Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement whose central thesis is the verification principle. This theory of knowledge asserts that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism.
A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. It is a concept in the philosophy of science that was introduced and brought into the common lexicon by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn. Even though Kuhn restricted the use of the term to the natural sciences, the concept of a paradigm shift has also been used in numerous non-scientific contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events.
Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers, and for "The Two Cultures", a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and "literary intellectuals".
The Vienna Circle of logical empiricism was a group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, chaired by Moritz Schlick. The Vienna Circle had a profound influence on 20th-century philosophy, especially philosophy of science and analytic philosophy.
Terence Francis Eagleton is an English philosopher, literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University.
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York.
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science.
The science wars were a series of scholarly and public discussions in the 1990s over the social place of science in making authoritative claims about the world. Encyclopedia.com, citing the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, describes the science wars as the
Postpositivism or postempiricism is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism and has impacted theories and practices across philosophy, social sciences, and various models of scientific inquiry. While positivists emphasize independence between the researcher and the researched person, postpositivists argue that theories, hypotheses, background knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed. Postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases. While positivists emphasize quantitative methods, postpositivists consider both quantitative and qualitative methods to be valid approaches.
The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was a debate about literary and artistic merit, which expanded from the original debaters to the members of the Académie Française and the French literary community in the 17th century.
Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive – meaning a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience. Other ways of knowing, such as intuition, introspection, or religious faith, are rejected or considered meaningless.
In science, objectivity refers to attempts to do higher quality research by eliminating personal biases, irrational emotions and false beliefs, while focusing mainly on proven facts and evidence. It is often linked to observation as part of the scientific method. It is thus intimately related to the aim of testability and reproducibility. To be considered objective, the results of measurement must be communicated from person to person, and then demonstrated for third parties, as an advance in a collective understanding of the world. Such demonstrable knowledge has ordinarily conferred demonstrable powers of prediction or technology.
Wissenschaft is a German-language term that embraces scholarship, research, study, higher education, and academia. Wissenschaft translates exactly into many other languages, e.g. vetenskap in Swedish or nauka in Polish, but there is no exact translation in modern English. The common translation to science can be misleading, depending on the context, because Wissenschaft equally includes humanities (Geisteswissenschaft), and sciences and humanities are mutually exclusive categories in modern English. Wissenschaft includes humanities like history, anthropology, or arts at the same level as sciences like chemistry or psychology. Wissenschaft incorporates scientific and non-scientific inquiry, learning, knowledge, scholarship, and does not necessarily imply empirical research.
The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox (2003) is Stephen Jay Gould's posthumous volume exploring the historically complex relationship between the sciences and the humanities in a scholarly discourse.
Zaki Naguib Mahmoud was an Egyptian intellectual and thinker, and is considered a pioneer in modern Arabic philosophical thought. He was described by Abbas Mahmoud al-Akkad as "the philosopher of authors and author of philosophers". Mahmoud adhered to logical positivism and adopted science interpretation with social motivations to reconcile the Arab tradition with modernism. Mahmoud defines the "Arab tradition" as the configuration of techniques by which our ancestors lived, and he viewed logical positivism as the spirit of "Modernism".
Stefan Collini is an English literary critic and academic who is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge and an Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall. He has contributed essays to such publications as The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and the London Review of Books. He attended St Joseph's College in Beulah Hill, south London, and received his undergraduate BA degree and PhD at Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as completing a master's degree at Yale University.
Criticism of science addresses problems within science in order to improve science as a whole and its role in society. Criticisms come from philosophy, from social movements like feminism, and from within science itself.
The value judgment controversy (German:Werturteilsstreit) is a Methodenstreit, a quarrel in German sociology and economics, around the question whether the social sciences are a normative obligatory statement in politics and its measures applied in political actions, and whether their measures can be justified scientifically.
A literary feud is a conflict or quarrel between well-known writers, usually conducted in public view by way of published letters, speeches, lectures, and interviews. In the book Literary Feuds, Anthony Arthur describes why readers might be interested in the conflicts between writers: "we wonder how people who so vividly describe human failure can themselves fall short of perfection."
