A Gricean View at the History of Science

J was wondering about 'obvious' philosophy of science, except perhaps Feyerabend. I agree.

It's too inductive. My teacher in the philosophy of science (G. Ranea) had his PhD on Copernicus -- but he bored us to tears with Ramsey and the observation-theoretical distinction.

It can be bored, such as "What is that thing called Science", by Chalmers. They usually just start with Inductivism (Vienna Circle) and never fail to mention 'fragile'. Then they have 4 or 5 chapters on Popper. Imagine if we were so detailed when we study British empiricism: Locke-Hume-and-Berkeley and that's it.

Then they do Kuhn, who is a historian, rather than a philosopher, no? And when they do Lakatos and Feyerabend -- I get distracted. I get distracted when I read Lakatos because I would rather be discussing an Oxonian philosopher! (rather than the work of a Hungarian emigree who worked most of his life in what Grice called a red-brick university! I love him! Lakatos, I mean). And when they do Feyerabend they never mention that the man 'hated' Grice.

Feyerabend was appointed a member of the faculty of the dept. of philosophy at Berkeley after Grice. So Grice, who was a newcomer (of sorts) behaved like the host. Feyerabend, in his letters, recalls how he would get very irritated in just having to share an examination date with Grice. On one occasion, Grice had a student for 15 minutes discussing the implicature of the existential (vis a vis radical translation): "There is a rhinoceros in the fridge".

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Most scientists don't 'implicate'. They just 'follow' the 'maxims' but hardly engage in the sort of 'divergences' that Strawson had made Grice to get a fascination with. Such as, "He got herpes and had sex" (strictly truth-conditionally equivalent to "He had sex and got herpes". Etc.