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Epistemology is the side of philosophy that is concerned with questions about knowledge, evidence, and rationality. Metaphysics, a more controversial part of philosophy, deals with general questions about the nature of reality. Philosophy of science overlaps with both of these.
Neurath said that in our attempts to learn about the world and improve our ideas, we are “like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea.”
Popper’s Unique Place in the Philosophy of Science
Karl Popper is the only philosopher discussed in this book who is regarded as a hero by many scientists. Attitudes toward philosophy among scientists vary, but hardly ever does a philosopher succeed in inspiring scientists in the way Popper has. It is also rare for a philosopher’s view of science to be used within a scientif i c debate to justify one position over another. This has happened with Popper too. Within biology, recent debates about the clas-sif i cation of organisms and about ecology have both seen Popper’s ideas used in this way (Hull 1999). I once went to a lecture by a famous virologist who had won a Nobel Prize in medicine, to hear about his work. What I heard was mostly a lecture about Popper. In 1965, Karl Popper even became Sir Karl Popper, knighted by the queen of England.
Popper’s appeal is not surprising. His view of science is centered around a couple of simple, clear, and striking ideas. His vision of the scientific enterprise is a noble and heroic one. Popper’s theory of science has been criticized a great deal by philosophers over the years. I agree with many of these criticisms and don’t see any way for Popper to escape their force. Despite the criticism, Popper’s views continue to have an important place in philosophy and continue to appeal to many working scientists.
The logical positivists accepted and embraced the fact that error is always possible. Although some critics have misinterpreted them on this point, the logical positivists did not think that science ever reaches absolute certainty.
Many empiricists have been willing to say that they don’t care about the possibility that there might be real things lying behind the flow of sensations. It’s only the sensations that we have any dealings with. Maybe it makes no sense even to try to think about objects lying behind sensations. Perhaps our concept of the world is just a concept of a patterned collection of sensations. This view is sometimes called “phenomenalism.”
The second aspect, made vivid by David Hume, is inductive skepticism: why do we have reason to think that the patterns in past experience will also hold in the future?
The Nazis encouraged and made use of pro-German, anti-liberal philosophers, who also tended to be obscure and mystical. In contrast to the logical positivists, Martin Heidegger joined the Nazi party in 1933 and remained a member throughout the war.
Many logical positivists fled Europe, especially to the United States.
Schlick, unfortunately, did not. He was murdered by a deranged former student in 1936.