Thursday, October 14, 2010

Most significant 20th century philosophers

Brian Leiter is running a poll of interest to readers of this blog:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/most-significant-philosophers-of-science-of-the-20th-century.html

He has acknowledged some significant oversights (Schlick and Hull). But as I point out here: http://www.newappsblog.com/2010/10/philosophy-of-science-in-20th-century-.html
I think the situation is worse without Duhem, Russell, Weyl, and a few more controversial others (Husserl, Foucault, Zilsel, and Weber).
Chime in, and vote!

2 comments:

  1. There is now a new version of the poll that includes, Schlick, Duhem, Hull, Polyani, and David Lewis.

    For my money, I have Reichenbach and Hempel in the top spots. The set of issues that we address today in philosophy of science -- confirmation, explanation, causation, probability, realism, space and time, interpretation of QM -- owe more to these two than to any others.

    If the criterion were impact beyond philosophy of science, then I'd have to go with Kuhn and Popper.

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  2. Christopher I saw it. I think you underestimate how important Duhem and Weyl are to the issues you mention, but that is for another day.

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