Truth or coherence? How Adam Smith used philosophical sources to explain how paradigms change
Stefano Fiori
Abstract:The ‘History of Astronomy’ is fundamental to understanding Smith’s epistemology. The most problematic issue of this text is that Smith intended to analyse the history of astronomy according not to the principles of ‘truth’ that they embodied, but in terms of their logical coherence. However, he was also influenced by Newton’s realism. My thesis is that Smith had no doubts that external reality exists, but believed that it is necessarily filtered by our perceptions and our scientific beliefs. Perceptions and th… Show more
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