The Origin of the Structuralist Approach: The Attempted Integration of Physical Science into the Bourbaki Programme by P. Suppes. Non-Statement View

Abstract

Most critics of my book [52] seem to assume that it was my main objective, to give a corrected account of T.S. Kuhn’s philosophy of science, a new ‘Kuhn-reconstruction’ so to speak. This assumption is not correct, neither in an historical nor in a systematic respect². A few words of clarification are necessary, not only from the viewpoint of structurahsm as a purely systematic endeavour. It seems to me that it should be welcomed from the point of view of Kuhn’s philosophy as well. For it is my conviction, and I hope that Professor Kuhn will share this conviction, that it is detrimental to the discussion of the philosophical views shared by Kuhn, if the impression is created that a new formalism, invented as it were for the sake of belated justification, is forced upon Kuhn’s philosophy.

Readers interested in more details than those mentioned in this and the next section are advised to read the article [33] of Moulines and Sneed.