Under the influence of naturalistic approaches, contemporary philosophy of science tends to characterize scientific objectivity not by virtue of the individualistic following of rules or satisfying epistemic utilities, but as a property arising from the organisational features of groups. This paper presents a critical review of one such proposal, that of Helen Longino, probing some of its main features against the debate between Pasteur and Pouchet in mid-nineteenth-century France regarding the spontaneous generation of life. After considering some weaknesses and strengths, (...) it is argued that Longino’s social epistemology is only able to generate normativity by implicitly assuming a classic procedural notion of epistemic acceptability. The paper also aims to use this historical case to shed light on the complex, multidimensional nature of the dynamics of actual science, arguing both against purely epistemic and exclusively social approaches in a satisfactory meta-scientific explanation of controversies. (shrink)

Después de 40 años tras la revolución kuhniana en filosofía de la ciencia es clara la necesidad de un estudio interdisciplinar de la ciencia. Pero no se ve que sea posible el que la filosofía tenga algo que decir en tal marco interdisciplinar de análisis empírico. La tendencia general a la naturalización parece dejar fuera de juego a una disciplina, la filosofía, cuyo tradicional estilo normativo es muy difícil de asimilar. Con todo, la polémica continúa. En estas páginas se recoge, (...) entre algunos otros problemas, el enfrentamiento contemporáneo entre el racionalismo filosófico y el relativismo en la comprensión de la naturaleza de la ciencia. (shrink)

It is in the Tractatus 6.31’s that Wittgenstein, according to our view, draws a fruitful discussion framework for raising the contemporary debate on scientific realism. We argue that Wittgenstein outlines here a two-sided approach to the logical status of the most general scientific propositions; an approach inconsistent both with a realist interpretation of the nature of scientific knowledge and with a conventionalist one. After briefly commenting on the historical context underlying Wittgenstein’s approach, and tentatively considering a possible extension of the (...) Tractarian approach (to idealized generalisations describing classes of physical systems), we defend that Wittgenstein’s sketchy approach has not been successfully extended and developed in the philosophy of science until the last decades. Such an achievement, weconclude, has been possible after the rejection of the propositional view of scientific knowledge underlying the very Wittgensteinian approach. (shrink)