Teadusfilosoofilisest vaatepunktist

The author is a philosopher of science and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tartu. He graduated from the University of Tartu as a chemist but subsequently worked as a lecturer in philosophy, focusing his research on the philosophy of science, particularly the philosophy and history of chemistry. This volume brings together a selection of Rein Vihalemm’s Estonian-language articles previously published since 1970. The majority deal with the philosophy of science, though several so-called journalistic or essayistic texts have also been included. For the sake of completeness, the volume additionally contains one more general article translated (back) into Estonian from English and one from Russian, both reflecting the relatively recent stage of the author’s intellectual inquiries. The title of the book is deliberately ambiguous: on the one hand, such a selection suggests that even the more journalistic texts are written from a philosophy-of-science perspective; on the other hand, this very perspective itself is subjected to analytical examination. In other words, the author seeks to clarify what the philosophy of science is, what it has sought, seeks, and is able to say about science, the scientific approach, and scientific method, and, more broadly, what one may expect from the philosophy of science as such.