Philosophy of science, 1950–2000

the parting of the ways

pp. 641-663

in: Peter Grdenfors, Peter Gärdenfors, Jan Woleński, Katarzyna Kijania-Placek (eds), In the scope of logic, methodology and philosophy of science II, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

The past century has assuredly been a turbulent time in the philosophy of science. The discipline itself has, of course, an ancient history, stretching back to Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. But as the sciences themselves have grown so rapidly in power and complexity over the last century, so has second-order reflection on these sciences, what we call philosophy of science, itself become a great deal more luxuriant — as well as more disputatious! The history of the philosophy of science has, in fact, emerged as a third-order discipline in its own right.¹ The task of our symposium is primarily a historical one; we are asked to look at developments in the philosophy of science in the century just past and identify some of the milestones. Obviously, we have to be very selective.

Cited authors

Aristoteles

Plato