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Philosophy of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions: Remarks on the VPI Program for Testing Philosophies of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Alan W. Richardson
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Extract

For a number of years now, we, as philosophers of science, have been enjoined by more and more of our colleagues to understand the task of developing a philosophy of science to be itself a scientific task. We are told that if we want to understand science we have no better (and perhaps indeed no other) path to such an understanding than the path of science itself. We should view ourselves as ultimately attempting to arrive at a relatively complete theoretical understanding of how science proceeds. This is a call to naturalize philosophy of science.

Somewhat more recently some philosophers of science have become impatient even with those who have taken up the naturalist banner. It isn’t enough, they tell us, to arrive at an understanding of the nature of philosophy of science that proclaims it to be one science among many.

Type
Part I. Methodology and Explanation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 36 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

A prior version of this paper was read at the 1990 Minnesota Philosophical Association Meetings. I would like to thank my audience there and especially my commentator, James D. Fetzer, for helpful comments. I would like to thank also the University of Minnesota Naturalized Philosophers of Science: Ron Giere, Charles Wallis, Geoffrey Gorham, and Jerry Smerchansky, for inspiration, criticism, comments, and research materials. None of these philosophers should be held responsible for my errors in this paper.

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