W. Whewell and Philosophy of Science of the XXth century

Abstract

The article explores the conception of science developed by the famous Scottish philosopher W. Whewell who can be considered the founder of philosophy of science. It is demonstrated that, according to Whewell, the main goal of philosophy of science consists in discovering
the general methods of a scientific research which bring the researcher to the truth by means of a thorough analysis of the history of various scientific disciplines. The author discusses Whewell’s ideas about the structure and development of science and shows that, in many
cases, Whewell anticipated the ideas of K. Popper, T. Kuhn, I. Lakatos. The author argues that Whewell’s conception of science is still relevant and can be useful for the development of the philosophy of science.