Freedom and Rationality

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Studies in the History and Methodology of Social and Political Theory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. The Logic of Consensus and of Extremes

      • Joseph Agassi

      Pages 3-21

   3. Decision Theory, Political Theory and the Hats Hypothesis

      • Philip Pettit

      Pages 23-34

   4. Negative Utilitarianism

      • J. J. C. Smart

      Pages 35-46

   5. Metaphysical Individualism

      • Gregory Currie

      Pages 47-65

   6. The Ontology of Explanation

      • David-Hillel Ruben

      Pages 67-85

   7. Reflections on Conceptual Openness and Conceptual Tension

      • Leon J. Goldstein

      Pages 87-110

   8. Stereotypes, Statistics, and Schemata

      • Noretta Koertge

      Pages 111-124

   9. Human Rights and the New Circle of Equity

      • Ernest Gellner

      Pages 125-140

   10. The Degeneration of Popper’s Theory of Demarcation

       • Adolf Grünbaum

       Pages 141-161

   11. Science as a Particular Mode of Thinking and the ‘Taming of the State’

       • Gerard Radnitzky

       Pages 163-181

3. Studies in the History and Methodology of the Natural Sciences

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 183-183

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   2. Antilogikē

      • Paul Feyerabend

      Pages 185-189

   3. Kuhn Studies

      • J. N. Hattiangadi

      Pages 191-205

   4. Unfathomed Knowledge in a Bottle

      • W. W. Bartley III

      Pages 207-223

   5. Watkins’s Evolutionism Between Hume and Kant

      • Peter Munz

      Pages 225-246

   6. The ‘Optimum’ Aim for Science

      • Fred D’Agostino

      Pages 247-256

   7. Why Both Popper and Watkins Fail to Solve the Problem of Induction

      • John Worrall

      Pages 257-296

   8. Saving Science from Scepticism

      • Alan Musgrave

      Pages 297-323

x philosophy when he inaugurated a debate about the principle of methodologi­ cal individualism, a debate which continues to this day, and which has inspired a literature as great as any in contemporary philosophy. Few collections of material in the general area of philosophy of social science would be considered complete unless they contained at least one of Watkins's many contributions to the discussion of this issue. In 1957 Watkins published the flrst of a series of three papers (1957b, 1958d and 196Oa) in which he tried to codify and rehabilitate metaphysics within the Popperian philosophy, placing it somewhere between the analytic and the empirical. He thus signalled the emergence of an important implica­ tion of Popper's thought that had not to that point been stressed by Sir Karl himself, and which marked off his followers from the antimetaphysical ideas of the regnant logical positivists. In 1965 years of work in political philosophy and in the history of philosophy in the seventeenth century were brought to fruition in Watkins's widely cited and admired Hobbes's System of Ideas (1965a, second edition 1973d). This book is an important contribution not just to our understanding of Hobbes's political thinking, but, perhaps more importantly, to our understanding of the way in which a system of ideas is constituted and applied. Watkins built on earlier work in developing an account of Hobbes's ideas in which was revealed and clarifled the unity of Hobbes's metaphysical, epistemological and political ideas.

• Karl R. Popper
• liberty
• logic
• political philosophy
• political theory
• science

• University of New England, Australia

  Fred D’Agostino

• York University, Toronto, Canada

  I. C. Jarvie

Policies and ethics