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THE PROBLEMS OF SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY Fashion is a fickle mistress. Only yesterday scientific rationality enjoyed considerable attention, consideration, and even reverence among phi losophers; "but today's fashion leads us to despise it, and the matron, rejected and abandoned as Hecuba, complains; modo maxima rerum, tot generis natisque potens - nunc trahor exui, inops", to cite Kant for our purpose, who cited Ovid for his. Like every fashion, ours also has its paradoxical aspects, as John Watkins correctly reminds in an essay in this volume. Enthusiasm for science was high among philosophers when significant scientific results were mostly a promise, it declined when that promise became an undeniable reality. Nevertheless, as with the decline of any fashion, even the revolt against scientific rationality has some reasonable grounds. If the taste of the philosophical community has changed so much, it is not due to an incident or a whim. This volume is not about the history of and reasons for this change. Instead, it provides a view of the new emerging image of scientific rationality in both its philosophical and historical aspects. In particular, the aim of the contributions gathered here is to focus on the concept around which the discussions about rationality have mostly taken place: scientific change.
List of contents
I Theoretical Considerations Concerning Rationality and Scientific Change.- How Not to Talk About Conceptual Change in Science.- The Myth of the Framework.- A New View of Scientific Rationality.- Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience.- Methodology, Heuristics, and Rationality.- II Rational Scientific Changes.- Galileo and Rationality: The Case of the Tides.- The Quest for Scientific Rationality: Some Historical Considerations.- The Rationality of Discovery: Galvani's Animal Electricity.- The Rationality of Entertainment and Pursuit.- Index of Names.
About the author
Marcello Pera, geboren 1943, von 1972 bis 1994 Professor für Philosophie, schloß sich 1996 mit weiteren Intellektuellen der sogenannten "Professorengruppe" um Silvio Berlusconi an uns sitzt seitdem im italienischen Senat, dessen Präsident und damit zweithöchster Staatsmann Italiens Pera von 2001 bis 2006 war.
