Abstract
These are indeed exciting times for the philosophy of science. With the decline of logical empiricism practitioners have spread themselves over a wide range of alternatives, resuscitating, in the process, philosophies that the positivists had condemned to the netherworld of obscurantism and irrationality. Hence the objection that the new look is merely a facelift or, more seriously, the charge that rationality has been abandoned for pre-rational, a-rational or irrational modes of thought. But while it may be true that philosophy of science can no longer be described and justified as a body of established knowledge, the death-knell of positivism need not toll for rationality as such. Where one brand of rationality failed, another may thrive.
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Notes
Max Born. The Restless Universe. Translated by W. M. Deans. New York: Dover, 1951,p. 73.
Karl R. Popper. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchison, 1959, p. 111.
“For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemo-logica! footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits”. Willard Van Orman Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1961, p. 44.
Galileo Galilei. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems — Ptolemaic and Copernican. Translated by Stillman Drake. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962, p. 328 (in the national edition of Galileo’s Opere, edited by A. Favaro, Florence: G. Barbèra, 1899–1909, Vol. VIII, p. 355.
Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 9 (9 May, 1851), pp. 139–147. Reprinted in Robert E. Butts (ed.) William Whewell’s Theory of Scientific Method. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968, pp. 251–262, from which I quote.
Ibid., p. 251
René Descartes. Principia Philosophiae, Part III, art. 52–147. In C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds.) Oeuvres de Descartes, 12 vols and index, 1897-1913. Reprint, Paris: Vrin, 1956-1973, vol. VIII-1, pp. 105-202.
Ibid., Part IV, art. 24–27, pp. 214—216. An excellent account of the vortex controversy is to be found in E. J. Aiton. The Vortex Theory of Planetary Motions. London: Macdonald, 1972.
René Huygens. Oeuvres Complètes, 22 vols. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1888-1980, vol. XXI, p. 79. See Aiton, op. cit., pp. 75–78.
Whewell, art. cit., p. 254.
Huygens, op. cit., vol. XXI, pp. 472–473.
Joseph Saurin. “Démonstration d’une proposition avancée dans un des mémoires de 1709 ...”. Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences. Paris, 1718, pp. 191–199. See Aiton, op. cit., pp. 172—176.
The original memoir of 1669 is printed in the Oeuvres, vol. XIX, pp. 631–640. It achieved notoriety, however, in 1690 when it was included, with additions, as a supplement to the Traité de la Lumière, Oeuvres, vol. XXI, pp. 451–488.
Johann Bernoulli. “Nouvelles pensées sur le système de M. Descartes”. In Opera Omnia, Geneva, 1742, reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968, vol. Ill, pp. 132–173.
J. P. de Molières. “Loix générales du mouvement dans le tourbillon sphérique”. Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences. Paris, 1728, p. 265. See Aiton, op. cit., pp. 209–214.
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J. P. de Molières. “Les loix astronomiques des vitessess des planètes dans leurs Orbes, expliquées méchaniquement dans le Système du Plein”, Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences. Paris, 1733, pp. 301–312.
Whewell, art. cit., p. 348.
Johann Bernoulli. “Essai d’une nouvelle physique céleste”. In Opera Omnia, vol. Ill, pp. 261–364.
Whewell, art. cit., p. 258.
Daniel Bernoulli. “Recherches physiques et astronomiques”. Recueil des pièces qui ont emporté le prix de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, Paris, 1752, vol. III, pp. 93– 122. See Aiton, op. cit., pp. 235–239.
Daniel Bernoulli. “Traité sur le flux et reflux de la mer”. Ibid., vol. IV, pp. 56–57.
E. J. Aiton, op. cit., p. 247.
Antoine Cavalieri. “Dissertation sur la cause physique du flux et du reflux de la mer”. Recueil des pièces qui ont emporté le prix de l’Académie Royale des Sciences. Paris, 1752, vol. IV, pp. 21–28.
J. L. Heilbron. Elements of Early Physics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, p. 23, n. 4.
Recueil des pièces qui ont emporté le prix de l’Academi Royale des Sciences. Paris, 1752, vol. V. pp. 1—144. The three essays are separately paginated at the end of the volume.
Pierre Bouguer. “Entretiens sur la cause de l’inclinaison des orbites”. Recueil des pièces qui ont emporté le prix de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, Paris, 1752, vol. I, p. 48.
Leonhard Euler. Opera Omnia. Series tertia, volume I, Leipzig and Berlin, 1926, p. 10.
E. J. Aiton, op.cit., p. 262.
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Shea, W.R. (1987). The Quest for Scientific Rationality: Some Historical Considerations. In: Pitt, J.C., Pera, M. (eds) Rational Changes in Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 98. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3779-6_7
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