Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-th4rj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T07:55:25.165Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pluralism or Relativism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Gideon Freudenthal
Gideon Freudenthal
Affiliation:
The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas Tel Aviv University
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Elkana's paper “Two-Tier Thinking” (1978) contains the thesis that became the foundation of all his later work. This thesis is best summarized by the author himself:

The thesis of this paper is that this distinction [between realists and relativists] is not a logical necessity but a historical situation in Western scientific culture. It is claimed here that the distinction is spurious: every problem has a realist and a relativist dimension, and the two views can be, and are actually being, held simultaneously. Once a frame of reference has been selected, in it realism prevails. With respect to selection of an appropriate framework the approach has to be relativist since there is no absolute, external-to-all framework which would fit absolute realism. (Elkana 1978, 309)

Information

Type
Homage to Yehuda Elkana
Information
Science in Context , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Summer 1996, pp. 151 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Cassirer, Ernst. 1910. Substance and Function.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. 1913. “Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik.” Jarbücher der Philosophie 1: 1–59.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. 1927. “Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grenzfragen der Logik und Denkpsychologie.” Jahrbücher der Philosophie 3: 191–208.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. 1929 “Forms and Metamorphoses of Form of the Philosophical Concept of Truth.” Address presented as newly elected rector of University of Hamburg.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. 1955. “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.” Translated by Manheim, Ralph. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Elkana, Yehuda. 1978. “Two-Tier Thinking: Philosophical Realism and Historical Relativism,” Social Studies of Science 8: 309–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elkana, Yehuda. 1987. “Alexandre Koyré Between the History of Ideas and Sociology of Knowledge,” History and Technology 4: 111–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlick, Moritz. 1918. Erkenntnislehre.Google Scholar
Vaihinger, Hans. 1911. Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The philosophy of as if).Chicago, 15: 118.Google Scholar