We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
While there are affinities between Collingwood’s views and pragmatism, their shared considerations of the socio-historical dimensions of scientific knowledge have not been explored thus far. This chapter aims to fill this gap by comparing Collingwood’s views from An Essay on Metaphysics with pragmatist stances in contemporary philosophy of science by Philip Kitcher and Hasok Chang. In addition to similarities regarding the importance of the purposes of inquiry and framing knowledge in relation to a system of practice, there are disagreements between Collingwood and this strand of pragmatism regarding truth, propositional knowledge, and drawing out political implications. I argue that Collingwood’s approach can supply tools that can assist the pragmatist goals of improving scientific practice, mainly through analyzing cases from the history of science. This warrants mapping Collingwood’s place in twentieth-century philosophy as a precursor to recent attempts to overcome the clash between logical and historical approaches to scientific knowledge.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.