Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on references
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC (1890–1940)
- 1 Fin-de-siècle: the professors of the Republic
- 2 Science and idealism
- 3 Bergson
- 4 Between the wars
- PART II THE REIGN OF EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY (1940–1960)
- PART III STRUCTURALISM AND BEYOND (1960–1990)
- Conclusion: the philosophy of freedom
- Appendix: philosophy and the French educational system
- References
- Index
2 - Science and idealism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on references
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC (1890–1940)
- 1 Fin-de-siècle: the professors of the Republic
- 2 Science and idealism
- 3 Bergson
- 4 Between the wars
- PART II THE REIGN OF EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY (1940–1960)
- PART III STRUCTURALISM AND BEYOND (1960–1990)
- Conclusion: the philosophy of freedom
- Appendix: philosophy and the French educational system
- References
- Index
Summary
It's like the rules of logic or scientific laws, reality conforms to them more or less, but remember the great mathematician Poincaré: he's by no means certain that mathematics is a rigorously exact science.
(Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, iii, 149)The narrative of French philosophy during the first two decades of the twentieth century consists of three intertwined stories: the development of philosophy of science as an independent discipline, the solidification of university idealism in the philosophy of Leon Brunschvicg, and the brilliant rise of Bergson's spiritualist metaphysics. This chapter treats the first two topics, and the following chapter is devoted to Bergson.
PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE: POINCARÉ, DUHEM, AND MEYERSON
Although French philosophers firmly rejected positivism, they still recognized the centrality of science for philosophical reflection. Lachelier and Boutroux, in particular, insisted on the need to construct a unified account of nature that showed how the truths of science and of human freedom combined in a coherent whole. Such a synthesis involved exhibiting the limitations of science (indeterminism, absence of finality) that require us to complement it with metaphysical accounts if we are to describe the full concrete-ness of reality. This enterprise of developing a metaphysics of nature called for serious philosophical reflection on scientific knowing, which in turn required a thorough acquaintance with the methods and results of science.
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- Information
- French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century , pp. 26 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001