scholarly journals Nineteenth Century French Philosophy of Science: Positivism and its Continuations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Schmaus ◽  
Olivier Rey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
French Philosophy

Robert M. Young's Mind, Brain and Adaptation revisited

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Christopher Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Philosophy Department ◽  
History Of ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Scientific Ideas

Abstract Robert Maxwell Young's first book Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century (1970), written from 1960 to 1965, still merits reading as a study of the naturalization of mind and its relation to social thought in Victorian Britain. I examine the book from two perspectives that give the volume its unique character: first, Young's interest in psychology, which he considered should be used to inform humane professional practices and be the basis of social reform; second, new approaches to the history of scientific ideas. I trace Young's intellectual interests to the Yale Philosophy Department, the Cambridge Department of Experimental Psychology and a new history and philosophy of science community. Although Young changed his political outlook and historiography radically after 1965, he always remained faithful to ideas about thought and practice described in Mind, Brain.

French philosophy of science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Gutting
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Important Influence ◽  
Existential Phenomenology ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Rational Reflection ◽  
French Tradition

A distinctively French tradition in the philosophy of science began with Descartes, continued through the Enlightenment in works such as D’Alembert’s Discours préliminaire and the Encyclopédie, and flowered in the ninteenth and the early twentieth century with the work of Comte, Duhem, Meyerson and Poincaré. Throughout the twentieth century, the dominant fashions in French philosophy derived more and more from German influences, especially idealism and phenomenology (Hegel to Heidegger). But amidst these developments, there persisted an essentially autonomous tradition of French philosophy of science that offered an indigenous alternative to the Germanic imports. Here the key figure was Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962), for many years professor at the Sorbonne and director of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques. His work was continued and modified by Georges Canguilhem (1904–95), his successor at the Institute, who himself was an important influence on philosophers such as Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and Michel Serres. Jean Cavaillès’ critique of Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics and his effort to develop a neo-Hegelian alternative to it had deep affinities with Bachelard’s work and was also an important influence on Canguilhem. The most important general features of twentieth-century French philosophy of science appear if we contrast it with its two major rivals: existential phenomenology and logical positivism. Existential phenomenology is a ‘philosophy of the subject’, maintaining that ultimate truth resides in the immediacy of lived experience. Bachelard and his followers, by contrast, proposed a ‘philosophy of the concept’, for which experiential immediacy is subordinate to and corrected by concepts produced by rational reflection. This process of rational reflection is, moreover, embodied in science, which is not, as existential phenomenology maintains, a derivative and incomplete form of knowing, but the very paradigm of knowledge. In giving science a privileged epistemic position, the French philosophers of science are like the logical positivists. But, unlike the positivists, they treat science as essentially historical, irreducible in either method or content to the rigour of a formal system. They also opposed the positivists’ effort to find the foundations of scientific knowledge in sense experience, maintaining that there are no simply given data and that all experience is informed by conceptual interpretation.

EMILE BOUTROUX, REDEFINING SCIENCE AND FAITH IN THE THIRD REPUBLIC

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOEL REVILL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Science And Faith

Historians have convincingly shown the extent to which Protestantism played a role in the founding of the Third Republic, undermining the once canonical claim that republicanism and religion were implacably hostile opponents in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Catholics, however, continue to be viewed as nearly universally antirepublican. Analyzing the writings of philosopher Emile Boutroux and his students, this article shows how the specifically Catholic concern with the relationship between free will and scientific concepts of determinism both influenced the direction of French philosophy of science into the twentieth century and provided a framework for defending the Republic at the height of the Dreyfus affair.

4. Post-Revolutionary philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Stephen Gaukroger ◽  
Knox Peden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Rapid Rise ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
The Third ◽  
Old Order ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
The Relationship

After the French Revolution, philosophy and the rapid rise of individualism were blamed for the bloodshed. ‘Post-Revolutionary philosophy: the nineteenth century and the Third Republic’ introduces thinkers like Auguste Comte, who ushered in socialism by arguing that Enlightenment ideas had toppled the old order of monarchy and religion, but that their individualism potentially hampered progress. Progress, epitomized by science, was the goal in nineteenth-century French philosophy. Rationalism and the ‘critical idealism’ of Léon Brunschvicg were not the only schools of thought. The Romantic philosopher Henri Bergson tackled the relationship between mind, body, and spirit by defining knowledge as a process.

Politics by other means: Justus von Liebig and the German translation of John Stuart Mill's Logic

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAT MUNDAY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Chemical Methods ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Complex Figure ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
Von Liebig ◽  
The Relationship

Compared with other scientists of the nineteenth century, the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–73) was a complex figure. In part, this was because Liebig established such broad borders for his science. Chemical methods, popular and professional publications about chemistry, technological applications, promoting the car and even politics – all were central concerns stemming from Liebig's notion of chemistry as the central science.When Liebig discovered John Stuart Mill's Logic, a work on the philosophy of science, it struck a deep chord within him. Mill's high praise for Liebig's chemistry certainly provided Liebig with a means to promote his own reputation. In addition, Mill's Logic presented science as a central method for the general reform of society, a goal Liebig was himself struggling to define in the early 1840s. In the scientific method, Mill discovered a ‘rule by the elite’, which he could never find nor justify in his political philosophy. This was a rule that greatly appealed to Liebig, and he set out to ensure that Mill's work was translated and published in German. Though many details of this transaction are known, this paper seeks to investigate the relationship between Liebig and Mill's book, and the significance of this relationship for understanding Liebig's role as a gatekeeper and inter-relations between science and politics.

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