Being Post-Positivist . . . or Just Talking About it?

Abstract

Hans Ruin and Patrick Heelan join me in celebrating the rise of post-positivist and phenomenological approaches to scientific and technological practice. Yet as they both know, I am also concerned that the very presence of all the new accounts which give voice to this trend may tempt us into concluding prematurely that the traditional understanding of science and technology has already been displaced. With especially Ruin’s encouragement, I expand my original discussion of this concern by explaining why I agree with him about the ontologically mistaken suppositions that one might become post-positivistic by doing philosophy “meta-philosophically,” or become phenomenological by making “life” more basic that “nature.”