Both Collingwood and Wittgenstein link philosophy with poetry. Collinwood thought that “good philosophy and good poetry are not two different kinds of writing, but one,” while Wittgenstein wrote that “philosophy ought to be written only as a poetic composition.” In this chapter, I present what these two philosophers say about the relation between philosophy and poetry and argue that, their differences notwithstanding, both want philosophers to express their times, just like poets, and lead their audience to the future in a process of self-knowledge and reform. Finally, I comment on Richard Rorty’s remarks on the relation between philosophy and poetry. I argue that, unlike Collingwood and Wittgenstein, Rorty wants poetry to replace, and perhaps even eliminate, philosophy, but agrees with them and Nietzsche that poets ought to act as prophets, not in the sense of foretellers, but in the sense of inspiring leaders and groundbreakers.

This chapter first discusses the use of history in Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, arguing that he does not offer a grand historical narrative, does not practice integrated history and philosophy of science, and does not use historical examples as evidence for his philosophical model. The chapter then sketches an alternative account that draws on Wittgenstein’s concept of object of comparison, that is, a yardstick that is laid against reality to illuminate certain of its features. It then compares Kuhn’s model of science to Wittgenstein’s language games and claims that both, as objects of comparison, undermine an essentialist understanding of science and language, respectively. The chapter concludes by presenting the various ways Kuhn’s work has impacted the historiography of science.

Kuhn used the duck–rabbit figure as a metaphor for revolutionary change in science. The two aspects of the drawing stand for two ways of perceiving the world, before and after a revolution, while the drawing itself represents the world that, paradoxically, both changes and remains the same. I argue that Kuhn, aiming to bring about a revolution in philosophy of science, did not want to eliminate the paradox, but rather to exploit and underscore it to challenge what he saw as the dominant epistemological paradigm. I also argue that Kuhn rejected the two-tiered view of perception, first observing and then interpreting raw data, in favour of the theory-ladenness of observation that echoed Wittgenstein’s account of ‘seeing’ rather than Hanson’s assimilation of scientific observation to ‘seeing as’. According to Wittgenstein, ‘seeing as’ is parasitic upon regular seeing and, in that sense, cannot illuminate the general case of perception in science. Finally, I show that the analogy between the dawning of an aspect and novelty in science, informed Kuhn’s views on creativity. In his view, advances in science emerge when a system of beliefs is transformed by new patterns of organization.