The nineteenth-century appraisal of Whewell's philosophy as confused, eclectic, and metaphysical is still dominant today. Yet he keeps reappearing on the agenda of the historians and philosophers of science. Why? Whewell continues to be a puzzle. Historians evade the puzzle by deeming him to have had no serious philosophy but some interesting ideas and/or to have been socially important. Menachim Fisch's recent study offers promise of a new appraisal. But Fisch's account leads back to the puzzle. Fisch poses the question (...) well, promises a new answer, but does not provide one. The puzzle will remain until the strength of Whewell's turn away from empiricist problems to Kantian ones has been appreciated. (shrink)

William Whewell’s philosophy of science is often overlooked as a relic of 19th century Whiggism. I argue however that his view – suitably modified – can contribute to contemporary philosophy of science, particularly to debates around scientific progress. The reason Whewell’s view needs modification is that he makes the following problematic claim: as science progresses, it reveals necessarily truths and thereby grants a glimpse of the mind of God. Modifying Whewell’s view will involve reinventing his notion of necessary truth as (...) the pragmatist notion of superassertibility. And, if scientific progress does not uncover necessary truths, then it does not reveal the mind of God. The result is an outline of an account of scientific progress that is piecemeal and fallibilist in nature, yet at the same time maintains key Whewellian themes of consilience and the unity of science. (shrink)

Primarily between 1833 and 1840, William Whewell attempted to accomplish what natural philosophers and scientists since at least Galileo had failed to do: to provide a systematic and broad-ranged study of the tides and to attempt to establish a general scientific theory of tidal phenomena. I document the close interaction between Whewell’s philosophy of science and his scientific practice as a tidologist. I claim that the intertwinement between Whewell’s methodology and his tidology is more fundamental than has hitherto been documented.Keywords: (...) William Whewell; Tidology; History of HPS; Scientific methodology; Whewell papers. (shrink)

In this essay, I call attention to Kant’s and Whewell’s attempt to provide bridging principles between a priori principles and scientific laws. Part of Kant’s aim in the Opus postumum (ca. 1796-1803) was precisely to bridge the gap between the metaphysical foundations of natural science (on the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) see section 1) and physics by establishing intermediary concepts or ‘Mittelbegriffe’ (henceforth this problem is referred to as ‘the bridging-problem’). I argue that the late-Kant attempted to show (...) that the concept of ‘moving force’, an intermediary concept derived from a priori principles, could be given empirical content so that concrete scientific knowledge is arrived at. Thus, the late-Kant wished not only to show that proper scientific laws are necessary a priori (as he had shown in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) but also that intermediary concepts could be derived from a priori principles which, when interpreted empirically, resulted in the specific forces as established by physics (see section 2). Of course, William Whewell never knew about Kant’s Opus postumum and his attempt to bridge the gap between the metaphysical foundations of science and physics. However, it is striking that Whewell had similar concerns about the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science as Kant himself. According to Whewell, the Kantian project was incomplete because it did not show how ‘modifications’ (in the sense of concretizations) of a priori principles could result in empirical laws (section 3). Next, it will be argued, by taking into account several of Whewell’s philosophical notebooks which have scarcely been studied systematically, that Whewell’s doctrine of Fundamental Ideas grew out of his dissatisfaction with the Kantian project with respect to the bridging problem and that his own philosophical position should be seen as an attempt to bypass the bridging-problem. (shrink)

SummaryIn this article I argue that Darwin was the author, quite contrary to his original intentions, of a fundamental revolution in the theory of scientific knowledge. In 1838, in order to meet the anti-evolutionist challenge of his professional colleague, William Whewell, he began to sketch a transmutationist theory of the origin of human ideas which would explain the success of inductive science: its discovery of what Whewell and his contemporaries thought were necessary and certain truths. But though it explained how (...) scientific ideas originated, Darwin's theory implied also that theoretical certainty in science was impossible. Thus Darwin's evolutionism when combined with Whewell's a priorism led to a thorough-going fallibilism. This was worked out in detail by W. K. Clifford, a Cambridge evolutionist, Kantian and fallibilist. (shrink)

Professor Marcucci's book on Whewell [6] is a comprehensive expository treatment of Whewell's philosophy of science. The work contains chapters on Whewell's theory of ideas, the fundamental principles of his philosophy of science, his views on mathematics and mechanics, and on his philosophy of induction and philosophy of discovery. In addition there is a chapter on the English reception of Whewell's thought. Professor Marcucci's notes are rich, both in references to Whewell's many critics and to nearly all of the extant (...) literature on Whewell. Indeed, no full study of Whewell has as yet appeared that makes better or more extensive use of all the relevant literature on Whewell. (shrink)

Central to Paul K. Feyerabend's philosophy of science are two theses: (1) there is no standard observation language available to science; instead, observability is to be viewed as a pragmatic matter; and (2) when considering questions of empirical significance and experimental test, the methodological unit of science is a set of inconsistent theories. I argue that the pragmatic theory of observation by itself decides neither for nor against any particular specification of meaning for an observation language; and that Feyerabend's position (...) provides no decision procedure when two contending theories share no terms having the same meaning, and thus cannot be said to be logically incompatible. Also, Feyerabend's insistence upon falsification will force him to admit that there are relatively permanent facts available to all theories, or to abandon the idea of test as falsification and to conclude that scientific theories can only be accepted or rejected on the basis of non-evidential considerations. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Para o filósofo inglês William Whewell, a multiplicidade de observações e o refinamento dos resultados alcançados no decorrer dos séculos, através de uma forma elaborada de indutivismo, nos permitem compreender a ciência progredindo rumo às verdades necessárias e universais, além dos limites do psicologismo e do ponto de vista particular. A intuiçáo ocupa nesse processo um papel crucial, o qual vem recebendo dos comentadores diferentes interpretações. O estatuto epistemológico da intuiçáo e em que (...) medida ela se insere no processo de descobrimento de verdades sáo questões que analisaremos neste artigo. (shrink)