Philosophical Roots of the Philosophy of Science

What is the philosophy of science—considered as a philosophical enterprise? The desire to understand science philosophically can mean strikingly different things, depending on the philosophical perspective from which that desire arises. Perhaps the three most influential positions in the philosophy of science over the last century have been those of the Vienna Circle, of Thomas Kuhn, and of Paul Feyerabend. But where were these thinkers “coming from,” philosophically speaking? The most important influence on the Vienna Circle is recognized to be Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, a work of general philosophy with teachings on ethics, aesthetics, and the meaning of life, as well as on the status of science. In order to understand what drives the Vienna Circle to see the nature of science as it does, we shall, therefore, read the Tractatus. The Tractatus, however, is a rather mysterious book that expresses its larger views partly by refusing to talk about them. In order to understand the Tractatus more fully, we shall read it, in turn, against the background of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea, which is generally acknowledged to have been a primary influence on Wittgenstein when he wrote the Tractatus. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions is, in large part, a criticism of the Vienna Circle. Behind that criticism lay, among other factors, Kuhn’s study of Wittgenstein’s late work, Philosophical Investigations. We shall explore this connection together and consider how much The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a work in the spirit of Philosophical Investigations. Feyerabend’s Against Method continues and radicalizes Kuhn’s criticism of the Vienna Circle, yet with inflections remarkably unlike Kuhn’s. There are striking resemblances between Feyerabend’s skeptical perspectivism and that of Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil. We shall read the two works together and study the philosophical relationship between Feyerabend and Nietzsche. By studying some of the most significant currents in 20th-century philosophy of science against the broader matrix of 19th- and 20th-century philosophy generally, we will hope to gain a fuller understanding of both philosophy of science and that broader matrix itself.