Much of the focus on Poincaré’s philosophy of science has been on the notion of convention, a crucial concept that has become distinctive of his position. However, other notions have received much less attention. That is the case of verifiable hypotheses. This kind of hypotheses seems to be constituted from the generalization of several observable facts. So, in order to understand what these hypotheses are, we need to know what a fact to Poincaré is. He divides facts into brute and (...) scientific facts. The characterization of this duality is not trivial at all, and leads us to the following questions that we will discuss in this paper: which the part of construction that exists in a scientific fact and which the part of translation, that is, what remains from the brute fact in the scientific one?; and when we conceive a generalized hypothesis, are we supposed to do it from scientific or from brute facts? The clarification of these questions could lead to distinguish the part of construction and the part of translation in the first steps of science, which is essential to get a better understanding of Poincaré’s conception of science. (shrink)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

Henri Poincaré’s philosophy of science has been widely studied and has been related to other important scientific and philosophical figures such as Einstein, Hilbert, Helmholtz, Duhem, and even Bergson. Poincaré refers to many people in his works, but there is one name that appears repeatedly in his texts, in particular when he develops his general views on the value of science. That is Édouard Le Roy. There is a lack of secondary sources on Le Roy’s work and, when compared to (...) Poincaré, references are usually given to Poincaré’s interpretation of his works and not to Le Roy himself. When writing on the value of science, Poincaré structures his discourse as a reply to Le Roy’s views. This paper aims at clarifying why it was so important for Poincaré to reply to Le Roy. To do that, we will discuss the figure of Le Roy in the context of the time, his philosophy (which he called nouveau positivisme), and the relation between Poincaré’s philosophical position and Le Roy’s. This will make Le Roy’s work more familiar to contemporary audiences but will also clarify some controversial aspects in Poincaré’s position. (shrink)