Abstract

Duhem is perhaps the last active scientist to have produced a philosophi- cal text, and TheAim and Structure of Physical Theory retains its status as one that every textbook writer in the philosophy of science has to take into consideration. Several of Duhem’s other books have since appeared in English translation, but the Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science is the first collection of Duhem’s papers to appear in English. Commentators have oRen pointed out that the roots of Duhem’s main philosophical work are to be found in a series of articles he wrote in the Catholic journal, Revue des Questions Scientijiques, during the first part of the 1890s, and it is not before time that these should be made available in English. In fact, the editors of the Essays have done us the greater ser- vice of including some of these seminal papers in a broader selection from Duhem’s shorter pieces, ranging over the years from 1892 to 1915 and covering his interests in the history of science and the relation between science and religion, as well as the philosophy of science. In the latter cat- egory, there is a nice little essay, “The Nature of Mathematical Reason- ing” from 1912, in which he takes issue with Poincark’s views on math- ematical induction, a review of Mach’s The Science of Mechanics (1903) and “Logical Examination of Physical Theory” - the section dealing with his philosophy of science from the submission he wrote in 1913 in sup- port of his membership of the Academie des Sciences. Like the latter, the last two chapters of To Save the Phenomena (1908) and “Some Reflec- tions on German Science” (1915) have already appeared in English. Of the remaining nine essays, eight appear, as far as I’m aware, for the first time here in English, while the “lightly edited” “History of Physics” origi- nally appeared in English.