Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists
by D.C. Stove
- Used
- Very Good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0080267912
- ISBN 13
- 9780080267913
- Seller
-
ELY, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Pergamon Press. Very Good. 1982. Soft Cover. 8vo 0080267912 Paperback, crease to one corner. 128 pages, clean and tight. Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend occupy leading positions in Western philosophy of science in this century. To them we owe the prevailing view that scientific knowledge is never true (nor even probable), and never false (nor even improbable). Even the best scientific opinion, at any time, is nothing more than an unjustified conjecture, a socially-imposed dogma, or a fashionable gestalt. Some consequences of this attitude to scientific truth verge on the lunatic, and David Stove demonstrates how irrationalists turn the trick of concealing absurdity by a variety of logical and linguistic devices. He then examines the aetiology of the irrationalist thesis, and traces the fatal conjunction of empiricism with perfectionism back to Hume: 'Nothing fatal to empiricist philosophy of science follows from the admission that arguments from the observed to the unobserved are not the best, unless this admission is combined, as it was by Hume, with the fatal assumption that only the best will do.' In this business-like declothing of philosophical emperors, he performs a valuable service for all students of philosophy. By exposing the 'frivolous elevation of the critical attitude into a categorical imperative of intellectual life', he resurrects a philosophical basis for holding that, for example. Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood was right. or that Ptolemaic astronomy was wrong, or that scientific knowledge has advanced over the last four hundred years. For non-philosophers and others who have always held such views, David Stove provides a lucid and amusing account of an extraordinary movement in the history of ideas. .
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Details
- Bookseller
- CHARLES BOSSOM (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 143818
- Title
- Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists
- Author
- D.C. Stove
- Format/Binding
- Soft Cover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0080267912
- ISBN 13
- 9780080267913
- Publisher
- Pergamon Press
- Place of Publication
- Oxford, Great Britain
- Date Published
- 1982
Terms of Sale
CHARLES BOSSOM
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About the Seller
CHARLES BOSSOM
Biblio member since 2010
ELY, Cambridgeshire
About CHARLES BOSSOM
Charles Bossom has worked in the Book Trade since 1963, commencing at WH Smith Oxford and retiring in 1999 as Regional Manager Central England. The Charles Bossom bookselling business was started in early 2000. We offer a changing selection of old and out-of-print books in a wide range of subjects. We frequently add new items to our stock so visit us regularly.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.