“The proper measure of a philosophical system or a scientific theory is not the degree to which it anticipated modern thought, but its degree of success in treating the philosophical and scientific problems of its own day.” I don’t buy it. What is important in science (I leave philosophy to others) is not the solution of some popular scientific problems of one’s own day, but understanding the world. In the course of this work, one finds out what sort of explanations are possible, and what sort of problems can lead to those explanations. The progress of science has been largely a matter of
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