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Philosophy of Science: An Anthology, edited by Marc Lange. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
Richard D. Wolff
This review examines some of the epistemoloycal and political implications of the conclusions drawn by eminent philosophers of science surrounding empiricism, reductionism, and causality. Why, asks this review, are philosophers of science unwilling (or unable, or uninterested) to examine the larger implications of their critiques of "scientific" methods and assumptions, especially as those implications have important political resonances?
Key Words: Empiricism, Reductionism, Holism, Causality, Philosophy of Science, Overdetermination
In this latest collection of key articles in the discipline, Marc Lange, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gathers what he deems to be the seminal articles in the field since 1945. While he seeks to cover the basic disciplinary subdivisions, what the anthology offers readers of this journal is a summary of how philosophers of science view three key issues: empiricism, reductionism versus holism, and causality. Because all three remain key for many other disciplines as well, such as those represented by this journal's diverse readership, it is revealing to examine where matters stand among the academicians who focus on these issues.
Lawrence Sklar, of the University of Michigan, is represented by a 1990 essay "Foundational Physics and Empiricist Critique" (139-53). Sklar clearly acknowledges that the critiques of empiricism, in its epistemological and methodological senses, are profound. They "cast grave doubts on the possibility of a coherently formulated and rationalizable empiricist account of the confirmation of generalities" (139). That is, he flatly rejects the classic empiricist notion that theoretical truths can be "verified" by testing...