The Kuhn-Inspired New Philosophy of Science

Abstract

Harold I. Brown’s articulation of the “new philosophy of science”1 is particularly welcome because it systematically pulls together various strands of the post-positivist philosophy of science literature. The new philosophy of science Brown presents, drawing on the work of Kuhn, Toulmin, Hanson, Lakatos, Polanyi, and others, but effectively structured, enhanced, and defended by Brown, replaces logical empiricism’s fundamental presuppositions of Principia logic and observation-based empiricism with a new approach which emphasizes the theory-ladenness of perception, the unavoidability of paradigmatic presuppositions, conceptual change and scientific revolutions, dialectic (as opposed to algorithmic) reasoning as the model of rational thinking in science, and a sharp rejection of the discovery/justification distinction. Brown develops a new epistemology of science to compliment and underlie the new philosophy of science, including alternative conceptions of rationality, scientific knowledge, truth, objectivity, and relativism. As with Kuhn, Brown’s discussion of relativism cannot be helpfully separated from the rest of his presentation. Consequently, in what follows we shall concern ourselves with the entire Brownian conception of the new epistemology and philosophy of science.