Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-12T22:47:53.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Feyerabend's Pragmatic Theory of Observation and the Comparability of Alternative Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Burke Townsend
Burke Townsend*
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The line which separates theory from observation, once drawn with some assurance by students of the structure of science, has more recently come under a great deal of criticism. Some critics allow that there is a distinction to be made between theoretical claim and observational record, but maintain that the distinction merely indicates the character of the directions toward the extremes on a continuous spectrum of scientific statements and cannot usefully be taken as a fiduciary mark for the bifurcation of the language of science. Others, among whom is numbered the object of my attention today, Paul Feyerabend, will not admit the legitimacy of the distinction at all in the form in which it has customarily been cast. Under the distinction in this customary form, Feyerabend, it would seem, would want to judge all statements to be theoretical.

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1970 , 1970 , pp. 202 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 ‘Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism’, in Scientific Explanation, Space and Time, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III (ed. by Feigl, H. and Maxwell, G.), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962, p. 39Google Scholar.

2 ibid., p. 39.

3 ibid., p. 40.

4 ibid., p. 36.

5 ‘Problems of Empiricism’, p. 152, in Beyond the Edge of Certainty: Essays in Contemporary Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh Series in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 2 (ed. by Colodny, R. G.), Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965Google Scholar.

6 ‘An Attempt at a Realistic Interpretation of Experience’, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, N. S. 58 (1958) 146Google Scholar.

7 ‘Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism’, p. 94, and ‘Problems of Empiricism’, p. 214.

8 Above, p. 5.

9 ‘Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism’, pp. 36-7.

10 ‘Problems of Empiricism’, p. 214.

11 ibid., p. 212.