CHAPTER ONE
BRIEF HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Writing a historical account of the development of Philosophy of science is quite a task to fulfill. It confronts at least two problems. First, the philosophy of science as an academic discipline is fairly new. Few historians attempt to write about its history yet. Secondly, these few historians do not agree on the nature and scope of philosophy of science. A coherent understanding of the scope of the philosophy of science is a precondition for writing about its history. Consequently, the writers differ in their historical accounts. R. Harre, for example, in his article History of Philosophy Science in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, begins his account the controversies that took place between Whewell and Mill in the second quarter of the nineteenth century .
J. Losee, however, in his book A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (1993) finds the need to include the works of Euclid, Archimedes, and the classical atomists, among others . Other writers would simply fulfill the task by selecting from significant scientists of the nineteenth century like P. Duhem, E. Mach and H. Poincare . Several authors, however, agree to limit the understanding of the philosophy of science as a twentieth century event that owes its beginnings to the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle . This chapter adopts the limited and strict concept of philosophy of science, but, in tracing its history, includes the precursors in the nineteenth century.
1.1 WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE?
Epistemology refers to that philosophical investigation on the nature of human Understanding. It is also called the general theory ...