Bacon's inductivist philosophy of science divides thinkers into the scientific and the prejudiced, using as a standard the up-to-date science textbook. Inductivists regard the history of science as progressing smoothly, from facts rather than from problems, to increasingly general theories, undisturbed by contending scientific schools. Conventionalists regard theories as pigeonholes for classifying facts; history of science is the development of increasingly simple theories, neither true nor false. Conventionalism is useless for reconstructing and weighing conflicts between schools, and overemphasizes science's internal (...) organic growth. For Popper, not for inductivists or conventionalists, the successful criticism of theories is the heart of science. Popper's view admits the existence of valuable errors and enables us to avoid being wise after the event, thereby improving our understanding of the history of science through reconstructions of the actual interplay of theories and facts. (shrink)

Althusser believed the Marxist conception of history broke from all previous conceptions of the social whole. Hegel's idealism conflated the knowledge of the object with the object itself. Within his social totality, no practice or thought can run ahead of its time. For Marx, all knowledge is the result of theoretical knowledge, not the revelation of the real. Every structure of a social whole has its own history; there is no central concept of which the various social structures are merely (...) expressions. All of the superstructure affects, and is affected by, the economic infrastructure, although it is the economy that is the determinant in the last instance. Historical materialism seeks to delineate the structural and conjunctural articulation of the various social practices. Marxist philosophy is fully aware of its place and function within the social order, hence of the irreducibly political nature of all philosophical discourse. (shrink)