Abstract
Scarcely two decades ago, those scholars interested in the history of the philosophy of science had to spend the bulk of their time justifying the existence of this field as a proper and legitimate branch of philosophy. Although prepared to concede that metaphysics, ethics and epistemology all had distinguished temporal careers, laden with present-day significance, most philosophers of science were convinced that philosophy of science really began during their own lifetimes, probably in Vienna; if it had any prior ancestry at all, it was generally traced no further back than Duhem, Mach, and Poincaré, along with occasional footnotes to Hume and Aristotle. The small coterie of scholars who were convinced that the story was a bit more complicated generally suppressed their internal disagreements and closed ranks — at least in public — in order to persuade their philosophical colleagues that the history of methodology was a fiorishing, exciting and relevant area of inquiry which deserved serious study and attention.
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Notes
For a guide to many of these studies, see my `Theories of Scientific Method from Plato to Mach: A Bibliographic Review’, History of Science 7 (1968) 1–63.
Benjamin Martin, A Philosophical Grammar (London, 1748), p. 19. Similar sentiments are expressed a year later by Condillac; cf. his Oeuvres (Paris, 1798), vol. 2, pp. 327ff.
T. Reid, Works (ed. W. Hamilton, 6th ed., Edinburgh, 1863), vol. 1, p. 236. For further discussion of this background, see L. Laudan. Reid, Works (ed. W. Hamilton, 6th ed., Edinburgh, 1863), vol. 1, p. 236. For further discussion of this background, see L. Laudan, `Thomas Reid and the Newtonian Turn of British Methodological Thought’, in R. Butts and J. David (eds.), The Methodological Heritage of Newton (Toronto, 1970 ), 103–31.
Most contentious in Hartley’s system was his effort to provide a neuro-physiological foundation for the Lockean `associationist’ psychology by postulating an aetherial fluid which filled the nerves.
From Boscovich’s De Solis a Lunae Defectibus (1760). Quoted from, and translated by D. Stewart in his Collected Works (ed. by W. Hamilton, Edinburgh, 1854–60), vol. 2, p. 212.
See especially Hartley’s Observations on Man: His Frame, His Duty and His Expectations (London, 1749), vol. 1, pp. 341–51.
For a discussion of LeSage’s physics, see S. Aronson, `The Gravitational Theory of George-Louis LeSage’. The Natural Philosopher 3 (1964) 51–74; for a brief discussion of that theory’s philosophical significance see L. Laudan, `George-Louis LeSage: A Case Study in the Interaction of Physics and Philosophy’, in Akten des II. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses, Hanover, 17–22. Juli 1972 (Wiesbaden, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 241–52.
From a letter published in Notice de la Vie et des Ecrits de George-Louis LeSage (ed. P. Prevost, Génève, 1805), p. 390.
This quotation is from LeSage’s `Premier Mémoire sur la Méthode d’Hypothèse’, published posthumously in P. Prevost’s Essais de Philosophie (Paris, 1804), vol. 2, para. 23.
For references to these later works, see L. Laudan, op. cit.,note 7.
I am now doing a comparative study on the reception of the theories of Hartley, Boscovich, LeSage and Lambert.
See his L’Art d’Observer (2 vols. Généve, 1775), expanded to the three-volume Essai sur l’Art d’Observer et de Faire des Expériences (Génève, 1802). Senebier, incidentally, was LeSage’s successor as Director of the Geneva library.
See P. Prevost, op. cit.,note 12.
D. Stewart, op. cit.,note 5, vol. II, p. 301. (Cf. also ibid.,pp. 307–308.)
See Richard Olsen’s very interesting study, Scottish Philosophy and British Physics, 1750–1880 (Princeton, 1975).
Cf. Mill’s chapter on hypotheses in the System of Logic.
See J. Mittelstrass, Die Rettung der Phänomene (Berlin, 1962 ).
See M. Mandelbaum, Philosophy, Science and Sense Perception (Baltimore, 1964 ).
See A. I. Sabra, Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton (London, 1967); and G. Buchdahl’s numerous studies of Descartes.
For a brief discussion on this issue, see L. Laudan, The Methodological Foundations of Mach’s Anti Atomism and their Historical Roots’, in P. Machamer and R. Turnbull (eds.), Motion and Time, Space and Matter (Columbus, 1976 ), pp. 390–417.
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Laudan, L. (1977). The Sources of Modern Methodology. In: Butts, R.E., Hintikka, J. (eds) Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1780-9_1
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