Contemporary Philosophy of Science in Italy: An Overview

The paper analyses the development of some themes in the contemporary philosophy of science in Italy. Section 1 reviews the dabate on the legacy of neopositivism. The spread of the philosophy of Popper is outlined in Section 2, with particular regard to the problem of the vindication of induction. Section 3 deals with the debate on the incommensurability thesis, while Section 4 examines its consequences on the possible relationships between historical and epistemological studies of science. The last section is devoted to one of the most recent trends in the Italian philosophy of science: the resumption of Aristotelian dialectics. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science

Two philosophical traditions with much in common, (classical) pragmatism and (Heidegger's) hermeneutic philosophy, are here compared with respect to their approach to the philosophy of science. Both emphasize action as a mode of interpreting experience. Both have developed important categories – inquiry, meaning, theory, praxis, coping, historicity, life-world – and each has offered an alternative to the more traditional philosophies of science stemming from Descartes, Hume, and Comte. Pragmatism's abduction works with the dual perspectives of theory (as explanation) and praxis (as culture). The hermeneutical circle depends in addition on the lifeworld as background source of ontological meaning and resource for strategies of inquiry. Thus a hermeneutical philosophy of research involves three components: lifeworld (as ontological and strategic), theory (as explanatory), and praxis (as constitutive of culture). This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

International Union of History and Philosophy of Science Division of Logic,Methodology and Philosophy of Science Bulletin no. 15

International Union of History and Philosophy of Science Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science Bulletin no. 15     

Pragmatism and Philosophy of Science: A Critical Survey

After delineating the distinguishing features of pragmatism, and noting the resources that pragmatists have available to respond effectively as pragmatists to the two major objections to pragmatism, I examine and critically evaluate the various proposals that pragmatists have offered as a solution to the problem of induction, followed by a discussion of the pragmatic positions on the status of theoretical entities. Thereafter I discuss the pragmatic posture toward the nature of explanation in science. I conclude that pragmatism has (a) a generally compelling solution to Hume’s problem of induction; (b) no specific position on the status of theoretical entities, although something like the non‐realism of the sort developed by van Fraassen seems a defensible candidate for most pragmatists in general, even though there are non‐trivial objections to van Fraassen’s position; and (c) central to the pragmatic conception of scientific explanation is the abandonment of our common conception of truth as a necessary condition for sentences to provide adequate explanations, and a drift in the direction of a contextualist account of explanation.     

Scheffler Revisited on the Role of History and Philosophy of Science in Science Teacher Education

Twenty-five years ago Israel Scheffler argued for the inclusion of philosophy of science in the preparation of science teachers. It was part of his wider argument for the inclusion of courses in the philosophy of the discipline in programmes that are preparing people to teach that discipline. For the most part Scheffler's suggestion, at least as far as science education is concerned, went unheeded. Pleasingly, in recent times there has been some rapprochement between these fields. This paper will restate parts of Scheffler's argument, it will develop some additional considerations pertaining to it, and it will set the discussion in the context of contemporary debate about science, science education and teacher training. With changed time and circumstances, Scheffler' arguments might find more adherents than when they were initially proposed. My revision of Scheffler's argument has two planks: first pedagogical, second professional.     

人类学:科学与哲学

设定人类学是一门科学根据哈里斯所说 ,博厄斯 以很简明的方式表述这个论题 :“人类学是一门科学 ,而科学是历史”。[1] 马林诺夫斯基 则寻求一种关于文化的科学的定义。在他死后发表的一部题为《科学的文化理论》的文本中 ,[2 ] 他为人文学者提供了一种关于“科学”的最低限度的定义 ,从而使科学得以有别于抽象思想和常识。“科学的论述不同于常识的表述 ,首先 ,在于一位某门科学的学者会以一种学术上合规则、有条理的方式 ,很为深入地扩展考察的完整性与精密性 ;其次 ,在于经过科学训练的心智 ,会将问题的探究循着和问题相关的思路推进 ,…     

International Union of History and Philosophy of Science Division of Logic,Methodology and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS/DLMPS)

International Union of History and Philosophy of Science Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS/DLMPS)Bulletin no. 16     

Formal Methods in the Philosophy of Science

In this article, we reflect on the use of formal methods in the philosophy of science. These are taken to comprise not just methods from logic broadly conceived, but also from other formal disciplines such as probability theory, game theory, and graph theory. We explain how formal modelling in the philosophy of science can shed light on difficult problems in this domain.     

A Draft for Unifying Controversies in Philosophy of Science

The basic (negative and positive) methodological maxims of three currents of philosophy of science (logical empiricism, falsificationism, and postpositivism) are formulated. Many of these maxims (stratagems) are controversial, e.g., the stance about the nonsense of metaphysics, and that of its indispensability. The restricted validity of these maxims allows for their unification. Within the framework of most of them there may be a relationship of (synchronic, or diachronic) subordination of the contradicting desiderata. In this vein ten stratagems are formulated. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia

Book Information Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia. Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia James Franklin, (Sydney : Macleay Press, 2003), 465, AU$59.95 By James Franklin. Macleay Press. Sydney. Pp. 465. AU$59.95,