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History and the Norms of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

James Robert Brown
James Robert Brown*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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Extract

Most philosophers have a schizophrenic attitude toward the history of science. On the one hand, they want their philosophical accounts of how science ought to be done to do justice to typical scientific practice; but on the other hand, they want to avoid any confusion of historical facts with philosophical norms. A fine example of such a schizophrenic attitude is the one expressed by Wesley Salmon who says: “If a philosopher expounds a theory of the logical structure of science according to which almost all of modern physical science is methologically unsound, it would be far more reasonable to conclude that the philosophical reasoning had gone astray than to suppose that modern science is logically misconceived.” (Salmon 1970, p. 73).

But after conceding so much, he takes it all back when he adds: “In spite of this the philosopher of science is properly concerned with issues of logical correctness which cannot finally be answered by appeal to the history of science….

Type
Part VIII. History and the Metaphilosophy of Science
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 236 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

For helpful discussions on related matters I thank R. Butts and K. Okruhlik of the University of Western Ontario. Of course I alone am responsible for blunders.

References

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