Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T05:30:29.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discussion: The Structure of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Adolf Grünbaum
Adolf Grünbaum*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 1962 , pp. 294 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

∗∗

The Structure of Science by E. Nagel; 618 pages; $7.50; Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1961.

References

1 Cf. H. Reichenbach, The Philosophy of Space and Time, Dover Publications, New York, 1958, §§6 and 8; hereafter, this work will be cited as “PST.”

2 Cf. H. Poincaré, The Foundations of Science, The Science Press, Lancaster, 1946, pp. 75–77.

3 H. Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, The University of California Press, Berkeley, 1951, p. 133.

4 H. Poincaré, The Foundations of Science, The Science Press, Lancaster, 1946, p. 81.

5 Ibid., p. 235.

6 For a discussion of the important logical differences between the linguistic interdependence between geometry and optics espoused by Poincaré and their epistemological (inductive) interdependence as championed by P. Duhem and Einstein, cf. A. Grünbaum, “Geometry, Chronometry and Empiricism,” Section 6, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. III, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962.

7 Under the assumed conditions as to the parallactic findings, the optical paths might still be interpretable as Euclideanly-related geodesics on a new metricization, but only if the customary angle congruences were abandoned and changed suitably as part of the remetricization. In that case, the paths of light rays would be straight lines even in the Euclidean description obtained by the new metricization, but the optical laws involving angles would have to be suitably restated.