Philosophers of science

Louis Pierre Althusser (UK: , US: ; French: [altysɛʁ]; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.
Althusser was a long-time member and sometimes a strong critic of the French Communist Party (Parti communiste français, PCF). His arguments and theses were set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism. These included both the influence of empiricism on Marxist theory, and humanist and reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in the European communist parties, as well as the problem of the cult of personality and of ideology. Althusser is commonly referred to as a structural Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation and he was critical of many aspects of structuralism. He later described himself as a social anarchist.Althusser's life was marked by periods of intense mental illness. In 1980, he killed his wife, the sociologist Hélène Rytmann, by strangling her. He was declared unfit to stand trial due to insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital for three years. He did little further academic work, dying in 1990.

Jürgen Habermas (UK: , US: ; German: [ˈjʏʁɡn̩ ˈhaːbɐmaːs] ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focuses on the foundations of epistemology and social theory, the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, albeit within the confines of the natural law tradition, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests. Habermas is known for his work on the concept of modernity, particularly with respect to the discussions of rationalization originally set forth by Max Weber. He has been influenced by American pragmatism, action theory, and poststructuralism.

Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick (; German: [ʃlɪk] ; 14 April 1882 – 22 June 1936) was a German philosopher, physicist, and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle.

Max Bense (7 February 1910 in Strasbourg – 29 April 1990 in Stuttgart) was a German philosopher, writer, and publicist, known for his work in philosophy of science, logic, aesthetics, and semiotics. His thoughts combine natural sciences, art, and philosophy under a collective perspective and follow a definition of reality, which – under the term existential rationalism – is able to remove the separation between humanities and natural sciences.

Edmund Faustyn Biernacki (19 December 1866 in Opoczno – 29 December 1911 in Lwów) was a Polish physician.Biernacki was the first one to note a relationship between the sedimentation rate of red blood cells in a human blood sample and the general condition of the organism. This method, known as the Biernacki Reaction, is used worldwide to assess erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), which is one of the major blood tests.

Jules Vuillemin (; French: [vɥijmɛ̃]; 15 February 1920 – 16 January 2001) was a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy of Knowledge at the prestigious Collège de France, in Paris, from 1962 to 1990, succeeding Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Professor emeritus from 1991 to 2001. He was an Invited Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey (1968).
At the Collège de France, Vuillemin introduced analytical philosophy to France. Vuillemin’s thought had a major influence on Jacques Bouveresse's works. Vuillemin himself vindicated the legacy of Martial Gueroult.
A friend of Michel Foucault, he supported his election at the Collège de France, and was also close to Michel Serres.

Dominique Lecourt (French: [ləkuʁ]; 5 February 1944 – 1 May 2022) was a French philosopher. He is known in the Anglophone world primarily for his work developing a materialist interpretation of the philosophy of science of Gaston Bachelard.

Gaston Milhaud (10 August 1858, Nîmes – 1 October 1918, Paris) was a French philosopher and historian of science.
Gaston Milhaud studied mathematics with Gaston Darboux at the École Normale Supérieure. In 1881 he took a teaching post at the University of Le Havre. In 1891 he became professor of mathematics at Montpellier University, and in 1895 became professor of philosophy there. In 1909 a chair in the history of philosophy in its relationship to the sciences was created for him at the Sorbonne. Milhaud's successor in the chair was Abel Rey.

Etienne Vermeersch (2 May 1934, Sint-Michiels, Bruges – 18 January 2019, Ghent) was a Belgian moral philosopher, skeptic, opinion maker and debater. He is one of the founding fathers of the abortion, euthanasia law, and the Law on Patients' Rights in Belgium. Vermeersch became an atheist after five years with the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Later he became a philosophical materialist. In January 2008, Vermeersch was chosen by hundred prominent Flemings as the most influential intellectual of Flanders. He died in a hospital in Ghent on 18 January 2019 by euthanasia after a long illness.

Michel de Certeau (French: [sɛʁto]; 17 May 1925 – 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known as a philosopher of everyday life and widely regarded as a historian who had interests ranging from travelogues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to contemporary urban life.A multidisciplinarian, he wrote ground-breaking studies in fields as diverse as mysticism, the act of faith, cultural dynamics in contemporary society, and historiography as an intellectual practice. His impact continues unabated, with new volumes appearing regularly, and perhaps surprisingly his reputation is growing even more rapidly in English and German-speaking countries and the Mediterranean than in his native France. This strong and growing interest in academia is not matched in the public sphere; however, partly due to his being considered a "difficult" author because of his highly personal style which makes translation difficult, and partly due to the declining status of French in the world generally. Nevertheless, portions of his prolific output have been translated into a dozen languages.