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From Methodology to Dialectics: A post-Cartesian Approach to Scientific Rationality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Marcello Pera*
Affiliation:
University of Pisa

Extract

The problem of scientific rationality is one of the most controversial in the contemporary philosophy of science. If I am so foolhardy as to raise it again, it is because I do not feel comfortable with most present-day solutions and because I hope I may suggest a more promising, although still tentative, line of research.

In order to illustrate the particular angle from which I intend to deal with this problem, I shall make use of the words of a great cosmologist, Fred Hoyle, and I shall also refer to the current debate in cosmology. What I have to say, however, is intended to apply to science in general and not only to a single discipline or to a specific episode.

Type
Part X. Methodology
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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