McMullin 1966 Recent Work in Philosophy of Science

REVIEW ARTICLE:
Recent Work in Philosophy of Science

by Ernan McMullin
O SURVEY A field like philosophy of science in the short

compass of a review article presents three major difficulties.
First, the number of relevant works is very great ; in the United

States alone, at least a dozen important works in philosophy
of science appear e ach year, and their number is increasing.
Second, the field itself is very hard to define.
Strictly speaking,
philosophy of science means philosophizing about the methods

or results of science (which gives us two divisions, methodology
and something akin to philosophy of nature) .
But ever since
the early logical })OsitiYists cla i med that philosophy of science

is the only valid method of philosophical approach to reality, it
has tended to overflow into metaphysics and especially into
theory of knowledge. Many contemporary analytic philosophers
( Putnam, :for example ) would claim that science and philosophy
of science have replaced classical metaphysics and epistemology.
Much of the recent writing on theory of knowledge in the
United States takes scientific knowing as the paradigm of knowl
e dge ;
a philosophy of science in such a case automatically
becomes a theory of knowledge and vice veTSa.

is nothing new:
This, of course,
" science " was the paradigm of knowing for
Plato and ..A_ristotle also, but their conception of science was

not limited to the empirical order, nor was natural science so
powerful and pervasive a factor in their world. The shift in the
s ense of " science " here has had far-reaching consequence for
epistemology too.
Other areas that are so closely relate d to
philosophy of science that a cut between them becomes a some

what arbitrary affair are philosophy of mathematics, philosophy
478
Recent Work
in
Philosophy of Science
479
of logic, semantics, even formal logic itself, sociology of science

and history of science. vVe shall, however, have to leave these
aside in this brief review.
A third difficulty is harder to get around. Most of the writing
in philosophy of science today is done in article form; book
length strnlics (other than college textbooks) nre relatively rare,
and tend to be sceptically regarded. If one looks at the writing
of the men who have most influenced contemporary American
philosophy of science (people like Carnap, Nagel, Hempel,
Feigl), one finds very few books among them. The reasons are
manifold, and are for the most part obvious enough: a conscious
modelling on the style of writing in science; the conviction that
philosophers must "do research" just as scientists do, so that
when they write a piece, the "research" it reports will
not have to be repeated; a deep-rootcll distrust of wide-ranging
attempts to formulate a "system" after the fashion of classical
metaphysics. What characterizes nearly all the philosophy of
science being written in English today is the application of a
powerful analytic method to very limited problems. This has
the advantage that some " real" progress has been made, i. e.,
some problems have been "solved" or at least brought nearer
to "solution" in a way that everyone (or nearly everyone) can
accept. But on the other hand, this piecemeal approach makes
it very hard to see what is really going on, and, in particular,
it too readily encourages writers to take their own epistem
ological, methodological and metaphysical assumptions for
granted, thus leading to a surprising dogmatism regarding these
unexamined issues.
I.
AxTHOLOGrns BASED ON
LEcTmrn SERLES
Thus a much greater proportion of the important writing in

philosophy of science goes on in the journals than is the case in
other parts of philosophy. To review the books that have
appeared over the past three or four years leaves an uncom-
480
Ernan
McMullin
:fortably large segment of the recent developments in philosophy

of science out of account. Or at least this would be the case
were it not for the fact that a new sort of book is coming to
be regarded as the major repository of important "results" in
philosophy of science. The book is a series of essays by the
leading people in orthodox philosophy of science circles. UsuallJ
the essays are somewhat longer (sometimes much longer) than
they would be in journals; they are also more carefully worked,
on the whole. This form of publication is not altogether new,
of course; the European custom of presenting a Festschrift to
distinguished aging scholars gave rise to somewhat similar
volumes. But the fashion in philosophy of science was set by
the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science,* the first
volume of which appeared in 1956. The Minnesota Center for
the Philosophy of Science, under Herbert FeigI's direction, has
for more than a decade invited two or three philosophers of
science each year to spend a period of research at the Center.
The results of the research are presented before the staff of the
Center for discussion, and be:forn the final research paper takes
shape much revision usually takes place. \Vhat appears in the
volumes sponsored by the Center has thus been very carefully
worked over, and represents something of a team effort. Some of
the papers, especially those in the third volume (the last one to
appear, 1962), are more like full-length monographs. .For
example, Griinbaum on "Geometry, Ohronometry and Empiri
cism" runs to 122 closely packed pages.
Three other universities have taken their cue from Minne
sota, so we now have Boston Studies in the Philo8ophy of Science
(2 volumes, 1963, 1965) from Boston University, Philo8ophy of
Science: the Delaware Seminar (2 volumes, 1963), from the
University of Delaware, and the University of Pittsburgh series
in the philosophy of science (2 volumes, 1962, 1960 )-six
*
Emrori's KoTE:
Article.
The bibliography is listed at the end of the Review
Recent Work
in
481
volumes in three years, containing seventy-two essays. The

same authors tend to recur in each-Gri.inbaum and Hanson are
each represented in four of the six volumes-, yet there is never
theless a wide variety of approach. The genesis of the papers
is the same in each of the three cases: the University sponsors a
lecture series in the philosophy of science, and the lecturer is
asked to write up his paper in a fuller and more formal fashion
later. It is worth noting that this imposes certain limitations:
the topic will tend to be one suitable for a single public lecture
(this eliminates entire territories); the authors will be well
known and orthodox members of the guild (so as to insure an
audience ) ; since the lectures are by invitation, unknown or
unorthodox people are less likely to appear than they would be
in the regular journals. Still, the selection-process thus operated
insures an unusually high standard of craftsmanship; though
sometimes the reader may feel that he has strayed into a private
club, he soon realizes that its members are an articulate and
disciplined group of writers.
There would be a great advantage if each volume could be
centered around a relatively well-defined theme. This was
attempted in the Minnesota series, but although some of the
other volumes promise in their subtitles and introductions a
thematic focus, it never comes off. The reason is simple: if
University A wants to get Professor B to enhance their lecture
series, as a rule they have to take whatever title he suggests.
If the lecture series be made a thematic one, it is much more
difficult to find the people one wants. This is yet another way
in which the rather contingent connection between a prestige
series of uni\'ersity lectures and a valuable and usable book
works to the detriment of both.
Still, it is possible to discover some overall differences between
the four series, iclosyncrasies that give each an individual edi
torial character. The J\Gnnesota series has the: largest volumes;
they get about 40% larger each time, in fact. And many of
Ernan }.;!cMullin
482
their articles are detailed and exhaustive surveys of an entire

area, with a valuable bibliography.
One thinks of the classical
study on " The Mental and the Physical" by Feigl in Volume
II,
Sellars on " Time and the vVorld Order" in Volume
III, and three strikingly different accounts of scientific explan

ation
(averaging 70 pages each) by Hempel,
Feyerabend, also in Volume III.
Scriven, and
The focus of this series has
been on philosophical psychology and on methodology; much of

the best recent work in these two areas can be found here.
The Minnesota volumes are an indispensable research tool for
anyone working in philosophy of science.
The essays in the Pittsburgh series are much shorter, with
the exception of a notable research paper by Feyerabencl in each
volume, one on philosophical issues of quantum mechanics and
the other a lengthy attack on "dogmatic empiricism."
This
last paper has given rise to a good deal of discussion (see below).
A good number of the essays touch on physics (for example,

a delightfully written review of contemporary cosmology by
Philip Morrison, and a provocative discussion of the teleological
aspects of thermodynamics by David Hawkins, and an interest
ing debate between Hanson and Brian Ellis on the significance
of Newton's First " Law "). As befits their lecture origin, most
of the Pittsburgh essays are well presented, and offer a readable
introduction to the problems they treat.
The Delaware volumes are considerably larger than the
Pittsburgh ones (and the second one costs a prohibitive
$15).
They range somewhat more widely in their topics, though the

core is a set of no less than ten papers on the nature of scientific
explanation, by far the most popular topic in recent, philosophy
of science. Most of the remaining papers in Volume I concern
the biological and social sciences; in Volume II physics is the
focus.
One unusual feature of these volumes is that some dis
tinguished research scientists (Hill, Pollard, Wheeler, Glass,

Dobzhansky) were asked to write about philosophical implica-

tions of their fields .
483
The unevenness of the results underlines
one of the most curious features of philosophy of science as a

discipline: its distance from science, or rather the professional
distance between philosophers of science and scientists.
It is odd that a discipline which is supposed to illuminate and
explore another discipline not only has no influence upon that
other discipline but not even any interest, as a rule, for its
exponents.
If one reads the attempts of scientists to write
philosophy of science, one is quite often struck by

na'ivete of
approach,
an earnest,
certain
enthusiastic, hut not very
analytic exploration of the problem.
The best philosophy of
science is hardly ever vnitten by a scientist. It requires techni

ques of conceptual analysis and a familiarity with the historical
development of science that the successful scientist is unlikely to
have had time to acquire. Whereas the philosopher of science
is forced to learn enough science to perform competently in
whatever area of the philosophy of science he has chosen. But
the seientist does not need the exact and critical approach of
the philosopher of science in order to do good science; indeed,
many would maintain that a reflective and critical habit of
mind of this sort would inhibit scientinc creativity.
The remaining two volumes are those in the Boston series.
Th e NSF sponsors a continuing colloquium in the philosophy
of science in Boston, where philosophers of science, logicians,
and scientists of the New England area find
regular forum
for philosophical discussion. The p apers are brief, but they are
followed by one or more comments by invited scholars, and in
Volume I by a transcription of sections of the oral discussion.
This gives them a lively open-ended character, in contrast w ith
the more dennitive stance of the essays in the other three series.
Because most of the writers a re from the Boston area, one finds
names here that are not in any of the other collections. Besides
the inevitable half-dozen papers on explanation, there are some
t antalizingly brief discussions of language and related problems
Ernan McMullin
484
( Chomsky, Lenneberg), a spirited debate between Marcus and

Quine on modal logic and intensions, some good papers on the
philosophy of physics ( Si egel, Schiller, Shimony, Capek), and a
thoughtful essay by Marcuse on Husserl's phenomenological
analysis of the basis of modern mechanics, with a comment by
Gurwitsch.
II.
ANTHOLOGIES:
FESTSCIIRIFTS
Besides the anthology based on a university lecture series,

there is also the more conventional
Festschrift
of essays pre
sented to a senior scholar by his friends and former students.

This form of publication has always been common in Germany,
but it has been under attack for some time as too often involving
a
wasteful use of materials.
from quite disparate fields:
Very often the ess ays would be

a given reader would be unlikely
to be interested in more than a few of them. Thus he would not

buy the book; and it would be found only in the large libraries.
Thus the often excellent essays in it would be virtu ally inaccessi
ble and unknown to the academic public.
have a good essay, don't lose it in a
The moral :
Festschrift,
if you
where it may
do honor to a friend but will meet a fate like that of the Mayan
temple lost in the j ungle and visited only by the most persistent
of searchers.
( If you have a bad essay, of course, a
Festschrift
is ideal for it, unless an International C ongress is near and you

want someone t o subsidize your trip, in which case the Congress
Proceedings-more securely lost in the j ungle even

Festschrift-may be the thing).
The e ditors of some Festschrifts have seen this, and
than the
h ave met
the difficulty, at least p artially, by making the book a thematic

one, or at the very least by focussing it around the work of the
man it is intended t o honor ( instead of allowing j ust any paper
to be submitted, provided the author qualifies as a member of
the circle). In this way, several recent
Festschri'.fts
offered to
distinguished philosophers of sc ience are valuable anthologies of
Recent Worlc
in
485
current work in the philosophy of science. .Among these are

The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy (1964)
offered to Karl Popper and edited by Mario Bunge; Fann and
Strategy in Science ( 1964) offered to Joscph W oodger and
edited by J. R. Gregg and F. T. 0. Harris; The Philosophy of
Rudolf Carnap ( 1DG3), edited by P. .A. Schilpp, not a Fest
schrift strictly speaking, but a volume built around the highly
successful format of the J,ibrary of Living l'hilosophers.
The Popper volume is a sprightly collection of 29 brief essays
covering the range of areas Popper himself covers. .A few of
the essays deal with Popper's own controversial work in the
philosophy of science, but by far the most interesting part of
the book is a series of essays in section 3 by .Agassi, Bohm,
Bunge, Feyerabend, and Ullmo on what might be called the
"ontological implications" of scientific theory in general. .All
of them are critical of the positivist denial of such implication,
though they disagree among themselves as to how far the realist
interpretation ought to be pursued. :Feyerabcnd's f'Ssay, "Real
ism and Instrnmentalism" is a particularly well-reasoned de
fense of the realistic approach that was so unfashionable only
a decade ago, when the influence of Vienna was still strong.
The swing toward some modified form of realist interpreta
tion of scientific models and theories has been very notable in
the last few years; one hardly ever finds the straight Machian
positivism any more, not at least among philosophers of science,
although it appears to he spreading among theoretical physicists,
dispirited by their long-continued failure to find an adequate
reformulation of nuclear and quantum field phenomena. The
spread of the so-called "general systems approach," with its
reliance upon computer summaries of data rather than upon
theories that "account for" the data, is very striking among the
younger theoretical physicists, especially those associated with
the American industrial aerospace complex. This "black-box"
pessimism is deplored by most of the outstanding physicists of
486
Ernan Mc1vIullin
the older generation, but at a time when radical new theories are
simply not forthcoming, though obviously needed, it is not
surprising to find such a failure of methodological nerve. But
it is ironic that it should occur just at the time when the same
attitude, popularized forty years ago by the logical positivists
and at that time quite alien to the intuitive realism of the great
majority of physicists, is beginning to recede in philosophy.
In two important books (1929, 1937), Joseph Woodger did
something no one had ever successfully done before (and few
have done since). He took over the notion of an axiomatic
method from the Principia Mathematica, and using the power
ful analytic tools of logic, proceeded to axiomatize some parts of
biology, notably genetics. It \vas a tour de force in more ways
than one. Many efforts had been made to axiomatize physics,
on the face of it a much easier proposition, but none had been
successful, even with Newtonian mechanics. (None still has).
Since few biologists were familiar with logical techniques and
even fewer could see any point in applying them to biology,
Woodger's pioneer work went for a long time virtually un
recognized. In recent years, the application of formal methods
to the analysis of various parts of science has become more
popular-for example, in the work of Suppes and his associates
at Stanford. But scientists look on this work with much scepti
cism, and all too often justifiably so. They say: to construct an
ingenious and impressive analytic engine that will crank out
metatheorems about some section of science, like animal psy
chology, may impress philanthropic foundations or wealthy in
dustrial firms. But such an engine does not help anyone; it
does not tell the scientist how to proceed, but only analyzes in
a formal language, sufficiently complex to dazzle the uninitiated,
what the scientist is already doing. Nor docs it usually illu
minate \vhat he is doing, i. e., allow the scientist or others
understand better what he is doing.
Nevertheless, supporters of the formal analytic approach can
487
point out that their method-especially if it be a fully axiomatic

one-will clarify concepts and reveal unstated assumptions in
a way that is bound to be helpful to the theoretical scientist, if
he will just pay heed to it. And they will concede that most
such analytic efforts are poorly done and trivial in consequence,
but will urge that this ought not condemn tl1e method out of
hand. Woodger's work could surely be cited by the formalists
in support of their thesis, because it did clarify many of the
loose explanatory and descriptive concepts of biology, somewhat
as Newton had done in mechanics. And his work is having a
considerable influence on theoretical biologists today in their
efforts to formulate general theories.
The Woodger Festschrift is a fitting tribute, although it does
have the peculiar Festschrift weakness: a dozen or more brief
essays of little value, from people who wished to honor Woodger
-or acceded to the pressure of the editors !-but who had
nothing particularly to say at the time. As one would expect,
the best essays in the book are on the methodology of biology
especially jfays and Lewontin on the use of models-, on
specific biological problems where the "second-level" detach
ment of the methodologist can really help the working biologist,
on the philosophical presuppositions of scientific theories-two
good essays by Beckner and Alexander-, and on some problems
raised by formal language systems-a helpful review of the
present position in semantics by Robert Rogers, a highly exten
sionalist analysis of intensions by R. . Martin, and a criticism
by Kemeny of Quine's well-know'll rejection of the analytic
synthetic distinction.
In connection with these last articles, it is interesting to note
how discussions of the analytic-synthetic distinction tend nowa
days to be classified as philosophy of science-or, if one prefers,
to be carried on for the most part by people who are ordinarily
regarded as philosophers of science. Whereas not so long ago,
this problem would have been regarded as the metaphysical
488
Ernan McMullin
problem, par excellence. What has happened in the meantime ?

The answer comes in two parts. First, philosophy of science is
a much more empirical discipline today than was classical
philosophy.
Philosophers of science do not derive their prin
ciples from a more general metaphysics or theory of knowledge,

in the way that virtually all philosophers of science did down to
the eighteenth century. Instead, they tend to look at the methods
actually used by the scientist, at the strategies that have proved
successful, at the concepts used by the scientist in describing
these strategies. This is a quite empirical undertaking, not quite
as empirical as that of the scientist himself, but obviously far
more so than philosophy has been since the time of Descartes.
Most of the work of the philosopher of science is in the domain
of methodology and in this domain his judgments are surely not
synthetic
priori, in any sense of that disputed phrase. He is
concerned with a limited empirical object: the language-system

and procedures of a definite group of people, and although what
he has to say of it may have a bearing on metaphysics, it will
rarely have the same relation to evidence as metaphysics has.
The second point is this: Classical problems, like that of the
analytic-synthetic distinction, have been reformulated in such a
way as to direct them to limited empirical domains-such as
that of natural languages or of artificial formal languages. This
allows them to be treated in a quasi-empirical manner akin to
that of natural science itself.
Evidence is brought from lan
guage-usage or from the implications of the formal language

system, and counter-instances are sought.
The claims made
have an a posteriori character-or on occasion an analytic

character,
classical
if
artificial
metaphysics
languages
certainly
did
are
not
in
question-which
have.
It
is
per
fectly evident that the propositions of contemporary
sem
antics have at least as much in common, from the point of

view of verifiability, in particular, with empirical science as
they have with metaphysics, especially metaphysics in the trans-

cendental tradition.
489
There is a sort of intermediate area of
inquiry, then, which has something of the generality and re

flective character of metaphysics but also something of the
relation to specific, limited empirical evidence that natural
science has.
Philosophy of science is the most obvious instance of such an
area. The main reason, therefore, why such things as the discus
sion of the analytic-synthetic distinction or of the mind-body
problem are located in philosophy of science rather than in
metaphysics nowadays, is that it is felt that there is a com
munity of methodological approach which justifies such a group
ing. It is worth noting that when they are grouped thus, there
will be a tendency to "transcendentalize" metaphysics entirely,
to disconnect it from the empirical order, perhaps to equate
it with irresponsible speculations or trivial vacuity. And it is
certainly true that if philosophy of science and metaphysics be
regarded as sharply separate domains, and if problems like the
analytic-synthetic distinction be apportioned to philosophy of
science, the chances are that "metaphysics" in this view will
deserve all the epithets it gets.
This leads us to perhaps the most important contribution to
the logical and semantical side of the philosophy of science in
many years, The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap.
This volume,
whose enormous size (1088 pp.) almost proved its undoing and
did delay its publication for years, is a satisfyingly complete
exposition of, and commentary on, the work of the major figure
in the logic of science during the 1930-1950 period.
Carnap
began as a physicist, and with Reichenbach laid the foundations

for the powerful analytic approach to the language and logical
interstructure of science of the Vienna Circle. In the thirties,
he moved from positivism to the physica1ism he still espouses.
His major contributions to philosophy of science lay in his
construction of artificially simplified language systems whose
syntax and semantics could be completely specified;
within
490
Ernan
JJfcMullin
these, concepts like law and confirmation and explanation could

then be defined in a postulational and clearcut way. The
subtlety and forbidding complexity of his analyses are legend
ary, but they have been perhaps one of the most important
factors in the formation of the present generation of philo
sophers of science in the United States.
This volume contains a valuable summary by Carnap of his
own work in language analysis, in probability theory, and on the
foundations of physicalism and logical empiricism. This is
followed by twenty-six detailed essays by some of the leading
logicians and philosophers of science of the United States on
various aspects of Carnap's work. The essays are critical and,
for the most part, very carefuHy done. In the final section
(150 pp.), Carnap replies to each of his commentators in an
unusually direct and thorough way. .All in all, the volume is
surely a model of that sort of constructive dialogue to which the
Library of Living Philosophers is dedicated. One limitation,
perhaps, is that practically all of the contributors are in sym
pathy both with Carnap's reconstructive approach to language
and with his logical empiricism. But some sort of minimal
agreement usually is necessary for fruitful dialogue, and besides
it would not be easy to find-in .America at least-major phi
losophers of scienc e who disagree on fundamental issues with
Carnap.
The essays might be divided into three categories. First come
those dealing with what I might call the " metaphysics of
science." (Carnap would emphatically reject this label; " meta
physical " is still a term of reproach to him). .Articles by
Popper, Morris, Feigl, Frank, and Cohen discuss in a lucid way
the sort of metaphysics that Carnap's advocacy of physics as
the model of human knowing leads to. Carnap's famous " mean
ing postulates," which he was forced to introduce as a means
of anchoring his constructed language-systems, and the " reduc
tion-sentences " associated with them, are shown to have some-
Recent Work
in
491
thing of the synthetic a priori about them. Popper's essay on

the demarcation of science and metaphysics-one of his own
most characteristic theses-shows that despite Carnap's insistent
opposition to "metaphysics" as meaningless, he has never
succeeded in adequately characterizing it. The second category
consists of essays on logic and semantics, including one by
Strm\-son, the only one in the book that meets Carnap head-on.
Stra-wson forcefully argues that an explication given in a
technically-constructed language cannot possibly help to solve a
problem that can properly be called a "philosophical" problem.
This paper and Carnap's careful answer to it constitute one of
the best treatments I know of the basic division between the two
"analytical " schools in contemporary philosophy. Finally,
there are some essays that touch more directly on issues in
philosophy of science: Hempel on Carnap's analysis of theo
retical terms, Griinbaum on time and geometry, and Nagel,
Kemeny, Putnam, and Burks on induction. All in all, this
book is not only a monument to a great philosopher, but also
indirectly furnishes the most comprehensive argument for the
empiricist-constructivist approach to philosophy of science
espoused by him.
The most recent Festschrift in philosophy of science is 1vlind,
llfotter, and Method (l!)(j(j) in honor of Herbert Feigl. About
half of the twenty-six essays which make up this volume are
devoted to the mind-body prohlem, to which Feigl has devoted
most of his attention in recent years. Paul Meehl contributes
an 80-page monograph analyzing Fcigl's identity thesis of mind
and body by means of an ingenious "thought experiment."
Scriven eontributes a brief but incisive criticism of the idPntity
thesis; Sellars gives a telling critique of phcnomcnalism; S. S.
Stevens summarizes the successes-in which he himself played
an important part-of the measurement approach to sensory
experience. The second part of the book contains a dozen brief
pieces on rnrions methodological problems; one on probability
492
Ernan
]f:[cMullin
and content-measure by Carnap, and a sympathetic analysis of

the logical empiricists' verifiability criterion of meaning by
Salmon, may be especially noted. Tho final section of the book is
concerned with philosophy of physics and contains a detailed
critical account by Mchlberg of the rnrious philosophical conse
quences that have been drawn from the special theory of re
lativity.
III.
ANTHOLOGIES:
OoKFEREcEs
There have been relatively few publications recently of the

proceedings of conferences in the philosophy of science. The
only regular conferences of this sort are the Section L Christmas
meetings of the AAAS which alternate between history of
science and philosophy of science each year. The proceedings
for the 1959 meeting was published in 1D61 as Current Issues
in the Philosophy of Science, and contains a great many short
papers, as well as numerous comments and rejoinders. Some of
the discussions arc especially lively ( e. g., th at of Sellars' paper
on the language of theories, that of Hanson on the logic of
discovery and that of Barker on simplicity in explanation).
But the book was not an economic success, and the AAAS
meetings have proved more and more difficult to organize,
especially because they coincide each year with the Eastern
Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association,
thus forcing philosophers of science to declare their allegiance.
Happily, beginning in 1968, there will be a regular two or
three-day meeting for philosophers of science in the fall of
alternate years, sponsored by the Philosophy of Science .A.sso
ciation and (probably) the AAAS. This should give a good
forum.
The proceedings of the International Congress in philosophy
of science held at Stanford in 1860, appeared in 1962 under
the title: Logic, 111ethodology and Philosophy of Science. This
was an especially useful volume because it included the work
493
of many Europeans who are otherwise not well-known here.

The general trend of the meeting was unusually formalist
(partly no doubt because of its being located at Stanford, where
this approach is dominant). Some of the best papers dealt with
linguistics (Chomsky, Bar-Hillel), philosophy of the social
and biological sciences (better represented here than in any of
the other volumes discussed above), and philosophy of mathe
matics (one-third of the entire volume!). The next Inter
national Congress will be held in Amsterdam next August, HJG7,
and a great number of United States representatives will be
there.
In 1960, a colloquium on model theory was held in Utrecht,
and the papers appeared in 1961 as The Concept and Role of
the Model in Mathematics and the Social Sdences. Most of the
papers were concerned with mathematical and logical aspects
of models, but a fe-w dealt with physics (Groenewold, :ilfolck
huyse), and there is a good general paper by Suppes on the
different uses of models. In 1961, a conference was held at the
University of Notre Dame on "The Concept of Matter." The
resultant papers with some of the discussions of the conference
appeared as a volume under the same title in Hl63. This >vas
an attempt at a completely thematic treatment, from a Yariety
of points of view, of a single concept in the philosophy of nature.
The aim was not only to illuminate the role that the notion of
matter has played in philosophy and in science but also in
directly to help decide one of the thorniest questions facing the
Aristotelian today; is there a philosophy of nature, properly
so-called, and if there is, how is it to be distinguished from
science on the one side and philosophy of science 011 the other
IV.
T.1<XTBOOKs IN PnILosorny OF ScTENCE
Two of the best textbooks appeared five years ago. Kagel's

Structure of Science (1961) is the most thorough treatment
of the major topics available in any language. It is empiricist
494
Ernan McMullin
in its general orientation, somewhat sceptical of any philosophy

that is not rooted in science. Yet this does not intrude on the
careful analysis of law, theory, types of explanation. Besides
methodological issues, the author also discusses substantive prob
lems connected with physics and biology. Two of the more
original chapters deal with the vexed questions of "levels " in
nature-and the associated topics of reduction and emergence
and of teleology in nature. Nagel defends sharply non-Aris
totelian views on both of these questions. The major fault of
the book is its length; everything is done in such detail that
the reader gets the impression of a steamroller that leaves no
slightest sign of philosophical life after it has passed. The
late Arthur Pap's Introdiiction to the Philosophy of Science
(1962) is at the same high level of technique and complexity.
But it focuses much more on the logical issues than K agel's book
does. The contrast between the two books is the contrast between
naturalism in the Dewey tradition with its " feel " for what
scientists are doing and what issues are important to them,
and logical empiricism in the Carnap tradition, more aloof from
the practice of the scientist but more rigorous and formalized
in its logical analysis.
Since 1962, a number of excellent undergraduate textbooks
have appeared ( Pap and Nagel wrote for graduate students).
Four of them deserve special mention. N ash's Naturc of the
Natural Sciences ( 1963) is most unusual in that it is written
by a scientist. Nash has worked for years in the teaching of
science to non-science students at Harvard. He draws very little
upon contemporary discussions among philosophers of science;
rather, he builds upon the practice of science as he knows it,
and upon the history of science as the major resource in our
understanding of what science is. There is nothing of the logical
technique and the formal analysis of the conventional Carnapian
approach. And indeed the analyses are frequently sloppy and
repetitive. ( For example, he lists the three criteria that qualify
495
facts as " scientific ": reproducibility, concurrence, regularity,

yet these are clearly not independent criteria as he defines
them).
But the book has a real freshness and open-endedness
about it that commend it as a textbook.
It is highly readable
which the more formal books, with all their merits, rarely are.
The author is wary of imposing stereotypes from logic or
philosophy
upon scientific method;
he concludes that this
method is far less well-defined, far more tentative, than it is

often said to be.
David Hawkins' Language of Natur e (1964) is an urbane
and wide-ranging review of the philosophic issues raised by
mathematics, physics and biology. The writer is Aristotelian in
his general sympathies and has much of interest to say of the
relations between modern natural science
and
Aristotelian
physics. He builds up to a chapter on the soul, in which man

is presented as a unique sort of being, on the basis of a careful
preliminary study of the cell, of learning, and of cultural
evolution, using the techniques and insights of information
theory. Despite the title of the book there is no special emphasis
on language. Hawkins is critical of contemporary empiricisms,
and thus though he is familiar with what is going on in phi
losophy of science, he goes his own way. His treatment of the
notion of probability is especially good.
Peter Caws' Philosophy of Science (1965) has forty-four
chapters averaging nine pages each.
He manages to pack an
extraordinary amount into each chapter-his nine pages on the

foundations of mathematics is surely a masterpiece of conden
sation.
The style is sprightly, and the book would be excellent
as preliminary reading for an undergraduate course. The con

trast between Caws' and Nagel's books is especially striking:
they espouse almost exactly the same positions, but Caws covers
a wider territory in one-third of the space.
The inevitable
penalty is superficiality-you really can't cover " Space, Time,

Matter " in seven pages-, yet there is an incisiveness and
496
Ernan McMullin
clarity of conception here that more ambitious books could

well copy.
Israel Scheffier's Anatomy of Inquiry (1963) covers roughly
the same range of topics as Pap's 1962 book.
It is a careful
analysis of the themes of explanation, significance and con

firmation, using all the techniques of formal logic.
Scheffier
takes the Hempel-Carnap account of explanation and pursues its

logical consequences with great subtlety and rigor.
The most
notable part of the book is a discussion of pragmatism and

different
types of
"fictionalism"
as the major competing
accounts of the meaning of scientific terms. He shows in detail

what the advantages and disadvantages of these two philoso
phical orientations are in the attempt to make sense of what
scientists do and say.
Other orientations are not discussed.
The book is a difficult one, and is not so much a textbook, in

the ordinary sense as a discussion of the logical consequences
of one particular way of doing philosophy of science.
In addition to these four, several other books are worth
noting.
Hempel's Philosophy of Natural Science (1966) is
an unpretentious little paperback in which the issues of in

duction, hypothesis-testing, the role of general laws, and ex
planation, are simply treated.
It is a good short survey of
the empiricist position on these topics, persuasively argued.

Korner's recent Experien ce and Theory
(1966)
presents a
general philosophy of science quite different in its structure

to those surveyed above.
The first third of the book is a
detailed general epistemology, in which the " schemata" of

empirical pre-scientific differentiation are discussed, and a
three-valued logic is proposed for the borderline propositions
necessary in any perceptual account of the world.
Part Two
argues that hypothetico-deductivc: systems are idealizations of

experience; even classical elementary logic would be regarded
by the author as an idealization because of its formal unification
of experience. It is in this section that the author's generally
Recent
Work
in
Philo sophy of
Science
497
Kantian orientation as well as his expertise in the philosophy

of mathematics are both displayed at their best. In the final
part, he discusses the relation between theory and experience,
and suggests that the domain of the intensional as revealed by
introspection and specifically the areas of action and choice have
to be taken more seriously than they usually are if an adequate
account of how theories are confirmed by experience is to be
given. The book is the only systematic work on the philosophy
of science in English in recent years that takes a metaphysical
stand that may fairly he called neo-Kantian, although the author
departs from Kant quite explicitly in some respects.
But for an all-out onslaught on empiricist philosophy of
science, there has been nothing for many years to equal Errol
Harris' Foundations of Metaphysics in Science (1965). This
is not really a textbook, but because of its inclusive and synthetic
character, it is most conveniently considered in this section.
Harris holds that the task of the philosopher is two-fold: 1)
to constmct a metaphysics from the evidence provided by the
results of the natural sciences; 2) to constmct a theory of
knowledge from a critical consideraton of the methods of
investigation used in science. He rejects empiricist philosophies
of science--all of them deriving, in his view, ultimately from
Russell's logical atomism-as being a priori metaphysics masque
rading under the banner of an anti-metaphysics. He arg11es that
a truly e mpir ic a l approach to natural science would take the
results of science seriously and not construct philosophic
categories without constantly checking them against relevant
scientific findings. According to him, extensional logic and
Humean reduction of all matters of fact to disconnected par
ticulars simply cannot begin to account for the world revealed
by science. Since logical empiricism builds on both of these,
he claims that it is incompatible with good science, and especial
ly with results of twentieth century science.
Leaving the Russell-Carnap orthodox staggering from this
498
Ernan McMullin
attack, he then goes on to range over the domains of physics,

biology, and psychology, in succession, in order to discern the
grounds for an adequate metaphysics. His knowledge of science
is wide, so that his inquiry is well worth following closely.
He is influenced by Alexander and Whitehead in his account of
physics; his approach to biology is very similar to that of
Teilhard, except that he is uneasy-as most philosophers have
been-with Teilhard's sharp dualism between two types of ex
planatory agency in accounting for change, radial energy and
tangential energy. But he feels that there is solid evidence for
"some sort of nisus to the construction of coherent complexes
in which [physical] potentialities are progressively more fully
and fruitfully realized" (p. 154). It is only in the last few
chapters that he begins what he calls a preliminary sketch of
a metaphysics which would be adequate to the rich data he
has uncovered in theories ranging from quantum physics to
gestalt psychology. His metaphysics is one of process, in which
there is emergence of new qualities, but the potentialities for
these were there in advance so there is nothing scientifically
out-of-reach about them. What ultimately appears as mind was
potentially present in all that preceded it, but he strenously
rejects Teilhard's claim that mind and consciousness were
present in matter at an imperceptibly low level even before
the development of cellular life. He criticizes many of the
idealist theses about spirit and idea, rejects Bergson's 6"lan and
the panpsychism of Whitehead.
There is no room here to evaluate this important work, but
it may be worth giving a few impressions. 1) Harris' critique
of empiricism is a valid reminder of weaknesses in that doctrine,
but many of the positions he criticizes are no longer defended
by any empiricists. 2) His review of scientific theories is
rewarding, and reminiscent of that performed by Teilhard in
The Phenomenon of Man. 3) He avoids the obvious pitfalls
in earlier process theories, such as those of Alexander, Smuts,
499
and Teilhard. He affirms the continuity of process-Teilhard

hesitated on this, and denied it in the case of human origins;
Harris denies the presence of a spiritual imperceptible causal
agency working through process; he denies a teleological impulse
to an Omega point. But the trouble is that it is not clear as
yet just what he affirms. What is left after one has taken
account of all the negations in the last few chapters of his book
may just possibly not be a consistent affirmation. We shall see.
In any event, this work is strongly recommended to Teilhard
admirers. Harris uses the same evidence as Teilhard does nnd
sets out to achieve a goal not unlike Teilhard's, but his use of
explanatory models is much more disciplined than is Teilhard's,
principally because he knows intimately the long and complex
history of process metaphysics.
v.
STUDIES IN METHODOLOGY
There have been several recent interesting studies of specific

aspects of the methodology of science: one on explanation by
Hempel, one on confirmation by Popper, one on the relation
ship between science and philosophy by Smith, and one on
"Copernican rcrnlutions" by Kuhn. Ifompel's Aspects of Sci
entific Explana. t ion gathers many of his earlier essays, and adds
one new and notable one-a monograph of 166 pages-on the
theme of his title. Hempel has been the principal protagonist
of the view that explanation in science consists of deductions
from general "laws " which are structurally identical with
predictions. In this detailed study, Hempel modifies his original
view in a number of respects, making use of a great deal of
interesting historical material. It is interesting to see how the
almost wholly non-historical logical approach of the Vienna
Circle has gradually given way to a much richer use-for the
same logical purposes-of the resources of the history of science.
This book gives the best empiricist account of the complex topic
of explanation, a topic which is the key to much of the work in
United States philosophy of science over the past decade.
Ernan McMullin
500
and
R efu t at i ons is a collection of
previously published articles.
Many of them deal with his
Popper's
Conje ctures
characteristic view of verification in science as progressive

non-falsification, a growth in the probability of a theory as
successive efforts to refute it fail.
This view of science allows
him to make a sharp cut between science and " metaphysics."
A metaphysical position may be false but is not " refutable."

He is critical of the logical empiricist account of the science
metaphysics distinction.
Yet his own view leads to notable
difficulties, especially in his doctrine of probability, as the many

critics of his earlier Logic of Scientific D isc overy pointed out.
Through his thought is fresh and forceful and though his
basic point about non-falsification and confirmation is sound,
his work often has a paradoxical and personal character that
has prevented it-in America more than in Popper's adopted
Britain-from having a major influence.
Vincont Smith's Science and Philoso ph y is an eloquent plea
for a philosophy of natur e that would be prior to em pir ical
science and that would differ from it not by a distinction of
method but only in terms of generality.
It would differ from
contemporary philosophy of science in that its analysis of nature

would not depend on specific scientific methods or findings,
but would proceed simply from the quite generic knmvledge of
nature available to every man. It would differ from metaphysics
-in the classical sense of that torm-by the restriction of its
object to the level of the changing physical realm.
The author
thus has to stake out a territory that will differ from science
( although presupposed implicitly in the conceptual set that
scientists bring to their science) , from philosophy of science
( though in continuity with it on many problems, such as the
nature of time and space) , and from metaphysics ( though many
of its distinctions will have analogues in metaphysics) .
The
territory is clearly a precarious one, bordered by three such

powerful neighbors.
Recent Wark
in
501
Smith follows an unexpected path, however. Two early

chapters summarize the entire history of modern science. One
chapter of forty pages has to suffice for the history of the
major theories in physics, chemistr', and hiology of the last
200 years. Inevitably it cannot be much more than a report
of findings, so that a non-scientist reading it could hardly at
the end be said to understand what has happened during those
two centuries of scientific effort. He would, at best, only know
something of the successive models. Two more chapters are
devoted to a similar rapid review in philosophy: the first
contains summaries of the major views on the nature of science
from Aquinas' time to our own, and the second is a clearly
drawn and useful review of philosophies of science of our own
century. There is an immense amount of erudition here, a
reporting of results with voluminous and up-to-date references,
which make the book not a students' textbook but rather a
scholarly monograph on a specific methodological theme. But
the summarization is so severe that the author is at times
forced to oversimplify and hence gets caught between two
different sorts of format.
It is instructive to compare and contrast Harris' and Smit h' s
account of what the philosopher does with science. Each feels
that the philosopher must take account of what goes on in
science, but whereas Harris derives his phi1osophy of nature
(that he calls it "metaphysics " does not mean that it is
metaphysics in Smith's sense) , from a careful scrutiny of
science, Smith's philosophy of nature is prior to science and
is implicit in its procedures. But Harris could well pose a
question to Smith: if philosophy of nature is prior, why
should one involve oneself in these summaries of the findings
of scientific theories, present and past ? What is their precise
relevance to the theme ? It is not from them that philosophy
of nature is to be derived, according to Smith. Their analysis
gives us, rather, philosophy of science after the modern fashion,
502
Ernan McMullin
or else a philosophy of nature which, like Harris', is logically

based on science and is not prior to it.
Perhaps Smith could answer that a prior philosophy of nature
will still show in the workings of science ; one speaks, for
example, of Newton's " philosophy of nature." But if this is
to be the source of our philosophy of nature, in what precise
sense is it prior to science ? How is it to be corrected ? How is
it to be related to a philosophy of nature which-like Aristotle's
-is worked out independently of any review of the specific
scientific theories of the day ? In the last analysis, there is an
ambiguity here that has to be resolved : either philosophy o:f
nature is evidentially prior to natural science, or else part, at
least, o:f the evidence in its support derives, however indirectly,
:from science. I:f one holds the former, it will be unnecessary to
review the history o:f science, except perhaps to criticize faulty
philosophies of nature that have showed up in it along the way.
But it will be necessary to detail sources o:f pre-scientific
knowledge of nature sufficiently stable and reliable to make th e
findings of science evidentially irrelevant to them. If one
defends the latter alternative, it is no longer correct to speak
of one's philosophy of nature as being " prior " to science. The
difficulty lies in the notion of " priority " here; it is implicit
in the Aristotelian assumption that since the general is " prior "
to the particular, a science of the general is possible without any
specific recourse to the particular, other than by way of illumi
nating instance. Here more than anywhere else, perhaps, there
is a head-on collision between philosophies of nature of Aris
totelian inspiration and nearly all the philosophies of science
o:f the present century. The Aristotelian is, it seems to me,
forced either to modify his thesis on " priority " or else become
a phenomenologist.
One of the most controversial, as well as most influential
books, in recent philosophy of science has been Kuhn's Strucfore
of Scientific Revo lutions (1962). Kuhn argues that during

"normal "
periods
of
science,
certain
"paradigm "
503
is
generally accepted, certain basic models, methods , criteria of

meaning. During such a period, science is simply a matter of
problem-solving ; the paradigm is a rich source of problems
as well as of hints as to their solution.
But sometimes the
paradigm itself has to be overthrown, and this is what Kuhn

calls a "scientific revolution," a " change of world-view."
The
criteria for adoption of the new paradigm cannot be specified :

it is not a simple question of probabilistic verification, as would
be the case within a given paradigm.
So the theories of
verification--or falsification-of Hempel, Popper, et al., can

not be applied here.
The competing paradigms are radically
incommensurable with one another : the transition from one to

the other is a " gestalt switch " guided not by logic or by an
allegedly neutral experience but by all sorts of aesthetic and
psychological factors. Once the switch occurs, no evidence for
the new paradigm will then be needed.
The book has the vices of vagueness and circularity that are
all too often
associated with this sort of quasi-sociological
inquiry. Nowhere do we really learn what a " paradigm " is ;

its relationship with "scientific revolutions " is dangerously
close to the definitional, which would make the author's thesis
a tautology.
quarters
But it has been already criticized in so many
( Shapere's
for 1 9 6 4 is
critique
in
The
Philosophica l Revie w
particularly effective one)
cism is scarcely necessary.
that further criti
What is of more interest is to
note that the book is significant in two ways. First, it illustrates

a growing-and healthy trend-among philosophers of science
to do careful spadework in the history of science in support
of their views.
More and more it is coming to be seen that
philosophy of science cannot be successfully carried on by

logical analyses of the science of one period, whether our own
or any other.
The all-important dimension of time will be
missing, and thus one will miss not only the problems of
504
Ernan JJ1cMullin
discovery but also the real problems about confirmation. To

put this in another way, the philoso1ihy of science is an essen
tially historical undertaking, and the failure of the logical
empiricists to see this has greatly impoverished American phi
losophy of science in the past.
Second, Kuhn's work-especially if taken in conjunction with
the more recent articles of Feyerabend-opposes the empiricist
notions of confirmation that have dominated nearly all modern
philosophies of science and suggests in their place a rather
subjectivist and relativist account, possessing some obvious
affinities with the Hegelian tradition. According to Feyerabend,
there is no such thing as a neutral observation language;
every observation statement is already " theory-laden," and
hence the relations between it and the theory it is supposed
to " support " are in a sense circular. Besides, there will be
no way of comparing theories relatively to a set of observations,
since one or other theory will already he built into the reports
of the observations. We have come a long way here from the
Vienna Circle. And some have claimed to detect, in conse
quence, a swing toward idealism in contemporary American
philosophy of science.
If there is one, however, it is hard to see. Feyerabend's
thesis is open to grave objections : in the vast majority of cases,
the theory 11 packed into " the observation statement will not
be the one the statement is intended to support. The major
exception will be cosmological theories-such as the theory of
relativity-where the very categories of observation, space,
time, mass, are the concern also of the theory. But even here,
it will be possible to formulate the observation-statements in
terms of one theory or the other-the observed value of the
precession of the perihelion of :Mercury does in fact depend
upon whether classical or relativistic notions of space and time
be used. Discrepancies can then be sought between the theory
and the observation-statement formulated in terms of that
505
theory. Though the Feyerabend thesis thus loses its sting and
the Kuhn thesis is not sufficiently precise to have a serious
sting, yet they do underline the complexity of those processes
by which scientists become persuaded of the validity of a new
theory, especially a far-reaching one, and they show that the
old simplistic accounts, whether inductive or hypothetico-deduc
tive, work much better in the manual than they ever do in the
laboratory.
Another topic of great interest at present is that of models in
science. The term is used in many quite different senses, but
as used by the physicist, it raises questions about the logical
relation between theory and model, the role played by models
in discovery, and the ontological status of the model-docs it
tell us something of the underlying structure of the world ?
Thes e crucial questions have been the special domain of Mary
Hesse for years past, ever since her early book Science and the
Iluman Imagination, and lier more recent masterful Forces and
Fields. Her essays on this topic are gathered in !Jfodels and
Analogies in Science ( 1 9 6 6 ) which, despite its small size, is
full of good insights. Her most important contribution is the
notion of " material analogy " as the relation between model
and explicandum. She defends a strongly realist view of scienti
fic theory ; in the more positivist days when she began to write,
hers was a lonely voice, but in the last few years, especially
since philosophers of science have begun to tum, as she did, to
the history of science for their materials, a faint but definite
chorus of support can be heard.
A few other works may be listed briefly. Schlesinger's
Method in the Physical Sciences ( 1 9 6 3 ) is an unusual attempt
to discern four principles ( simplicity, micro-reduction, con
nectivity, verification) at work in scientific procedures, prin
ciples that arc supplementary to the more basic principles of
causality and uniformity of nature--and like them regulative
in character. But they are more specific ; they tell us more of
Ernan M cMullin
506
the world in which we actually live than do the more general

principles.
( Schlesinger's " principles " would form a philoso
phy of nature discerned in the actual practice of the scientist,

and revelatory of general structures of n ature).
Philosophy of
Science
( II,
1962 )
Van I,aer's
is a rather run-of-the-manual
scholastic account of the divisions between the " sciences," of

kind that seems very antiquated today.
The entire conceptual
apparatus of the book and the types of distinction drawn are

de rived from above, from a prior epistemology, rather than from
the sciences themselves. This approach has the advantage of an
epistemological consistency that contemporary modes of " divid
ing " the sciences often l ack.
But it has the enOTmous dis
advantage of an artificiality, an inescapably ad hoc character,

especi ally when theology, philosophy, and physics are all to be
rated as " science. "
It is worth asking what the " dividing "
of disciplines in supposed to accomplish, if it is not to illuminate

what actually goes on in each domain.
And the imposition of
an abstract schema can never substitute in this regard for a

close and p atient investigation of what the practitioners of the
" science " are actually doing.
The Hayden colloqui a on scientific method continue to ap
pear : the most r ecent are Parts and Wholes
and
Effect ( 1 9 6 5 ) .
(1963)
and
Cause
The papers in these volumes originate a s
lectures at M. I. T. ; they a r e concerned with t h e most general

explanatory or descriptive concepts used by the various disci
plines.
biology
nomics
The notion of cause is studied in physics

( Mayr),
s ociology
( Pa rsons), politics
(Samuelson), and so on.
( Nagel),
( Dahl),
eco
This is not philosophy of
s cience in the strict sense, but the effort to link the different
discipl ines in this way is surely methodology at its best.
The
essays are quite uneven in quality, but s ome a re good.

Three anthologies for student use may be noted.
lJ;J ethod and
Meaning ( 1 9 6 3 )
Science,
with short excerpts from the
writings of scientists and of philosophers of science, quite skill-
R e cent Work in Philosophy of Science
507
fully j uxtaposed, useful for a n elementary course ; Studies in
Explanation ( 1 9 6 3 ) an ambitious and unusual collection of

explanations of different sorts drawn from the writings of
scientists from Herodotus to Freud, excellent as collateral read
ing for a more advanced class in conj unction, say, with various
logical analyses of explanation ;
Philosophical Pro blems of
Natural Science ( 1 9 6 5 ) , a brief and somewhat scrappy collec

tion of ess ays by recent philosophers of science on a wide
diversity of topics.
VI.
IMPLICATIO:N"S OF SPECIFIC THEORIES
In recent decades, the two theories that have excited most

philosophical attention have been, of course, the theories of
relativity and of quanta.
There has been little activity, how
ever, on the rel ativity front, either in science or in philosophy,

for the past decade. In fact, if it were not for Adolf Griinbaum's
enormous and frequent monograph-articles, philosophers might
have forgotten that there is a problem there.
His Philosophical
Pro blems of Space and Time ( 1 9 6 3 ) is the only recent book

length work in English on the complex conceptual problems
posed by the two theories of relativity, the restricted and the
general.
The book suffers from many handicaps : the already
di:fficult subj ect matter is made to appear even more inaccess ible
by an involuted and distressingly opaque style of writing ; the
book is organized, like the older type of scholastic manual, in
terms of major
and minor polemics.
Every thesis has
adversarii who have to b e hunted out a n d destroyed.
its
This is
a great pity, because the book is enormously erudite,
and
Griinbaum has no peer, since Reichenbach' s death, in this

complicated field.
The major target of many of his shafts is,
indeed, Reichenbach : the two differ in their manner of relating

geometry and physics-Reichenbach's conception of geometry
is the more empirical of the two-and in the represent ation of
time as " flowing, " which Griinbaum rej ects.
But they agree
508
Ernan JJf.ell[ullin
in their defense of a causal theory of time and in their oppo

sition to the thesis, defended on occasion by E instein himself,
that the choice of geometries for physics is a conventional affair,
since, so it is argued, it will always be possible to modify some
interpretive link between the geometry and the physics or some
postulate of the physics itself in order to bring the two into line.
Griinbaum criticizes this conventionalist account of veri:fication
refutation, which goes back to Duhem, and argues that it was
not espoused by Poincare, as is usually assumed.
The philosophers' discussion of quantum theory still goes on,
though not as hotly as ten or twenty years ago. The anthologies
listed at the beginning of this article contain
of
essays,
including some lengthy and
Feyerabend, on microphysics.
large number
important
ones by
There has been no recent book
length study in English on this area except for Patrick Heelan' s

recent Quantum 1lfe chanics and O bje ctivity ( 1 9 6 6 ) which I
haYe not yet seen. Sefraggi' s Causa l itc'l c inde terminis m a ( 1!) 6 1 )
is a quite competent review o f the discussions that have gone
on since 1 9 2 7 about indeterminism, the uncertainty principle
and the principle of causality.
The book ends with a defense
of caus ality in the classical philosophical sense.
It is stri king
that almost the only continental European philosophers who

have taken the trouble to master these complicated areas of
discussion in contemporary philosophy of science, requiring a s
they d o a competence both in physics and in philosophy, have
been
scholastic
philosophers
in
th e
Thomist tradition
Selvaggi in Italy and Biichel in Germany.

this
is clear :
like
The reason for
the i dea that the scrutiny of nature might
lead to something of philosophical interest died a long while

ago on the European continent, borne down hy the weight
of
the
abortive
Hegelian
" N aturphilosophie "
on
the
on e
hand, a n d the disapproval o f various existenti alist human

isms on the other.
Only among Thomists did
philosophy of
nature remain alive ; even though quite alien to much of con-
509
temporary philosophy of science, it oriented its adherents to

the sort of cosmological problem that their non-scholastic col
leagues would dismiss as philosophically uninteresting.
The reader will doubtless have noticed that Selvaggi's is the
first book not in English mentioned in the course of this article.
This does not mean that there is not some writing on philosophy
of science in Spanish (especially in South America ) , in French
(especially on science as a cultural force ) , in German (on
philosophy of physics, in particular ) . But most of this writing
is derivative, and it plays almost no part in the philosophical
dialogue of the non-English-speaking countries themselves.
Seldom has a philosophical subject been as closely identified
with a language and a geographic location as philosophy of
science has become in this century. Despite its German origins,
it finds little suppmt in the Germany of today. Even in Eng
land, the hostility of many, though not all, of the language
philosophers towards its technicalities has inhibited its growth
and popularity.
Hanson's Concept of the Positron (1963 ) , like his earlier
Patterns of Discovery, is a somewhat disorganized but always
interesting voyage through less-known corners in the history of
science, this time quantum theory, in order to make some of the
author's favorite points about the nature of discovery in science,
its "insightful " and non-rule-governed character. Eight of
the nine chapters of the book have very little to do with the
question of the positron ; in a way, it is a pity that Hanson
decided to make the positron the focus of the book since this is
accomplished only at the expense of rather artificial cross-refer
ring. The philosophical purposes of the hook do not really
require the emphasis on the positron suggested by the title.
An area of growing philosophical interest is that of cyber
netics, information theory, and brain-computer analogy. Accord
ing to many, the developments in this area hold out hope for
illuminating that oldest of philosophical problems, the relation
510
Ernlln JJ1 c]J{ullin
of mind and body in man.

of a different sort :
So far, however, the impact has been
the cybernetics people h ave taken over a
great many terms from ordinary language usage-" i nforma

ton, " " memory, " " computcr,"-since no other terms were avail
able. This has led to much confusion, some1 of it ludicrous-as
whe n Von Neumann solemnly wondered whether man really had
a memory " in the proper sense " or not.
Philosophers h ave
thus been forced to analyze these terms far more carefully than
h ad ever been done before, s ince the slightest nuance can m ake
a crucial difference when the terms are shifted in ap plication
from man to machine.
Thus, the first philosophical fruit of
the cybernetic " revolution " has been in the area of conceptual
analysis.
Among the very many recent works that might be
listed, S ayre's Recognition ( 1 9 6 5 ) is

acute
analysis
of
cybernetic
goo d example of this
concepts-recognition,
classifi
cation, simulation-and i ts app1ication to the resolution of

apparently insoluble questions about " what machines can do."
T h e role of the philosopher here is not to bring new information,
but only to allow the scientist to cl arify his own language in
order that the implicati ons of wh at he i s doing may more clearly
emerge, and that he may, hopefully, achieve his uwn scientific
goal the more readily in consequence.
Other books may be listed : Van 1felsen's extremely thorough
Evolution and Philosophy ( 1 9 6 5 ) which I have reviewed else
where ; Behaviorism and Phenomenology ( 1 D H 4 ) , an extremely
provocative
set
of
( Skinner, 1facLeod,
essays
Koch,
from
the
acknowledged
:Malcolm, Rogers )
leaders
of two quite
disparate schools of thought regarding the proper methodology

for psychology ;
(1963 ) ,
Smart's Philosophy llnd Scientific Realism
rather confused defense of the view that experi
ence is identcal >vth a physi co-chemical process in the brain and

the correlative thesis that " man is a machine."
Recent Work
VII.
in
511
ScrnNCE AND MAN
Uncler this heading, we can group studies of scientific

creativity, of the philosophical issues of technology, of sociology
of science, and of science and religion, and pick a few titles out
of a very large literature in each area. It is fairly generally
admitted that there is no "logic " of scientific discovery, in
the sense of a set of rules that would guide one to a new theory,
say. There is an irreducible "leap" involved in theoretical
discovery, and the ability to make this "leap" seems to vary
greatly one from one person to another. Creativity, especially
creativity in science, has come in for intensive study recently.
Psychologists want to know how it can be identified. They
are especially anxious to discover other more tractable person
ality traits that would correlate with creativity so that one
could predict with some assurance: this man >vill be creative,
for example, as a physicist. Second, they are anxious to know
if creativity can be fostered or in any way stepped up. Crea
tivity has become such an obvious national resource today that
large sums of money are available for the study of problems
such as these. For a good sampling of the sort of work that
is being done, see Essays on Creat ivity in ihe Sciences ( 1 0 6 3 ) ;
Scientific Creativity : Its Recognit ion and Develop ment ( 1 9 63) ;
W1:dening Horizons in Crecdivity ( 1 0 64) . To an outsider these
volumes given the impression of much movement and research
sweat but almost no light so far.
The question of the creative act itself: how the person
"shifts gear" so that something radically new comes forth,
is, of course, rarely studied, since according to behavioristic
tenets, this is a pseudo-problem about internal processes posses
sing no external correlate. There is no empirical way of ap
proach to the problem other than simply asking a lot of creative
people, as Ghiselin did in his useful little paperback The
Creative Process, to try to reconstruct what they did when.
Koestler in his A ct of Creation (19 64) gives a magisterial
512
Ernan Mc.Mullin
survey of various such reconstructions and of the psychological

theories put forward to account for them.
His book is a quite
fascinating one, as one would expect from an old hand like

Koestler, and although most of the abundant material he
presents is not new, his ordering of it is fresh and challenging.
His linking of humor, of sci entific discovery, and of artistic
creation provides the over-all structure of the book. He describes
the creative act as one in which " matrices" of thought not
previously associated are " bisociated" or brought into con
junction with one another in a productive way.
But, as he
himself would be the first to admit, this does not provide an

explanation of the creative leap, nor even an exact description
of it.
He docs, however, provide an abundance of materials,
themselves Yery creatively juxtaposed, that allow us to under

stand better 1vhat the conditions for creativity are.
For philosophers in countries like France and Italy, the
" problem of science" is the problem of man faced by science,
or
more accurately by technology.
( The distinction between the
two is often blurred in what Europe an philosophers have to say

about " science" ) . Thus there is much writing, most of it nega
tive, about the effects of technology on culture and so forth.
Oddly enough, in a country where technology is not only more
advanced than it is in Europe but also much more pervasive in
everyday life, there is far less concern in the United States about
the dangers of technology or about the philosophical implications
of technology generally. Some years ago, the
Encyclopedia
Bri
sponsored a conference on " The T echnological Order,''
tannica
whose proceedings were published in a book of the same name
( 19 G3 ) .
There are some excell ent essays here : two contrasting
ones from Christian thinkers,
one opt imistic, from Norris
Clarke, S. J., the other forebocling, from .Jacques Ellul, the

French Calvin ist author of that bleakest of estimates,
nique ;
La Tech
and two interesting historical analyses by I,ynn White
and Rupert Hall.
513
The most thorough analysis of this entire domain is Van

:1Ielsen's
Science
and
Van ::M:elsen is a
Technology (19 6 1 ) .
Thomist, and a competent philosopher of science, and is also

convinced that living with technology constitutes perhaps the
major problem for modern man. The first half of his book could
in a way have been dispensed with since it is a general phi
losophy of science along broadly Aristotelian lines, and is not,
except for the ch, ,ter on " !Ian and JI.fatter, " of direct service
in the analysi s oi later issues . J3ut the remainder of the book
is a competent and readable study of the e:ff ects of technology
on man, of man's need for technology, and of technology as a
secularization of the Christian goal of redemption.
The most thoughtful recent work on Snow's question-or as
many would have it, pseudo-question-of the " two cultures"
is Holton's
Science and Culture ( 1 9 6 5 ) ,
a set of Daedalus
essays, far tighter and more profound than most of the abundant
literature occasioned by Snow's broadside of some years back.
The i;,uiters have much to say about how culture is to be defined
-see especially Levin and Marcuse-and on the ways in which
theoretical natural science has influenced human culture. Hol
ton has a good paper on the reverse issue : the ways in which
culture influences theory-formation in science, the theme of
Polanyi, Kuhn, and others, as we have seen.
This is
while book.
Philosophy
Other recent volumes i nclude :
Technological
Oidl ure
( 1 9 64 ) ,
worth
in a
a set of papers originally given
at a workshop held at Catholic University, where the impact

of technology on Christian hopes for man was explored ; A. C.
Benjamin's
Science, Technology and IIuman Values ( 1 9 6 5 ) ,
general text in philosophy of science, to which is added a long

section on the relation of science to education, to religious belief,
to social betterment ;
articles drawn from
The A tomic Age ( 1 9 63 ) , a collection of

the Bulletin of the A tom1:c Scientists con
cerning the relationship between atomic science and political

decision. Jl.fany of the essays in this last volume have a strident
514
Ernan McMullin
character ; many are politically naive. But the impact of the

volume is a sobering one, even though we now have two decades
of non-use of atomic weapons to give us some small grounds for
comfort.
In the last couple of decades, a new branch of sociology has
excited some attention: sociology of science. In The Sociology
of Science ( 1 9 62 ) , Barber and Hirsch have gathered eome of
tho best work in this as yet not very well-defined field. The
topics covered range from the social origins of scientists, the
sorts of motivation that lead people into science or that inspire
scientists themselves, the value of co-operative work in various
fields of science, the relations of scientists to society and to
government. Scientific discovery is here treated as a social and
a psychological phenomenon. Not so long ago, this would have
seemed utterly irrelevant to the philosophy of science. But
one does not have to be a follower of Fcyerabend or Kuhn today
to sec that some of this can conceivably be relevant when we
come to ask why scientists accept a particular theory and reject
another competing one. The old answer in terms of evidcne and
probabilities and hypothetico-deductive confirmation may be all
very well as an ideal, but it is abundantly clear that it does
not report what goes on quite often in real science, especially at
moments of crisis. So that if we wish to have a genuinely
empirical account of what counts as evidence and confirmation
in science as it is actually carried on, we may have to look much
further than many theorists of "ideal" science would still care
to admit.
One of the most irresponsible books I have read in years
belongs to the category of the sociology of science. It is Lewis
Feuer's Scientific Intellectual ( 1 9 63 ) . The thesis of tho book
is that a true scientific intellectual can be recognized by his
"hedonist-libertarian ethic," and that it was the growth of such
an ethic that "provided the momentum for the scientific revolu
tion." Tho method he follows is that of highly selective choice
515
of historical materials, followed b y psycho-analytic reconstruc

tion and sociological guesswork of the most outrageously un
supported kind.
ian, is an "
Newton, who was surely no hedonist-libertar
nigma " to him, so in a special appendix he
endeavors to give an Oedipal interpretation to Newton's life

and work ( " Did the apple falling to the earth with the theme
of the seed's return to the mother release a flood of emotional
energy for a tremendous original insight ? " p. 412 ) .
The
medieval philosophical terminology of entity and essence was

" the language and metaphysics of those who repressed the
sexual and physical as unclean " ( p. 9 6 ) ; he reduces medieval
philosophy to Platonism, with a brief aside on Aristotle and
Aquinas, and claims that the reason why Platonism was pre
dominant was the celibacy of the clerics.
No evidence, in the
ordinary sense of that term, is brought for this rather simplistic

contention.
There is something of the dark and dangerous
methodology of the witch-hunt in this book :
one begins with
a set of prejudices and reconstructs history using psychoanalytic

causal categories independently of any direct evidence.
Surely
a poor model for sociology, not to mention philosophy of science !

Finally, we come to the category of reli gion and science.
l\Iuch of the writing in this area is of indifferent quality.
One
recent textbook, Barbour's Issues in Science and Religion, has

done an extraordinary j ob of surveying this entire area, and
bringing much clarity to it.
The author is both scientist and
theologian, but of course it is philosophy of scienc0 he has to call

on most, since this is nearly always the point of meeting of
science and theology. The book is divided into three parts ; reli
gi on is related successively to history of science, the methods of
science, and the theories of science. T opics like " proof in scienc e
rmd religion, " " evoluti on and creation," are treated with consid
erable sensitivity.
The last chapter is an ingenious schema of
nine different ways of relating God to nature. Barbour treats

Protestant and C atholic viewpoints separately when the need
Ernan McMullin
516
arises. The only complaint I have with the book is its skimming
over so much in such short compass. Topics are schematized
rather than analyzed in depth. But for a provocative and
accurate undergraduate-level presentation 0 the problems in
this field, and 0 the major answers that have been given, this
book has no equal that I know 0.
A couple 0 others in this category : Von Weizsiicker's The
Relevance of Science (1D 64 ) -a noted scientist looks at the
history 0 science and notes its interrelations with the history
0 Christian faith (Gifford lectures) ; Talafous' Readings in
Science and Spirit ( Hl 6 6 ) , a well-selected group 0 essays on
the origin 0 life, the nature 0 man, and the nature 0 belief,
from writers as <liYcrse as Allport, de Lubac, and Camus.
University of Notre Dame,
Notre D am e, Indiana.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books Mentioned in the Article
1.
Antho log-ies :
I1ecture Series
H. Feigl and G. Maxwell ( eds. ) , Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy

of
S cience :
l 9G2 ) ,
Exp lana tion,
Scientific
III, xv +
and
Space
'l'ime
( Minneapolis,
628.
R. G. Colodny ( ed . ) , Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, Lniversity of

Pittsburgh series in the Philosophy of Science
( Pittsburgh,
288.
R. G. Colodny
Beyond
( ed . ) ,
the E d g e of Certainty, University of

( Pittsburgh,
P ittsburgh series in the Philosophy of Science

vii +
28 7 .
B. Baumrin ( e d. ) , Philosophy of Science :

York,
19ti3 ) ,
I , xv +
3 7 0.
B . Baumrin ( ed. ) , Philosophy of Science :

York,
1963 ) ,
II, xvii +
l9G2 ) , I,
1965 ) ,
II,
the D e laware Seminar, ( New

the E c laware Seminar ( New
551.
M. W . Wartofsky ( ed . ) , Boston Studies i n t h e Philosophy o f Science

( Dordrecht,
1 9 63 ) ,
I, vii i +
212.
R. S . Cohen and M. W . Wartofsky

( New York,
( eds. ) ,
1 9 65 ) , II,
Boston
xxxiv +
Studies i n
4 7 5.
the
D. Lerner ( ed . ) , I'arts and Who les , Hayd e n C o lloquium on Scientifi c

Method, M.I.T. ( Ne w York,
D.
Lerner
1965 ) ,
1963 ) ,
pp. ix +
1 80.
( eel. ) , Cause and Effect, Hayden Colloquium
pp. ix +
211.
( New York,
Re cent Work
2.
Antho logies :
in
517
Fes tschrifts
M. B unge ( ed . ) , 'l'he Cri tical Approach to Science and Philosophy, in

honor of Karl Popper
( Lonuon, H l G 4 ) , pp. xv + 4 8 0 .
J. R. Gregg a n d F. T . C . Harris, Jr'orm a n d S trategy i n Science, in honor

of Joseph Woodger
( Dordrecht, 1 9 6 4 ) , pp. vii + 4 7 6 .
P. A . Schilpp ( ed . ) , T h e Philosop hy o f Rudo lf Carnap ( La Salle, Ill.,

1 9 63 ) , pp. xvi + 1 0 8 8 .
P. K. Feyerabend a n u G. Maxwell ( eds. ) , Mind, M a t ter, and Method, i n

honor of Herbert l<'eigl
3.
Antho logies :
( Minneapolis, 1\)()6 ) , pp. 5 2 4 .
Conferences
H . Feigl and G. Maxwell

Science
( eus . ) , Current Issues in the Philosophy of
( Kew York, 1 9 6 1 ) , pp. ix + 484.
B . H . Kazemier and D. Vuyj se ( eds. ) , The Concept and the Role of the
Model in Mathematics and Natural
and Social
Scien ces
( Dordrecht,
H l 6 1 ) ' pp. 1 9 4 .
E. K age!, P. Suppes, a n u A. Tar:,;ki
( eds. ) , I1ogic, JJJ ethodology and
Philosop hy of Science ( S tanford, H l 6 2 ) , pp. ix + 6 6 1 .
E. McMullin
( ed. ) , 'l'h e Concep t o f M a t t er
( Kotre D ame, 1 9 6 3 ) , pp.
xi + 624.
4.
'l'ex t b ooks in Philosoph,1J of S ci ence
E. Nagel, 'l'he S triwture of Science
( New York, 1 9 6 1 ) , pp. xiii +
618.
A. P a p , ln trod1wtion to the Philosophy o f Science ( New York, 1 9 62 ) ,

pp. xiii + 444.
L. K. X ash, The N afore of the N alura l Sciences
( Boston, 1 9 6 3 ) , pp.
xix + 406.
D . Ha,ykins, The Languag e of Nature ( San Francisco, H l 6 4 ) , pp. xii +
372.
P. Caws, 1'he Philosop hy of Science ( Princeton, H l 6 5 ) , pp. xii + 3 5 4.

V . Smith, Science and Philosophy
C.
( Mi lwaukee, 1 9 G 5 ) , pp. xiii + 2 6 6 .
Hempel, Philosop hy o f Na tural Science
( Englewood
C liffs, K. J.,
1 9 66 ) ' pp. 1 1 6.
5.
S tudies in Sp ecific Areas of Methodology
K.
l'opper,
Knoi!Jiedge
Conjectures
and
R ef1da tions :
The
Gro u;th
of
Sc ientific
( New York, l!J 62 ) , pp. x i + 4 1 2 .
T . Kuhn, '!'he Structure o f Scientific Revo lutions ( Chicago, 1 9 62 ) , pp.

xv + 1 7 2 .
H.
Van
Laer,
Philosophy
of
Science,
Part
Two :
S tudy
Division and Nature of Va rious Groups of Sciences ( Pittsburgh,
of
the
1962 ) ,
pp. xiv + 342.

I.
S cheffler,
The
Anatomy
of Inq uiry
( Xew York,
1 9 6 3 ) , p p . xii +
3 3 2 + v.
G. Schlesinger, .JI et hod ,in t h e Physi cal Scimwes
( London, 1 9 6 3 ) , pp.
vii + 1 40 .
H. Kahl ( ed . ) , Stndies i n Exp lanation ( Englewood Cliffs, N . J . ,

p p . xi + 3 6 3 .
1963 ) ,
518
Ernan
Mc1vfullin
S. Rapport and H. Wright ( eds. ) , Science : Method and Meaning ( New

York, 1 9 6 3 ) , pp. xii + 2 5 8 .
C . Hempel, Aspects o f Scientific Exp lanation
( New York, 1 9 6 5 ) , pp.
viii + 505.
E. Harris, The Foundations of Metap hysics in Science
( New York,
1 9 6 5 ) , pp. 5 1 2 .
M . Hesse, Models and A.nalogies i n Science ( Notre Dame, 1 9 6 6 ) , p p . 1 8 4.

S. Korner, Experience and Th eory ( New York, 1 9 6 6 ) , pp. xiii + 250.
6.
Studies of Specific Th eories
A. Griinbaum, Philosophical Pro b lems of Sp ace and Tim e ( New York,

1 9 6 3 ) , pp. xi + 448.
J. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism ( London, 1 9 63 ) , pp. viii +

1 60 .
N. Hanson, The Concep t of t h e Posi tron ( Cambridge, 1 9 63 ) , pp. ix +

236.
T. Wann ( ed. ) , Behaviorism and Phenomeno logy ( Chicago, 1 9 64 ) , pp.

xi + 1 9 0 .
F. Selvaggi, Causalita e Indeterminismo ( Rome, 1 9 64 ) , pp. 453.

A. van Melsen, Evolu tion and Philosop hy ( Pittsburgh, 1 9 6 5 ) , pp. 208.
K. Sayre, Recognition :
A Study in t h e .Philosophy of Artificial In telli
gence ( Notre Dame, 1 9 6 5 ) , pp. xx + 305.

7.
Scienca and Man
M. Coler ( ed. ) , Essays on Creativity in the Sciences ( New York, 1 9 63 ) ,

pp. xix + 2 3 5 .
C. Taylor a n d F. Barron ( eds. ) , Scientific Crea tivity : Its Recognition
and D evelopment ( New York, 1 9 6 3 ) , pp. xxiv + 4 1 9 .
C . Taylor
( ed. ) , Widening Horizons in Creativity
( New York, 1 9 64 ) ,
pp. xix + 466.
A. Koestler, The A c t of Crea tion ( London, 1 9 64 ) , pp. 7 5 1 .

A. van Melsen, Science and Techno logy ( Pittsburgh, 1 9 6 1 ) , pp. ix + 3 7 3 .
C . Stover, T h e Techno logical Order ( Detroit, U l 6 3 ) , pp. xii + 280.
l\f. Grodzins and E. Rabinowitch ( eds. ) , The A tomic Age ( New York,
1 9 6 3 ) , pp. xviii + 6 1 6 .
G . McLean ( ed. ) , Philosophy i n a Techno logical Cul ture ( Washington,

D . C., 1 9 64 ) , pp. xv + 43 8 .
A. Benjamin, Science, Technology and Human Values ( Columbia, Mo.,

1 9 6 5 ) ' pp. v + 2 9 6.
G. Holton ( ed. ) , Science and Culture ( Boston, 1 9 65 ) , pp. xxviii + 348.

B . Barber and W. Hirsch ( eds. ) , The Sociology of Science ( New York,
1 9 62 ) , pp. xiii + 6 6 2 .
L. Feuer, The Scientific Intellectual ( New York, 1 9 63 ) , pp. xii + 44 1 .

C . von iVeizsiicker, Th e R elevance o f Science :
Creation and Cosmogony
( New York, 1 9 64 ) , pp. 1 9 2.
I. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion ( Englewood Cliffs, N. J.,

1 9 66 ) , pp. x + 470.
C . Talafous, Readings in Science and Spirit ( Englewood Cliffs , N. J.,

1 9 6 6 ) , pp. xi + 2 7 1 .

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REVIEW ARTICLE:

Recent Work in Philosophy of Science

O SURVEY A field like philosophy of science in the short

First, the number of relevant works is very great ; in the United

philosophy of science means philosophizing about the methods

But ever since

the early logical })OsitiYists cla i med that philosophy of science

a philosophy of science in such a case automatically

becomes a theory of knowledge and vice veTSa.

" science " was the paradigm of knowing for

Plato and ..A_ristotle also, but their conception of science was

Other areas that are so closely relate d to

philosophy of science that a cut between them becomes a some

of logic, semantics, even formal logic itself, sociology of science

Thus a much greater proportion of the important writing in

:fortably large segment of the recent developments in philosophy

The bibliography is listed at the end of the Review

volumes in three years, containing seventy-two essays. The

their articles are detailed and exhaustive surveys of an entire

One thinks of the classical

study on " The Mental and the Physical" by Feigl in Volume

Sellars on " Time and the vVorld Order" in Volume

III, and three strikingly different accounts of scientific explan

(averaging 70 pages each) by Hempel,

Feyerabend, also in Volume III.

The focus of this series has

been on philosophical psychology and on methodology; much of

A good number of the essays touch on physics (for example,

They range somewhat more widely in their topics, though the

One unusual feature of these volumes is that some dis

tinguished research scientists (Hill, Pollard, Wheeler, Glass,

Recent Work in Philosophy of Science

The unevenness of the results underlines

one of the most curious features of philosophy of science as a

If one reads the attempts of scientists to write

philosophy of science, one is quite often struck by

enthusiastic, hut not very

analytic exploration of the problem.

The best philosophy of

science is hardly ever vnitten by a scientist. It requires techni

( Chomsky, Lenneberg), a spirited debate between Marcus and

Besides the anthology based on a university lecture series,

sented to a senior scholar by his friends and former students.

wasteful use of materials.

from quite disparate fields:

Very often the ess ays would be

to be interested in more than a few of them. Thus he would not

( If you have a bad essay, of course, a

is ideal for it, unless an International C ongress is near and you

Proceedings-more securely lost in the j ungle even

the difficulty, at least p artially, by making the book a thematic

distinguished philosophers of sc ience are valuable anthologies of

current work in the philosophy of science. .Among these are

Recent Work in Philosophy of Science

point out that their method-especially if it be a fully axiomatic

problem, par excellence. What has happened in the meantime ?

Philosophers of science do not derive their prin

ciples from a more general metaphysics or theory of knowledge,

priori, in any sense of that disputed phrase. He is

concerned with a limited empirical object: the language-system

Evidence is brought from lan

guage-usage or from the implications of the formal language

The claims made

have an a posteriori character-or on occasion an analytic