Research Catalog

Title

The rationality of science / W.H. Newton-Smith.

Author

Newton-Smith, W.

Publication

Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 294 pages : illustrations; 22 cm.

Summary

Traditional philosophical accounts of the scientific enterprise represent it as a paradigm of institutionalized rationality. The scientist is held to possess a special method which he disinterestedly applied, generating an accumulation of scientific knowledge about the world, and the evolution of science is seen as being determined by the rational deliberations of scientists and not by psychological or sociological factors. More recently, various philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have held that this rational model is no longer tenable. Some have claimed that there is no such thing as a scientific method or scientific progress, and that theories are incommensurable and so there is no possibility of choice between alternative theories. The more extreme non-rationalists seek to explain scientific change exclusively in terms of psychological and sociological factors. In this book, the author explores the controversy between the two approaches and presents a strongly critical and independent view of both rationalists like Popper and Lakatos and non-rationalists such as Kuhn and Feyerabend. He goes on to develop his own account of the scientific enterprise--temperate rationalism, a vindication of the rationalist approach to science and of a realist construal of theories.--

Series Statement

International library of philosophy

Uniform Title

International library of philosophy

Subjects

• Philosophie des sciences
• Science > Philosophy
• Rationalism
• Methodology
• Rationaliteit
• Wetenschappelijke technieken
• Filosofie
• Natuurwetenschappen
• Wissenschaftstheorie
• Rationalismus
• Wissenschaftsphilosophie
• methodology
• rationalism (philosophy)
• Methods

Note

• Includes index.

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 282-287.

Contents

1. The rational image -- 2. Observation, theory and truth -- 3. Popper: the irrational rationalist -- 4. In search of the methodologist's stone -- 5. T.S. Kuhn: from revolutionary to social democrat -- 6. Feyerabend, the passionate liberal -- 7. Theories are incommensurable? -- 8. The thesis of verisimilitude -- 9. Scientific method -- 10. Strong programmes -- 11. Temperate rationalism.

ISBN

• 0710008708
• 9780710008701
• 0710009135
• 9780710009135
• 0415058775
• 9780415058773

LCCN

81008556

OCLC

• ocm07555888
• 7555888
• SCSB-52316

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library