Analytic & pragmatist · 1934 – today
Post-positivist philosophy of science
Science does not grow by piling up verified facts: theories are tested as wholes, can be refuted but never finally proven, and change through historical upheavals.
How does science actually gain knowledge?
The logical positivists hoped to ground science on verification, but no finite set of observations can verify a universal law, and the line between “observational” and “theoretical” kept blurring. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, Popper, Quine and Kuhn dismantled that picture from three different directions.
Popper: no number of white swans proves “all swans are white”, but one black swan refutes it, so science advances by bold conjectures and attempted refutations. Quine: a test never confronts a single sentence, only a whole web of belief, so even logic is in principle revisable. Kuhn: “normal science” works inside a paradigm until anomalies pile up and a revolution replaces it.
- Falsifiability, not verifiability, marks a scientific theory.
- Beliefs face experience as a whole web, not one by one.
- Science changes through paradigm shifts, not only accumulation.
It made the history and sociology of science central to philosophy of science, and put “falsifiable” and “paradigm shift” into everyday language.
Thinkers
1902–1994Karl PopperViennese-born philosopher of science and defender of the open society1908–2000W. V. O. QuineHarvard logician who attacked the analytic–synthetic distinction1922–1996Thomas KuhnPhysicist turned historian of science who coined “paradigm shift”Key texts
Where it came from
Reacted againstLogical positivism (Vienna Circle)Popper replaced verification with falsification, and Quine’s “Two Dogmas” rejected the analytic–synthetic distinction and the idea that sentences can be tested one by one.Grew out of
PragmatismQuine ended “Two Dogmas” by calling for a “more thorough pragmatism”: we revise our web of belief by what works best.
What it led to
Carried on byAnalytic philosophy of mindQuine’s naturalism, philosophy continuous with science, set the terms for treating the mind as a part of nature.
Its answers to the big questions
KnowledgeHow can we know anything?Never proved, only tested: good theories are bold guesses that survive refutation.On the record
The school’s “read more” link points to the Wikipedia article “Postpositivism”.
The article covers the critique of positivism in philosophy of science and the social sciences, and its history section discusses Popper’s falsificationism and Kuhn’s paradigms; Quine is mentioned only in passing. It is the closest general article and is kept.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Postpositivism”