Formation of the Classical Philosophy of Science and the Evolution of Its Forms

The modern philosophy of science is genetically related to the formed in the modern era classical philosophy of science. The latter, in turn, was formed under the influence of developments in the New European (“new”) science in the late 16^th – 18^th centuries. The new European science has acquired the status of classical one, because it is the initial stage of the modern type of science. The distinctive feature of this modern type is that experiment has become its basis and method. The article reveals the specifics of experiment as an activity associated with the search for facts that can confirm or refute an assumption/theory/law. An overview of the emergence of the experimental method in natural science and humanities is carried out. The concepts of Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Immanuel Kant are considered as varieties of classical philosophy of science. It is concluded that in the case of Francis Bacon, the philosophy of science represents a methodology of science, extremely approximated to and aimed at the objective world studied by science, revealing the laws of experimental activity and the rules of the method of induction, which make exploration of nature possible. This type of philosophy of science runs from Francis Bacon to Auguste Comte and the whole positivist tradition. The second type of classical philosophy of science constitutes the axiomatic-deductive methodology of science. It has its origin in the philosophy of René Descartes and brings science and philosophy quite closely together, since in this methodology it is philosophy that sets the fundamentals/axioms of the deductive method. This branch leads to Hegel and the phenomenological tradition. Immanuel Kant builds a critical methodology that claims to overcome the limitations of both empirical-inductive and axiomatic-deductive methodologies. In this methodology, experiment is comprehended through such a concept as “the limits of possible experience”. A peculiar continuation of the Kantian variety of the philosophy of science is the critical rationalism by Karl Popper. 

Keywords: philosophy of science, methodology of science, experiment, empirical-inductive method, axiomatic-deductive method, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Vladimir I. Vernadsky