A clear, original and systematic introduction to philosophy of science which examines the theories of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend before proposing a new, temperate rationalist perspective.

This collection of essays has evolved through the co-operative efforts, which began in the fall of 1974, of the participants in a workshop sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The idea of holding one or more small colloquia devoted to the topics of rational choice in science and scientific progress originated in a conversation in the summer of 1973 between one of the editors (GR) and the late Imre Lakatos. Unfortunately Lakatos himself was never able to see this project through, but his thought-provoking methodology of scientific research programmes was ably expounded and defended by his successors. Indeed, this volume continues and deepens the debate inaugurated in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave), a book which grew out of a conference held in 1965. That debate has continued during the years that have passed since that conference. The group of discussions about the place of rationality in science which have been held between those who emphasize the history of science (with Feyerabend and Kuhn as the most prominent exponents) and the critical rationalists (Popper and his followers), with Imre Lakatos defending a middle ground, these discussions were seen by almost all commentators as the most important event in the philosophy of science in the last decade. This problem area constituted the central theme of our Thyssen workshop. The workshop operated in the following manner.

Scientific realism is the position that the aim of science is to advance on truth and increase knowledge about observable and unobservable aspects of the mind-independent world which we inhabit. This book articulates and defends that position. In presenting a clear formulation and addressing the major arguments for scientific realism Sankey appeals to philosophers beyond the community of, typically Anglo-American, analytic philosophers of science to appreciate and understand the doctrine. The book emphasizes the epistemological aspects of scientific realism and contains an original solution to the problem of induction that rests on an appeal to the principle of uniformity of nature.

Rectifying misrepresentations of Popperian thought with a historical approach to Popper’s philosophy, Gattei reconstructs the logic of Popper’s development to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.

In this important new work, Professor Trigg deals with the question of the rational foundations of science. In so doing, he explains and evaluates the views of Rorty, Wittgensteing, Quine, Putnam, and Hawking, amongst others. The limits of science and rationality are explored and the power of human reason is in the end upheld.

Mikael Stenmark examines four models of rationality and argues for a discussion of rationality that takes into account the function and aim of such human practices as science and religion.

Traditional philosophical accounts of the scientific enterprise represent it as a paradigm of institutionalized rationality. The scientist is held to possess a special method which he disinterestedly applied, generating an accumulation of scientific knowledge about the world, and the evolution of science is seen as being determined by the rational deliberations of scientists and not by psychological or sociological factors. More recently, various philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have held that this rational model is no longer tenable. Some have claimed that there is no such thing as a scientific method or scientific progress, and that theories are incommensurable and so there is no possibility of choice between alternative theories. The more extreme non-rationalists seek to explain scientific change exclusively in terms of psychological and sociological factors. In this book, the author explores the controversy between the two approaches and presents a strongly critical and independent view of both rationalists like Popper and Lakatos and non-rationalists such as Kuhn and Feyerabend. He goes on to develop his own account of the scientific enterprise--temperate rationalism, a vindication of the rationalist approach to science and of a realist construal of theories.--