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The Unimportance of Semantics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Richard Creath
Richard Creath*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Extract

Our deepest commitments about history are reflected in how we break it down into periods. (Cf. Galison 1988) By drawing a break at a certain point we emphasize the novelty and importance of a new development. It is also how we contain and dismiss certain work as no longer relevant. Thus, in the history of physics we break the story with Newton, both to emphasize his roles in bringing previous developments to a close and in initiating new lines of work, and also to suggest that the ongoing practice of physics thereafter can appropriately in large measure ignore what preceeds Newton. Periodizing history is essential to understanding it, including when we periodize the work of a given writer. In philosophy, anyone who did not see a gulf between Kant’s early work and his critical philosophy or between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and his Philosophical Investigations would be missing something enormously important.

Type
Part X. Rudolf Carnap Centennial
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 404 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1991

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank colleagues Jane Maienschein and Michael White and fellow symposiasts Burton Dreben and Michael Friedman for comments on an earlier version of this paper. I would also like to thank the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences of Arizona State University for a research travel grant.

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