Customer Reviews

The Rise of Scientific Philosophy

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I am only half way through this AMAZING book, and the revelations are incredible. The first third is a history of philosophy and epistemology up until Kant, and shows you what true science is all about. This is a manifest for clear thought, if I've ever seen one, and I have... Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World". This book explains everything with reason and rationale, he has not yet gone into the metaphysic to explain anything. He doesn't expect the reader to go to another source, he explains it all in the book, says who he got it from, even what book. If you ever wanted to know what the scientific philosophy truly was you have to read this. It is not just about its rise, but explains WHAT it is, with that very important geneological information about how it came about. If you are religious, watch out. It will really shake your world, and you will understand why the highest percentage of agnostics is found in the intellectual, scientific fields that required the intellectual philosophic framework of science in order to be comprehended completely. EVERY SCIENCE STUDENT SHOULD READ THIS! Got to close up the computer lab, and happy reading.

Reichenbach pulls no punches. By the time he's finished, traditional, speculative philosophies are dead, buried and left without a headstone. (That these "undead" philosophies continue stalk the land, well, that's another story...)

According to Reichenbach - and his logic is impeccable - while the rationalist philosophers painted their mystical canvases, the parallel development of science, and scientific method handed the empiricists the tools they needed to produce the first grounded philosophic view. The search for certainty had the classic philosophers barking up the wrong tree. And meanwhile, the exploration of the microscopic world, coupled with the creation of a new mathematical tool - statistics - bootstrapped the scientific community into a model of the universe that was not causal, but probabilistic.

And what of ethics? Just as there are no absolute answers to the physical world, Reichenbach leaves the moral bucket empty as well. Your ethics, he argues, are ultimately what you choose to posit for yourself.

There is much more, lurking in this dense and difficult book. Published in 1951 - two years prior to his death - this is a tour-de-force of a man who was a contemporary of Einstein, and a participant in the famed "Weiner Kreiss" (Vienna Circle) which included such mighty minds as Kurt Godel. (See my review of D. Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach...") Reichenbach was one hot potato, armed with superior weaponry, and ready to take on the world.

The tragedy of this pursuit of consistency, which is the trademark of the scientific view, is that it probably will never come to guide society at large. Empty as it is, it is unacceptable to the majorities, whom Reichenbach was certainly not writing to, and who have no working concept of the scientific method. Most people do not want to hear that there are no ultimate answers.

One very big problem I see with this philosophy lies not with its truthfulness, but in its usefulness. We humans have a tough situation all around. We have a state of awareness which far exceeds that of our animal brethren, but we are bound with all the other animal traits, including mortality. Therefore, since we became aware of our frailties, we have consistently sought a coping mechanism. The rationalist view offered some hope - be it a blatant lie - but scientific philosophy, alas, does not. In truth, it runs counter to any coping mechanism one might choose to create. It is certainly not a philosophy for the weak and sick. This is the largest difficulty I see with its acceptance. As correct as Reichenbach may be, how can we stomach sending our children into a world where there's no intrinsic good or bad? How can we prepare them? The search for an easy answer may be wrong - but it's easy! And like water, humanity will likely take the easy path. There are many sweeter smelling flowers out there. Why choose this one? The author could have spent some effort making this philosophy more appealing to the masses, but he chose not to.

So is it just for scientists after all? The implications of scientists, blindly searching for more empty knowledge, as pawns of the capitalists, guided by a philosophy of blind greed, creating new and better tools and toys for the rest of us, yields a rather uncomfortable image in my mind of the future of the human race. But, after all, it truly doesn't matter what we do. And even though the truth is sometimes a bit scary, I do like the concept of creating my own vision and values.

Now it's true that humans created both traditional and scientific philosophy, and however different their origins may have been, they are both here to stay. Are there any implications for the future of society in general? After reading this book, I would have to say: "Probably".

Very interesting book, but not for everyone.

In an episode of Seinfeld, George makes a comment about physiotherapists, and I think professionals in general. He claims that "everyone's guy is the best". Certainly this can be true for many authors as well.

This is not the case here because I am not enamored with his other works. But in the Rise of Scientific Philosophy, Reichenbach brings you through questions and observations which need addressing. He begins his assault on poor Philosophy on page three, and continues through the book. He separates out the poetic philosophers, from the more tough minded philosophers that actually say something.

I don't think that I am exaggerating when I write: I don't believe someone can truly say they have some philosophical background without having read and digested the work contained with in Reichenbach's book.

But, it is not an easy read, and will take time. But the time taken is very much worth it.

Note: I must confess that I bought my copy of the book fully a year before actually reading it.

I read Reichenbach's Rise of Scientific Philosophy when I was a freshman in college, forty years ago. I have read many books over the years, but to this day I would say that this is the most influential book of my life. I started college as an ordinary Christian protestant. A philosophy course taught me about critical thinking. Then I started reading Reichenbach over Christmas vacation and I found it so fascinating that I couldn't put it down. I underlined a lot of passages. I added lots of exclamation points!!! By the time I was finished I was no longer a Christian. I was an atheist. Reichenbach makes it clear that you don't have to have religion to be a good, moral person. For a while I was a militant atheist, but I soon matured out of that. Still wanting something to belong to, I was a Humanist with a capital H for awhile. Then I joined an ultra-liberal Unitarian church that didn't require people to believe any doctrine, but which discussed all sorts of philosophical and religious views and emphasized the importance of freedom of speech and religion. Now, after much reading in psychology, anthropology and philisophy, I continue to be fascinated by the need for religion as a universal human characteristic. Nobody can deny the power of religious beliefs to affect human emotions and behavior, for both good and evil. But some people are capable of deeper, more critical thinking about religion. Some people have the strength to exist and thrive without a God, but with love for people, for human rights, and for the natural world. This book is for those people. ...

It should be pointed out at the outset that while the author of the present classic book was a logical positivist, the author of the present review is not. Indeed, I think that basically all the central claims of the logical positivists were false. However, this important book goes far beyond the central claims of the logical positivist movement and I very much like the spirit in which it was written. Reichenbach tries to show how philosophy can (and ought to) benefit from modern science and, I think, how modern science can benefit from a philosophy that does away with certain outdated ways of thinking. He draws an important distinction between what he calls "speculative philosophy", on the one hand, and "scientific philosophy", on the other hand. The former is identified with the old and associated with building philosophical systems, while the latter is concerned with refining the questions (by logical analysis). Also, the speculative philosophy is associated with rationalism, while scientific philosophy is associated with empiricism. The errors of speculative philosophy are traced back to a heavy reliance of analogies and "picture language" in the place of real explanations and to a misguided search for absolute certainty.

Reichenbach is one of those rare individuals that have deep insights into both philosophy and modern science. His insight into mathematics, geometry, logic and physics is impressive. Philosophy cannot remain unchanged after breakthroughs of the Darwinian theory of evolution, Einstein's theory of relativity and the big bang theory, etc. Philosophers need to take note of scientific results that have relevance for philosophic questions and, I believe, scientists need to take note of philosophy. But meeting halfway, as it were, is impossible if the philosopher insists on doing philosophy like Plato and Aristotle did philosophy. One very important thing that Reichenbach takes up is how totally untenable it is to retain a teleological worldview in the face of modern science and how much damage to understanding anthropomorphic ideas has had and sadly continues to have to this day.

I think it is fair to say that this book is dated now, but where is a similar book written in this spirit today by someone who is as well read in both philosophy and science as Reichenbach was? Besides, it is very much in line with the attitude of the writer of the book that progress would be made after its publication. He would not consider this book to be a final statement on the topic, but a step in the right direction. I'm certain that progress has been made in almost all the areas on which the book touches, but one area on which I can say with confidence that this is the case is ethics. The chapter on "the nature ethics" is frustrating for me to read being a moral philosopher myself. Reichenbach thinks that much can be learned by doing a logical analysis of moral language and that if we do so we discover that non-cognitivism is the only way to go. This approach is severely outdated today. He does however discuss the relation of the individual to the group, but without going very deep.

In the spirit of the arguments found inside, I think this book should be seen, not as a final statement, but as a statement of the best philosophy at the time of its publication.

Fritz- Anton Fritzson
Lund University,
Sweden

As a philosophy professor for three decades, I have taught this wretched book several times in survey courses in 20th century philosophy. It has gone through numerous printings, and so has seemed to capture the respect of a good number of Anglo-American professors. However, Reichenbach's reading of the history of philosophy is wrong on every count; it is no wonder that Einstein, whose student he once was, ridicules Reichenbach in "Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist." Although I endeavored to keep my view out of lectures, my undergraduates were able to point to Reichenbach's superficiality and his errors at every turn.
So, one might ask--what is its attraction? For people who would like to avoid the considerable labor of studying the great thinkers of the past with seriousness, this book gives them an easy excuse not to. The book is a pathetic exercise in uninformed and biased revisionism.