Analytic philosophy of science

pp. 41-74

in: Nicholas Capaldi, The enlightenment project in the analytic conversation, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

The increasing, cumulative, and spectacular successes of science and technology throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made science the most prestigious and authoritative institution in western society.¹ This can be seen in a number of ways. In Germany, from about 1830 onwards scientism was not only in the ascendancy but an intellectual threat to the legitimacy of philosophy. From about 1870 onwards in Germany the new philosophy tended to justify itself as concerned with the logic of science and the articulation of a world view replacing philosophy. This current was subsequently to sweep across Great Britain and the Atlantic.² At the first meeting of the American Philosophical Association, on March 31, 1902, at Columbia University, the association's charter president, J.E. Creighton, pointed out that philosophy's importance had been eclipsed by the empirical sciences. He urged that philosophy should compete more effectively with the empirical sciences by becoming more methodological, systematic, and by setting strict standards of what counts as professional work.³