Epistemological breaks

While Bachelard rejects Meyerson s conservative or Lavoisian ontology of timeless identities rather than historicized substances, he shares with Meyerson the conviction that science rationalizes nature. Latour completes the critique of Meyerson when he rejects Bachelard s rationalism and criticizes his view that epistemological breaks objectify science by displacing intuitive and mythologically realistic views (Latour 1995, 81 and 124ff.). 

Lisa Lloyd I disagree with what Professor Williams just said. I think that every time you use the word reductionist , I would have used analysis . I think that it is correct that scientists use analysis to break systems down, but I think of reductionism as being something else which is the complete description of entire systems in terms of entities at a lower level. That s the sort of standard philosophical definition of reductionism which has a lot more metaphysical and epistemological bite than does the kind of analytic method that you are describing. So I would want to distinguish between analysis as a method, a set of approaches that all scientists do use, and reductionism as a set of commitments about what the ultimate aims of science or of a scientific theory would be, which is explanation at the lowest possible level. Does that make sense to you ... 

Castellio s published polemics against Calvin suggest that the break between the two men was predicated not merely on specific doctrinal points but on more profound epistemological differences. Castellio denied the clarity of Scripture and... 

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