Methodology, Metaphysics and the History of Science

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Scientific Realism and Incommensurability: Some Criticisms of Kuhn and Feyerabend

   • Richard M. Burian

   Pages 1-31

3. How To Be A Good Philosopher Of Science: A Plea For Empiricism In Matters Methodological

   • Michael Martin

   Pages 33-42

4. Feedback, Selection, and Function: A Reductionistic Account of Goal-Orientation

   • Roger J. Faber

   Pages 43-135

5. Philosophy of Science 2001

   • Paul K. Feyerabend

   Pages 137-147

6. The Dethroning of the Philosophy of Science: Ideological and Technical Functions of the Metasciences

   • Jost Halfmann

   Pages 149-171

7. Comments on Jost Halfmann’s ‘Dethroning the Philosophy of Science: Ideological and Technical Functions of the Metasciences’

   • Allan Janik

   Pages 173-181

8. Philosophy of Science and the Origin of Life

   • Hyman Hartman

   Pages 183-213

9. Sociobiology, Anti-Sociobiology, Epistemology, and Human Nature

   • Anthony Leeds

   Pages 215-234

10. Substance and Its Logical Significance

    • Elena Panova

    Pages 235-245

11. Tracking Down the Misplaced Concreton in the Neurosciences

    • Armand Siegel

    Pages 247-262

12. Does Popper’s Conventionalism Contradict His Critical Rationalism? Objections Against Popper in German Philosophy and Some Metacritical Remarks

    • Elisabeth Ströker

    Pages 263-282

13. How to Explore the History of Ancient Mathematics?

    • Arpad K. Szabó

    Pages 283-294

14. Nature on Trial: The Case of the Rooster that Laid an Egg

    • E. V. Walter

    Pages 295-321

15. Reflections on ‘Nature on Trial’

    • N. Sivin

    Pages 323-330

16. Toward the Vindication of Friedrich Engels

    • Donald D. Weiss

    Pages 331-358

17. Back Matter

    Pages 359-373

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This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so!) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re­ presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin­ guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion.

• Karl R. Popper
• history of science
• metaphysics
• philosophy of science
• realism
• science
• truth

• Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, USA

  Robert S. Cohen

• Dept. of Philosophy, Baruch College, City University of New York, USA

  Marx W. Wartofsky

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