A LEGITIMAÇÃO DA CIÊNCIA NA INGLATERRA VITORIANA: WILLIAM WHEWELL, FILOSOFIA DA CIÊNCIA E A DISTINÇÃO ENTRE O CONTEXTO DA DESCOBERTA E O CONTEXTO DA JUSTIFICAÇÃO

Abstract

This dissertation is a study in the history of the philosophy of science. The main objective is to analyze and understand the formation of the philosophy of science regarding the presentation of the intellectual production of the mathematician and polymath William Whewell (1794-1866), and concerning some of the features of his biography and his historical context. The objective of this work is complemented by an analysis of the philosophical, scientific, theological, moral and educational criteria and assumptions used by Whewell to establish a distinction between the process of scientific discovery and the methods of justification of theories (in current terms, the distinction between thus called context of discovery and context of justification ). Nowadays philosophers and historian of Victorian science consider Whewell s books History of the Inductive Science s, from the earliest to the present time (1st edition, 1837) and The Philosophy of the Inductive Science, founded upon their histories (1 st edition, 1840) as the first historical and philosophical systematization about the pure and empirical sciences. In this sense, it is important to investigate the intellectual biography of Whewell (usually unknown by the Brazilian academician and students) in order to better understand the steps of his production, as well as his purposes, commitments and some peculiarities of his personality. The importance of this work justifies itself not only because it provides a better understanding of the emer gence of the philosophy of science as a real field of investigation, as a specialized subject and as normative speech about the scientific thought and practice, but also for the kind of a pproach used in this work, which articulates most of Whewell s intellectual, moral, cultura l and institutional motivations to his own historical and social circumstances.