Science and objectivity

Mary Hesse

pp. 98-115

in: John B. Thompson, David Held (eds), Habermas, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1982

Abstract

Habermas has not yet explicitly addressed himself to the detailed problems of philosophy of science as these are currently being discussed in the analytic tradition. That is to say, he has not participated directly in the post-Kuhn and post-Feyerabend debates on truth and meaning, instrumentalism, realism and relativism, that are primarily associated with Davidson, Kripke, Putnam and others who more or less indirectly owe their problem-situation to the work of Quine. On the other hand, in Habermas's writings since Knowledge and Human Interests there is to be found a sufficiently systematic discussion of natural science to enable us to derive an account of his distinctive approach to these problems. My aim in this essay is to give a critical account of this approach.

Cited authors

Habermas Jürgen

Quine Willard Van Orman