This collection of essays reexamines the origins of logical empiricism and offers fresh insights into its relationship to contemporary philosophy of science.

This work is for scholars, researchers and students in history and philosophy of science focusing on Logical Empiricism and analytic philosophy (of science). It provides historical and systematic research and deals with the influence and impact of the Vienna Circle/Logical Empiricism on today's philosophy of science. It also explores the intellectual context of this scientific philosophy and focuses on main figures and peripheral adherents.

1. Filosofia in età antica -- 2. Filosofia in età medievale e rinascimentale -- 3. Filosofia in età moderna -- 4. Filosofia in età contemporanea.

For a long time–--maybe starting from the well known 1929 meeting in Davos–--the philosophy of exact and natural sciences deriving from Neo-positivism and hermeneutics followed separate ways. Post-positivistic philosophy of science and epistemology, though, saw the emerging of theses showing the existence of some affinities between the empirical method and the hermeneutical method. The paper singles these affinities out and discusses their consequences from the point of view of the problems of objectivity and truth. In particular, it supports the ideas (...) of objectivity as achievement and of truth as empty regulative ideal. (shrink)

Today’s critical state of philosophy is examined by considering two of its aspects: the way in which philosophy presently is ever more typically practised and the new challenges it has to face to keep up with the changed scientific, and more generally cultural and social context. The essay outlines some prospects of progress in the light of those which still now can be considered the proper tasks of philosophical inquiry. Such tasks are singled out through an historical survey of the (...) original characters of philosophy and an appraisal of its theoretical motivations. The importance of the history of philosophy and the necessity of achieving a virtuous relation among the various philosophical disciplines are stressed to contrast the dangers of excess specialisation and professionalism. (shrink)

The author discusses the evolution of Heidegger’s conception of science and brings out its limits as well as its possible developments. An eminent representative of contemporary thinking in the theory of knowledge, Paolo Parrini stands in a line of critical realism in the Kantian neopositivist tradition. This paper returns to and develops the lectio delivered at the award of the ‘Giulio Preti’ Prize in November 2008.