How Reid's Philosophy of Science demonstrates his commitment to Enlightenment "Improvement"

What is it about?

An exegesis of Reid on what it is to be (or become) a science. A comparison of Reid's view to familiar 20th century authors Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. For Reid, science is a reflective extension of common sense, a more self-aware and efficient version of our natural thinking. Like Popper, Reid sees science as cumulative rather than revolutionary; however, like Kuhn, Reid finds that scientific successes and failures are often more obvious than any methodological prescription for science.

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Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash

Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Reid was a Newtonian among Newtonians and a Baconian among Baconians. While other Enlightenment authors, like David Hume, characterized their own works as extensions of Newton, Reid often cast his reactions to them in Newtonian or Baconian terms. Accordingly, to understand Reid's writing, especially his criticisms of Hume, Priestly, Hutcheson, and others, it helps to understand Reid's expectations for scientific discovery--his philosophy of science. Here, I argue that Reid's approach to science bears some resemblance to familiar 20th-century philosophies of science, like Thomas Kuhn or Karl Popper's, without fully anticipating them. Reid had his own take, and it is a take worth considering whether we want to understand Reid's engagement with his Enlightenment peers or a forgotten philosophy of science.

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