Methodology, Metaphysics and the History of Science: In Memory of Benjamin Nelson (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 84)

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so!) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re­ presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin­ guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion. Front Matter....Pages i-x Scientific Realism and Incommensurability: Some Criticisms of Kuhn and Feyerabend....Pages 1-31 How To Be A Good Philosopher Of Science: A Plea For Empiricism In Matters Methodological....Pages 33-42 Feedback, Selection, and Function: A Reductionistic Account of Goal-Orientation....Pages 43-135 Philosophy of Science 2001....Pages 137-147 The Dethroning of the Philosophy of Science: Ideological and Technical Functions of the Metasciences....Pages 149-171 Comments on Jost Halfmann’s ‘Dethroning the Philosophy of Science: Ideological and Technical Functions of the Metasciences’....Pages 173-181 Philosophy of Science and the Origin of Life....Pages 183-213 Sociobiology, Anti-Sociobiology, Epistemology, and Human Nature....Pages 215-234 Substance and Its Logical Significance....Pages 235-245 Tracking Down the Misplaced Concreton in the Neurosciences....Pages 247-262 Does Popper’s Conventionalism Contradict His Critical Rationalism? Objections Against Popper in German Philosophy and Some Metacritical Remarks....Pages 263-282 How to Explore the History of Ancient Mathematics?....Pages 283-294 Nature on Trial: The Case of the Rooster that Laid an Egg....Pages 295-321 Reflections on ‘Nature on Trial’....Pages 323-330 Toward the Vindication of Friedrich Engels....Pages 331-358 Back Matter....Pages 359-373