00 Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, ...

Thomas Kuhn transformed the philosophy of science. His seminal 1962 work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" introduced the term 'paradigm shift' into the vernacular and remains a fundamental text in the study of the history and philosophy of science. This introduction to Kuhn's ideas covers the breadth of his philosophical work, situating "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" within Kuhn's wider thought and drawing attention to the development of his ideas over time. Kuhn's work is assessed within the context of other (...) philosophies of science notably logical empiricism and recent developments in naturalized epistemology. The author argues that Kuhn's thinking betrays a residual commitment to many theses characteristic of the empiricists he set out to challenge. Kuhn's influence on the history and philosophy of science is assessed and where the field may be heading in the wake of Kuhn's ideas is explored. (shrink)

Using the methods of hermeneutic phenomenology, and against the background of the principle that the real is what is or can be given in a public way in perception as a state of the World, and of the thesis established elsewhere that acts of perception are always epistemic, contextual, and hermeneutical, the writer proposes that objects of scientific observation are perceptual objects, states of the World described by theoretical scientific terms and, therefore, real. This thesis of Hermeneutical Realism is proved (...) by showing how the response of a standard instrument is 'read' as if it were a 'text'. Conclusions are then drawn about a number of topics, including Scientific Realism, Conventionalism, and Cultural Relativism. (shrink)