History, Historicity and Science

This fresh collection of essays questions how the historical process affects our conception of science, including our understanding of its validity as well as our general conception of knowledge. The essays in this book consider the philosophical labours spanning the work of Descartes, Kant and Hegel, still the philosophical basis of our modern understanding of science, as well as recent selected philosophers and historians of science such as Kuhn and Feyerbend. Themes raised include the philosophical basis for the validity of science, the possibility of ever knowing the independent world as it truly is, and the intelligibility of construing scientific knowledge as a historical. Taken separately and together, these essays provide a sustained analysis of scientific claims to objective standing, the historicity of thought and inquiry. They point toward unfinished philosophical business and the need for a new beginning.

Contents: Introduction, Tom Rockmore and Joseph Margolis; The concepts of physics: rational contents and constructions in history, Michel Paty; Theory-change and the logic of enquiry: new bearings in philosophy of science, Christopher Norris; Science, history, and philosophy in Kant and Hegel, Angelica Nuzzo; Historicity, social psychology and change, Rom Harré and Fathali M. Moghaddam; The reality of history, David Carr; The social location of scientific practices, Hugh Lacey; Kuhn, different worlds and science as historical, Tom Rockmore; Incommensurability modestly recovered, Joseph Margolis; Index.

Joseph Margolis is Professor at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. Tom Rockmore is Professor at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA.