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| Program > Logical Empiricsm Revisited |
| Programme > L'empirisme logique reconsidéré |
| Alan
Richardson (University of British Columbia) Kuhn's Structure and Logical Empiricism: Beyond Epic, Tragedy, Irony, and Farce |
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This talk seeks to sort out historical and interpretative issues regarding the place of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the history of philosophy of science in North America. After reviewing certain narrative structures already extant in the field (epic, tragedy, irony, and farce), I argue that there is an important dimension of the history that everyone has neglected by assuming a monolithic and professional image of logical empiricism: Kuhn's account of logical empiricism derived from its public image (he says so in the 1995 interview), and this public image is very different from the self-image of the program as a project in technical philosophy. Some lessons for our understanding of the place of logical empiricism in the history of philosophy of science and of related disciplines, especially history of science, derived from attending to a divergence between the "internal" professional and technical image of logical empiricism and its "external" public image will be outlined. These will be placed within a more general framework about a peculiar agony of technical "scientific philosophy": those outside its professional bounds have a hard time seeing it as philosophy precisely because it is technical.
Department
of Philosophy
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