For a Modest Historicism

The Monist 60 (4):540-555 (1977)
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Abstract

Recent work in the philosophy of science has taken a decidedly historicist turn. A number of writers have rejected the traditional thesis that science develops through the accumulation of firmly established truths, maintaining instead that scientific research is founded on beliefs which are presupposed without having been proven. Since these presuppositions are not established truths they are subject to revision, and a change in the presuppositions of a discipline results in a fundamental restructuring of that discipline, i.e., a scientific revolution. There are a number of versions of this general approach currently under debate, and there is considerable disagreement on how the various versions are to be interpreted. The central issue of this debate is the nature of scientific revolutions and it will be useful for our purposes to establish a point of reference by sketching an extreme view of scientific revolutions, a view which is often attributed to Kuhn and Feyerabend.

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Harold I. Brown
Northern Illinois University

Citations of this work

Relativism, truth, and incoherence.Harvey Siegel - 1986 - Synthese 68 (2):225-259.
Prospective Realism.Harold I. Brown - 1990 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (2):211.
Response to Siegel.Harold I. Brown - 1983 - Synthese 56 (1):91 - 105.
The failure to be rational.Morton L. Schagrin - 1982 - Philosophy of Science 49 (1):120-124.

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