BEYOND FOUNDATIONALISM AND RELATIVISM: WHAT HOPE FOR SCIENCES OR SOCIETY?

At the end of the European Middle Ages, as the Church slowly lost its monopoly held on truth and meaning, the traditional foundations of knowledge crumbled, initiating an epistemological crisis that continues to haunt Western thought. The problem became how can we have confidence in our theories and beliefs. What grounds their validity? Bacon's empiricism and Descartes' rationalism were the most concerted and influential early attempts to resolve the crisis. But their resolutions were soon found inadequate, and ever since, the search for a way to provide a solid foundation for our knowledge has been the dominant concern of philosophy. The last grandiose and influential attempt at resolution was positivism. But positivism too has fallen into disfavor. The epistemological crisis endures.