ABSTRACT
Philosophy of science is frequently spoken of, particularly by those laboring in disciplines other than philosophy, as if it consisted of little more than positivism and warmed-over versions of positivistic doctrines. One of the most important aspects of positivism in any account that would attempt to tie its history and influence to later developments in philosophy of science, including those informed by feminist theory, is the extent to which it was related to a foundationalist epistemology. Perhaps one of the greatest caricatures of the work of the positivists, particularly insofar as it stretches up to our time, is the notion that all the positivists held something like an emotive view of ethical statements, or that members of the Vienna Circle routinely held that no cognitive import of any kind could be attributed to statements of value. The chapter provides a structure for theories deriving from and concomitant to the new physics.
