Abstract

The article discusses in detail Nicholas Rescher’s book Scientific Progess: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science (1978). Rescher discusses the possibilities of further progress for science. According to Rescher there are no limits by principles to scientific progress. Among the positions which postulate an end of scientific progress there are some which see the reason in the finiteness of nature, others in the finitude of our intellectual resources. According to Rescher science arises from the interaction between nature and our intellectual instruments, and the combinatory of these interactions in infinite. On the other hand, there is an economic limit to scientific progress, due to the growth of the marginal costs of the scientific enterprise: the costs grow exponentially, that is to say that the yields grow only logarithmically compared to the investments.