Abstract
While Burtt’s influence continues to be a strong current in modem historiography of science, the origin of this current has been obscured by vigorous intellectual fashions, such as the trend toward analytic philosophy, artificial standards for mathematical-type rigor in science historiography, and an investment in mathematical realism as a guarantee for scientific certainty. These trends became cemented in ivory towers and turned into an institution with the Society for Unified Science, established in the 1930s. H. Floris Cohen is right when he says that the significance of The Metaphysical Foundations is not generally recognized.1 Although the book continues to be reprinted right up to the present time, it takes its readers somewhat by surprise, in that they, like Professor Cohen, can not place the book in any tradition. As we have seen, the cradle for Burtt’s revolutionizing ideas was Columbia University in the 1920s, a place where James Harvey Robinson taught the new history, John Dewey taught naturalism in philosophy and all the Columbia radicals embraced guiding the new age as their social duty as philosophers. Part of what happened to that movement, besides the wave of analytic émigré philosophers, is explained by the twentieth century backlash against, what Morton White has described as “anti-intellectualism in America.”2
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Notes
See H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 ).
Morton White, Anti-intellectualism in America in Pragmatism and the American Mind, ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ), 78–92.
Morton White, Anti-intellectualism in America in Pragmatism and the American Mind, ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ), 79.
Morton White, Anti-intellectualism in America in Pragmatism and the American Mind, ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ), 82.
Morton White, Anti-intellectualism in America in Pragmatism and the American Mind, ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ), 85.
Morton White, Anti-intellectualism in America in Pragmatism and the American Mind, ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1973 ), 85.
Stephen Toulmin, From Form to Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now, Daedalus Volume I, number 106, (Summer, 1977): 143–162.
Stephen Toulmin, From Form to Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now, Daedalus Volume I, number 106, (Summer, 1977): 145. Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell were at Cambridge, a fact which might tend to qualify Toulmin’s statements. Perhaps he means that the greater contribution to fashion was made by the German philosophers who came to the U.S. and that in Britain philosophy remained more balanced.
Stephen Toulmin, From Form to Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now, Daedalus Volume I, number 106, (Summer, 1977): 146.
Stephen Toulmin, From Form to Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now, Daedalus Volume I, number 106, (Summer, 1977): 146–147.
Stephen Toulmin, From Form to Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now, Daedalus Volume I, number 106, (Summer, 1977): 148–149.
Stephen Toulmin, From Form to Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now, Daedalus Volume I, number 106, (Summer, 1977): 150–151.
Stephen Toulmin, From Form to Function: Philosophy and History of Science in the 1950s and Now, Daedalus Volume I, number 106, (Summer, 1977): 154.
Editions of Principles and Problems of Right Thinking,(Harper and Brothers) appeared in 1928, 1931 and 1946. The 1946 edition was re-titled, Right Thinking: A Study of Its Principles and Methods. The post war edition marked a solid break with the earlier ones. It include, for one thing, a section detailing Burtt’s own theory of value and also his theory of philosophical method (Part IV).
J.H. Randall, “The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua”, The Journal of the History of Ideas, volume 1, number 2 (April, 1940 ) and The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science, ( Padua: Antenore, 1961 ).
J.H. Randall, The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science, ( Padua: Antenore, 1961 ), 25.
Burtt, Right Thinking: A Study of Its Principles and Methods,382.
John P. Anton, editors Preface to naturalism and Historical Understanding, Essays on the Philosophy of John Herman Randall, Jr., ( New York: State University Press, 1967 ).
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Villemaire, D.D. (2002). What Happened to the Metaphysical Foundations and Burtt’s Interest in the History of Science?. In: E.A. Burtt, Historian and Philosopher. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 226. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1331-3_11
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