Modern Philosophy of Science

Michael Friedman
X552
Spring 2002

This course will trace the historical development of the philosophy of
science from approximately 1800 to the early twentieth century,
beginning with the philosophy of Newtonian science developed by
Immanuel Kant and ending with Rudolf Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der
Welt (1928).  It is in these years that the philosophy of science
begins to take shape as a specialized discipline within philosophy
more generally; and the problems, in the first place, are stimulated
and framed by revolutionary developments in nineteenth century
science: the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, the wave theory of
light and electrodynamics, thermodynamics and the conservation of
energy, and molecular-atomic theory.  Accordingly, the initial work in
what we now call philosophy of science is undertaken by professional
scientists attempting to come to terms with these new developments-in
particular, by Hermann von Helmholtz, Ernst Mach, and Henri Poincaré.
Then, around the turn of the century, philosophy of science is
stimulated once again by revolutionary developments:  Einsteinian
relativity theory, on the one hand, and new work  in logic and the
foundations of mathematics by Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and
David Hilbert, on the other.  Now philosophy of science is pursued
more by professional philosophers-and, in particular, by the so-called
Vienna Circle of logical positivists represented especially by Moritz
Schlick and Rudolph Carnap.  The work of these philosophers then sets
the stage for most of twentieth century philosophy of science.