During the last three decades, reflections on the growth of scientific knowledge have inspired historians, sociologists, and some philosophers to contend that scientific objectivity is a myth. In this book, Kitcher attempts to resurrect the notions of objectivity and progress in science by identifying both the limitations of idealized treatments of growth of knowledge and the overreactions to philosophical idealizations. Recognizing that science is done not by logically omniscient subjects working in isolation, but by people with a variety of personal (...) and social interests, who cooperate and compete with one another, he argues that, nonetheless, we may conceive the growth of science as a process in which both our vision of nature and our ways of learning more about nature improve. Offering a detailed picture of the advancement of science, he sets a new agenda for the philosophy of science and for other "science studies" disciplines. (shrink)

This book argues against the view that mathematical knowledge is a priori,contending that mathematics is an empirical science and develops historically,just as ...

We cannot imagine two straight lines intersecting at two points even though they may do so. In this case our abilities to imagine depend upon our abilities to visualise.

This paper attempts to understand kant's obscure remarks that certain parts of natural science are a priori or have something akin to an a priori status. i argue that kant does not claim that propositions of physics are fully a priori, that the notion of a proposition's being a priori "given an empirical concept" can be explicated, that kant's attempted defense of the status of parts of dynamics is deeply flawed because of his commitments about a priority, but that his (...) account of natural science contains some important insights. (shrink)

T HE heart of Kant's views on the nature of mathematics is his thesis that the judgments of pure mathematics are synthetic a priori. Kant usually offers this as one thesis, but it is fruitful to regard it as consisting of two separate claims, a meta- physical subthesis and an epistemological ..

From the mid-1960s, after the important works by J. Hintikka, S. Körner, W. Sellars and P.F. Strawson, there has been a marked revival of Kantian epistemological thought. Against this background, featuring fruitful exchange between historical research and theoretical prospects, the main point of the book is the discussion of Kantian theory of scientific knowledge from the perspective of present-day analytical philosophy and philosophy of empirical and mathematical sciences. The main topics are the problem of a priori knowledge in logic, mathematics (...) and physics, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, the constitution of physical objectivity and the questions of realism and truth, the Kantian conception of time, causal laws and induction, the relations between Kantian epistemological thought, relativity theory, quantum theory and some recent developments of philosophy of science. The book is addressed to research workers, specialists and scholars in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of science and history of philosophy. (shrink)