pages 177-198