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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy of Science
Sokal’S Hermeneutic Hoax: Physics And The New Inquisition, Babette Babich
Sokal’S Hermeneutic Hoax: Physics And The New Inquisition, Babette Babich
Babette Babich
“The Hermeneutics of a Hoax: Physics and the New Inquisition” offers a rhetorical analysis and hermeneutics reading of the parodic character of Sokal's "hoax." From the perspective of a philosopher of science, it is argued that it is important to attend both to the rhetorical level of philosophy and science. In addition it is important to consider the culture of status (Bourdieu) as well as the self-reflective weaknesses of the culture of physics including those of (traditionally) physics-dominated philosophy of science. Echoing some of the criticisms and highlighting the points of social advocacy of the late Paul Feyerabend underscores the …
From Fleck’S Denkstil To Kuhn’S Paradigm: Conceptual Schemes And Incommensurability, Babette Babich
From Fleck’S Denkstil To Kuhn’S Paradigm: Conceptual Schemes And Incommensurability, Babette Babich
Babette Babich
This article argues that the limited influence of Ludwik Fleck’s ideas on philosophy of science is due not only to their indirect dissemination by way of Thomas Kuhn, but also to an incommensurability between the standard conceptual framework of history and philosophy of science and Fleck’s own more integratedly historico-social and praxis-oriented approach to understanding the evolution of scientific discovery. What Kuhn named “paradigm” offers a periphrastic rendering or oblique translation of Fleck’s Denkstil/Denkkollektiv, a derivation that may also account for the lability of the term “paradigm”. This was due not to Kuhn’s unwillingness to credit Fleck but rather to …