Thomas Kuhn's "Linguistic Turn" and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism: Incommensurability, Rationality and the Search for Truth

Presenting a critical history of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century, focusing on the transition from logical positivism in its first half to the "new philosophy of science" in its second, Stefano Gattei examines the influence of several key figures, but the main focus of the book are Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper.
Kuhn as the central figure of the new philosophy of science, and Popper as a key philosopher of the time who stands outside both traditions. Gattei makes two important claims about the development of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century; that Kuhn is much closer to positivism than many have supposed, failing to solve the crisis of neopostivism and that Popper, in responding to the deeper crisis of foundationalism that spans the whole of the Western philosophical tradition, ultimately shows what is untenable in Kuhn's view.

Stefano Gattei researches the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pisa. He is the author of several books and articles, including La rivoluzione incompiuta di Thomas Kuhn (Turin: UTET, 2007), Introduzione a Popper (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2008) and Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science: Rationality without Foundations (Routledge, New York). He is currently working on a reader's guide to Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery for Continuum Press, New York, and, together with Joseph Agassi, he is editing Physics and Philosophy, the fourth volume of Feyerabend's philosophical papers for Cambridge University Press. He also has in preparation an annotated critical edition of Kepler's Strena seu De nive sexangula (1611).