“It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.”

Theories and Things, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981
1980s and later

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Willard van Orman Quine25

American philosopher and logician 1908–2000

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“Philosophy of science can bring a strong array of analytical and synthetic tools to questions of ultimate causation, ultimate reality and “the whole of reality” because these questions are both physical and metaphysical—entailing methodological procedures from both science and philosophy.”

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“Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

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Context: Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.

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“Many innovations of current history and philosophy of science were, in fact, anticipated in Neurath’s oeuvre. The rediscovery of Neurath was therefore not merely a phenomenon of academic nostalgia, but itself constitutes research into the conditions and possibilities of changing a paradigm in the philosophy of science.”

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“Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.”

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“The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction – both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality – that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy – is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

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“Vico claims that the aim of philosophy is the problem of "finding," and he identifies the theory of "finding" with "topical philosophy.” …”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 40

“Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

“Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 98

“It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.”

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Willard van Orman Quine25

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