Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen as horizonal, (...) aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)

Continental philosophy of science has developed alongside mainstream analytic philosophy of science. But where continental approaches are inclusive, analytic philosophies of science are not–excluding not merely Nietzsche’s philosophy of science but Gödel’s philosophy of physics. As a radicalization of Kant, Nietzsche’s critical philosophy of science puts science in question and Nietzsche’s critique of the methodological foundations of classical philology bears on science, particularly evolution as well as style (in art and science). In addition to the critical (in Mach, Nietzsche, Heidegger (...) but also Husserl just to the extent that continental philosophy of science tends to depart from a reflection on the crisis of foundations), other continental philosophies of science include phenomenology (Husserl, Bachelard, Merleau‐Ponty, etc.) and hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Heelan, etc.), especially incorporating history of science (Nietzsche, Mach, Duhem, Butterfield, Feyerabend, etc.). Examples are drawn from the philosophy of sciences (chemistry, geology, and biology) other than physics. (shrink)

The ArgumentTheorists of science and culture, seeking to explicate the implications of chaos theory, quantum mechanics, or special and general relativity, have drawn parallels to the constellation of intellectual and social phenomena collected in the concept of postmodernism. The notion thereby invoked of a postmodern physics is suggestive and worth exploring. But it remains ungrounded so long as the argument moves in the realm of parallels. Moreover, these discussions prove to be tacitly constrained by a preexisting genre of physicists' own (...) literary production, a genre whose argumentative structures have been taken over implicitly into the subsequent exchanges. Attending critically in this way to the intellectual interests of the discussants — asking who it is that wants to constitute a postmodern physics — should open up more productive ways of framing the debate. (shrink)

En La función del dogma en la investigación científica (1979), Thomas Kuhn enfatiza la necesidad de que las ciencias maduras formen a sus recursos humanos propiciando una fuerte adhesión a los fundamentos ontológicos y epistemológicos que sustentan dicha concepción paradigmática. Esta tesis, que de algún modo quita perspectiva a las y los científicos, deja abierta la cuestión de cómo tan fuerte adhesión dogmática permite la crítica y a la postre la revolución científica. En “Ciencia normal, dogmatismo y progreso” (2023), Pablo (...) Melogno revisa críticamente esta propuesta kuhniana y la de una serie de analistas de su obra. Concluye que la propuesta de Kuhn es atinada por cuanto contempla cómo la tensión conservación-crítica permite en ciertas circunstancias sostener la fuerte adhesión incorporada, y en otras circunstancias ejercer una crítica informada ante una abrumadora acumulación de anomalías. En este artículo, sugiero que no son solo factores de índole racional los que llevan a un colectivo a decidir sobre la continuidad o el cambio paradigmático, sino que también inciden factores de tipo ideológico y cultural, frecuentemente naturalizados y difíciles de objetivar. (shrink)