Truth and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract

This paper is a reaction to two themes in recent history and philosophy of science. The first is the revival in philosophy of language of interest in truth and meaning, which relates to problems long discussed in philosophy of science. My tentative conclusion here is that tools are now available for the solution of these traditional problems, but that the detailed discussion by philosophers of language tends to by-pass philosophy of science, chiefly because it does not take sufficiently seriously questions about truth and meaning in theories and above all the question of radical theory change. A second theme, which is more implicit than explicit in this paper, concerns the fashionable tendency in post-Kuhnian philosophy of science for discussing philosophical problems in terms of case histories. These discussions have been motivated by the desire to avoid the threat of relativism and to restore rationality to theoretical science.

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