Abstract

The survey sums up some of the most important contributions to the philosophy of mathematics and physics made by the Belgian philosophers Renoirte, Dockx, Devaux, Ladrière, Hirsch, Apostel and Ruytinx. It is shown that most Belgia philosophers of science are more interested in giving a critical account of the actual practice of the working scientist than in sketching speculative and idealized pictures of science. This frame of mind is also affected by the allegiance that Positivism in its widest sense commands in Belgium together with Gonseth's Idoneism and Piaget's genetic epistemology. The survey also refers to the seminal ideas of the new rhetorics developed by Prof. Perelman whose school in the philosophy of law has obtained important results in the analysis of the historian's and lawyer's reasoning