Henry Kreuzman

Within contemporary analytic philosophy there is a division between the philosophy of science and epistemology. The lack of interaction and communication between these two fields is perplexing because they deal with many similar issues, such as knowledge, truth, belief, and rationality, and because they are both part of the same philosophical tradition . In order to understand this dichotomy, an historical account of how it arose is presented. This dissertation does not address psychological, sociological, and purely accidental factors that contributed to this dichotomy; rather, it focuses on philosophical factors which contributed to it. ;In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the study of rationality was not divided into two independent subjects . There was a diverse group of philosophers who independently adopted similar substantive theories which were versions of phenomenalistic foundationalism. Because it stated that the process of justification is the same for all types of beliefs, stated regardless of whether they are perceptual, common-sense, or scientific beliefs, phenomenalistic foundationalism did not divide philosophy of science from epistemology. ;However, among these philosophers, disagreements arose on four issues: the appropriate meta-methodology, the nature of philosophical analysis, the construal of the base language, and the structure of rationality. The result of these disagreements was not only the development of different substantive theories of rationality with correspondingly different meta-methodologies, but also the division of theories of rationality which apply to scientific beliefs from those which apply to perceptual and common-sense beliefs. Thus, divergence on these issues led to the dichotomy between philosophy of science and epistemology. ;Finally, the history of these two independent research programs, from their split in the mid-1930s to the present, is explored. This discussion focuses on the shift in meta-methodology and the turn towards naturalism within each discipline. Emerging from this broad historical picture is the insight that though these disciplines are independent, they have undergone parallel developments.