Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2022
A presidential address provides a rare opportunity for public, disciplinary self-reflection. This is particularly true in the context of a joint meeting with related disciplines. Accordingly, rather than simply presenting my own view of science, I shall focus on those of us engaged in viewing science, particularly philosophers, psychologists, historians, and sociologists of science. I will, of course, be doing the viewing From the vantage point of the philosophy of science, which thus fills the foreground. The middle distance will be occupied by the sociology of science, while the history of science and cognitive studies of science occupy the background.
I begin with a historical view of the philosophy of science itself. The most common picture of the recent history of the philosophy of science in North America is that, after a long period of dominance, Logical Empiricism was superseded in the 1960s by an historical approach to the philosophy of science inspired by Kuhn's (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions.