On the Empirical Refutation of Epistemological Doctrine in Hans Reichenbach’s Early Philosophy

This chapter offers a framework for thinking about the significance of Hans Reichenbach’s project in scientific philosophy. It argues for a reappraisal of the main purpose of Reichenbach’s 1920 book, Relativitatstheorie und Erkenntnis A Priori that both connects it more closely to the details of scientific neo-Kantianism and lays out more explicitly its attempt to provide an empiricist alternative to neo-Kantianism. The tensions in Reichenbach’s account in 1920 of empiricism lead, this chapter further suggests, to some of the central themes in his mature work in philosophy of science.