History and/or Philosophy of Science?

The goal of the project is to reconstruct the radical discontinuities and processes of re-orientation in the philosophy of science in the German speaking world between 1965 and 1995. This research is projected under the aspect of the historical and pragmatic turn of philosophy of science, which has rightly been termed the "mega trend of philosophy" (Hoyningen-Huene) in the second half of the 20th century, as well as the philosophical reactions to this trend. The project wants to place this philosophical confrontation in its historical context with particular reference to previously unpublished archival materials (Stegmüller) or to such sources, which have only sporadically and superficially been considered (Feyerabend, Popper). The clash between the classical normative theory-oriented conception of philosophy of science and the emerging descriptive-historical praxis-oriented approach to understanding science is mainly investigated. The philosophers who issued the challenge are (in alphabetical order) Paul Feyerabend, Norwood Russell Hanson, Thomas Kuhn and Stephen Toulmin. Those who reacted against them were the so-called "critical rationalists", Sir Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos and Hans Albert. The classic program of "rational reconstruction" and of conceptual explication, as already developed by Carnap in the 20s, is of special interest as a possible way of mediating between these approaches. This program underwent an extensive reformulation when confronted with the challenges of historicism in the work of Imre Lakatos and, especially, in the camp of theory structuralism (Stegmüller), and the representatives of the "semantic view". The project`s point of departure for studying this crucial turning point in the history of 20th century thought is the London Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science (1965), which was attended by several of the principal figures in our investigation. The period studied in this project ends around 1995, when some of the main figures of philosophy of science crucial for this debate died (Popper, Feyerabend, Lorenzen, Stegmüller and Kuhn).

The goal of the project is to reconstruct the radical discontinuities and processes of re-orientation in the philosophy of science in the German speaking world between 1965 and 1995. This research is projected under the aspect of the historical and pragmatic turn of philosophy of science, which has rightly been termed the "mega trend of philosophy" (Hoyningen-Huene) in the second half of the 20th century, as well as the philosophical reactions to this trend. The project wants to place this philosophical confrontation in its historical context with particular reference to previously unpublished archival materials (Stegmüller) or to such sources, which have only sporadically and superficially been considered (Feyerabend, Popper). The clash between the classical normative theory-oriented conception of philosophy of science and the emerging descriptive-historical praxis-oriented approach to understanding science is mainly investigated. The philosophers who issued the challenge are (in alphabetical order) Paul Feyerabend, Norwood Russell Hanson, Thomas Kuhn and Stephen Toulmin. Those who reacted against them were the so-called "critical rationalists", Sir Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos and Hans Albert. The classic program of "rational reconstruction" and of conceptual explication, as already developed by Carnap in the 20s, is of special interest as a possible way of mediating between these approaches. This program underwent an extensive reformulation when confronted with the challenges of historicism in the work of Imre Lakatos and, especially, in the camp of theory structuralism (Stegmüller), and the representatives of the "semantic view". The project`s point of departure for studying this crucial turning point in the history of 20th century thought is the London Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science (1965), which was attended by several of the principal figures in our investigation. The period studied in this project ends around 1995, when some of the main figures of philosophy of science crucial for this debate died (Popper, Feyerabend, Lorenzen, Stegmüller and Kuhn).