Philosophy of Science - Continental Philosophy of Science

Continental Philosophy of Science

In the Continental philosophical tradition, science is viewed from a world-historical perspective. One of the first philosophers who supported this view was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Philosophers such as Pierre Duhem and Gaston Bachelard also wrote their works with this world-historical approach to science. Nietzsche advanced the thesis in his "The Genealogy of Morals" that the motive for search of truth in sciences is a kind of ascetic ideal.

All of these approaches involve a historical and sociological turn to science, with a special emphasis on lived experience (a kind of Husserlian "life-world"), rather than a progress-based or anti-historical approach as done in the analytic tradition. This emphasis can be traced through Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, the late works of Merleau-Ponty (Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, 1956–1960), and Martin Heidegger's hermeneutics.

The largest effect on the continental tradition with respect to science was Martin Heidegger's critique of the theoretical attitude in general which of course includes the scientific attitude. For this reason the Continental tradition has remained much more skeptical of the importance of science in human life and philosophical inquiry.

Notwithstanding, there have been a number of important works: especially a Kuhnian precursor, Alexandre Koyré. Another important development was that of Foucault's analysis of the historical and scientific thought in The Order of Things and his study of power and corruption within the "science" of madness.

Several post-Heideggerian authors contributing to the Continental philosophy of science in the second half of the 20th century include Jürgen Habermas (e.g., "Truth and Justification", 1998), Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ("The Unity of Nature", 1980), and Wolfgang Stegmüller ("Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschafttheorie und Analytischen Philosophie", 1973–1986).