In this chapter I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues raised by “hidden entities”, entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation, can enrich the historical investigation of their careers. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. Hidden entities have played a crucial role in the development of the natural sciences. Despite their centrality to past scientific practice, however, several (...) of them (e.g., phlogiston, caloric, and the ether) turned out to be fictitious. For this reason, they have figured prominently in recent debates on scientific realism. The issues I explore in this paper are entangled with those debates. I argue that our understanding of hidden entities and their role in experimental practice can be enhanced by adopting an integrated historical-cum-philosophical approach. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on the reality of those entities has a lot to gain by examining historically how they were ntroduced and investigated. On the other hand, the historical reconstruction of the careers of those entities may profit from philosophical reflection on their existence. (shrink)

Naturalism implies unity of method--an application of the methods of science to the methodology of science itself and to value theory. Epistemological naturalists have tried to find a privileged discipline to be the methodological model of philosophy of science and epistemology. However, since science itself is not unitary, the use of one science as a model amounts to a reduction and distorts the philosophy of science just as badly as traditional philosophy of science distorted science, despite the fact that the (...) central theme of naturalized philosophy of science is that methodology should be true to science as practiced. I argue that naturalized philosophy of science must apply a plurality of methods to epistemological issues. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century, mainstream answers to the foundational crisis, mainly triggered by Russell and Gödel, remained largely perfectibilist in nature. Along with a general naturalist wave in the philosophy of science, during the second half of that century, this idealist picture was finally challenged and traded in for more realist ones. Next to the necessary preliminaries, the present paper proposes a structured view of various philosophical accounts of mathematics indebted to this general idea, laying the (...) ground for a desirable integration of their strenghts. (shrink)

Does recent work in the cognitive sciences have any implications for theories or methods employed within the philosophy of science itself? The answer to this question depends first on one’s conception of the philosophy of science and then on the nature of work being done in the various different fields comprising the cognitive sciences. For example, one might think of the philosophy of science as being an autonomous discipline that is both logically and epistemologically prior to any empirical inquiry. If (...) the cognitive sciences are empirical sciences, then research in the cognitive sciences could not have any significant implications for the philosophy of science. And that would be the end of the matter. Logical Empiricism is now typically understood as having exemplified this point of view.More specifically, Logical Empiricism took it for granted (i) that scientific knowledge should be understood as ideally having the structure of a formal logical calculus, and (ii) that the empirical warrant for scientific claims is given by directly observed data together with formal rules which determine the weight of the evidence for or against the particular claims in question. (shrink)