Series: Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Science

In this book, David Stump traces alternative conceptions of the a priori in the philosophy of science and defends a unique position in the current debates over conceptual change and the constitutive elements in science. Stump emphasises the unique epistemological status of the constitutive elements of scientific theories. These constitutive elements are the necessary preconditions that must be assumed to...

This book explains the background and meaning of Kant’s account of the life sciences in the Critique of the Power of Judgement by reading the development of Kant’s ideas on the living since his 1763 precritical essays, in parallel with analyzing several milestones in the constitution of the concept of organism as a self-organized totality, studied by biology. This parallel...