Liberty and the Pursuit of Knowledge

Renouvier certainly deserves more consideration than he has received to date. As Schmaus shows quite convincingly, Renouvier’s philosophy is a crucial step between Comte’s positivism and Poincaré’s conventionalism. The way Renouvier grounds his epistemology on a liberal social theory will prove useful for anyone who wishes to give sense to the idea of a social philosophy of science.

...an important introduction to Renouvier's thought....Written in clear and accessible prose, this brief work successfully introduces Renouvier's political philosophy of science and other dimensions of his thought. A solid addition to the literature on 19th-century French intellectual history.

...the book does an excellent job of introducing Renouvier to a reader not fully immersed in nineteenth-century French culture and thought....well researched and thoroughly written.

I am very glad that this book exists. I hope it will be widely read. It does an excellent job of focusing in on one aspect of Renouvier's philosophy and shows that it should be taken very seriously.

The book provides detailed scholarly analysis of the ideas of Renouvier which will be of interest to philosophers of science, especially those engaged with the history of the subject. . . .The book does an excellent job of introducing Renouvier to a reader not fully immersed in nineteenth-century French culture and thought.