Ensaios Sobre o Conhecimento Científico

Mary Brenda Hesse (1924-2016) played a significant role in the development of the history and philosophy of science in the 20th century. As much as the work of well-known authors such as Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn, Hesse’s philosophical reflections stimulated the debate on the value and limits of scientific knowledge and contributed to the development of a broader approach to classic questions in the philosophy of science, an approach that includes methodologies and theoretical content from other disciplines: primarily the history of science, but also sociology and hermeneutics. The essays published in this volume outline the theoretical path developed by Mary Hesse and show the challenges that her view of scientific knowledge pose for contemporary philosophy.

Translated into Portuguese by André Kfouri, the volume is one of the outcomes of the FCT exploratory project “Mary B. Hesse’s ‘new epistemology’. Principles and legacy” (EXPL/FER-FIL/0276/2021) coordinated by Pietro Gori and carried out between 2022 and 2023.