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Towards a New Philosophy of Positive Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Don Ross  and
Chantale LaCasse
Don Ross
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
Chantale LaCasse
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Extract

Imagine asking a typical, well informed, contemporary philosopher whether or not she considered biology to be a science. Our informant, being a philosopher, would not necessarily respond with the straightforward “of course” that would be expected from anyone else. She might first reason through a complicated and heavily qualified definition of science, or she might distinguish certain parts of biology (molecular genetics, perhaps) that she held to be more clearly scientific than others (sociobiology, perhaps). If she were partial to a certain sort of critical stance, she might question the political basis for wishing to dignify certain parts of our inquisitive practice with the honorific ‘scientific’ in the first place. But there is at least one thing that she would almost certainly not do. She would not simultaneously embrace a version of the conventional philosophical view of science and deny that biology is a science. This is despite the fact that, as she will acknowledge, biology exploits a range of methodologies and explanatory strategies that have not yet admitted of systematic, consensual philosophical explication.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , Summer 1995 , pp. 467 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1995

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