In his influential paper, 'Why Was the Logic of Discovery Abandoned?', Laudan contends that there has been no philosophical rationale for a logic of discovery since the emergence of consequentialism in the 19th century. It is the purpose of this paper to show that consequentialism does not involve the rejection of all types of logic of discovery. Laudan goes too far in his interpretation of the historical shift from generativism to consequentialism, and his claim that the context of pursuit belongs (...) to neither discovery nor justification is based on narrow interpretations of the contexts of discovery and justification. As a result, Laudan draws unwarranted conclusions concerning both the early and contemporary defenders of a logic of discovery. A methodological logic of discovery - which involves self-corrective methods of hypothesis generation that promote the long-term goals of science and which require consequential support for justification - is a type of logic of discovery that survives the shift to consequentialism. (shrink)

This article compares the features of a logic of discovery for the "friends of discovery" and for Karl Popper. It argues that the account given by Popper is the same as that of the "friends of discovery." The comparison will unsystematically exhibit that Popper proposes such a logic and will submit that the epistemological significance of a logic of discovery is to be sought in a configuration of ideas and transactions deemed regulated by or mirroring rationality rather than in creative (...) processes as such. (shrink)

At issue in this paper is the question of the appropriate relationship between the philosophy and history of science. The discussion starts with a brief sketch of Kuhn's approach, followed by an analysis of the so-called ‘testing-theories-of-scientific-change programme’. This programme is an attempt at a more rigorous approach to the historical philosophy of science. Since my conclusion is that, by and large, this attempt has failed, I proceed to examine some more promising approaches. First, I deal with Hacking's recent views (...) on the issues in question, particularly his notion of a ‘style of reasoning’. Next, Nickles's reconstructionist interpretation of the development of science and his views on Whig history are addressed. Finally, I propose an account of philosophy as a theoretical, an interpretative and explanatory, enterprise. Thus, three alternatives to the Kuhnian paradigm are discussed, alternatives that share a recognition of the relative autonomy of philosophy from history. Hence, they assume a less tight relationship between philosophy and history of science than is the case within the Kuhnian paradigm. (shrink)

Several philosophers of science have claimed that the correspondence principle can be generalized from quantum physics to all of (particularly physical) science and that in fact it constitutes one of the major heuristical rules for the construction of new theories. In order to evaluate these claims, first the use of the correspondence principle in (the genesis of) quantum mechanics will be examined in detail. It is concluded from this and from other examples in the history of science that the principle (...) should be qualified with respect to its nature and relativized with respect to its scope of application. At the same time this conclusion implies a qualification and a relativization of the heuristic power of the principle. Generally speaking, intertheoretical correspondence is primarily of a formal-mathematical and empirical but not of a conceptual nature. Moreover, it only applies to certain parts of the theories involved. Finally, a number of philosophical justifications of the principle are discussed and some conclusions are drawn concerning the debates on theory reduction and on the discovery-justification distinction. (shrink)

Debates concerning the character, scope, and warrant of abductive inference have been active since Peirce first proposed that there was a third form of inference, distinct from induction and deduction. Abductive reasoning has been dubbed weak, incoherent, and even nonexistent. Part, at least, of the problem of articulating a clear sense of abductive inference is due to difficulty in interpreting Peirce. Part of the fault must lie with his critics, however. While this article will argue that Peirce indeed left a (...) number of puzzles for interpreters, it will also contend that interpreters should be careful to distinguish discussion of the formal and strictly epistemic question of whether and how abduction is a sound form of inference from discussions of the practical goals of abduction, as Peirce understood them. This article will trace a history of critics and defenders of Peirce’s notion of abduction and discuss how Peirce both fueled the confusion and in fact anticipated and responded to several recurring objections. (shrink)

The analysis of philosophically important themes can depart from two different angles. The first one investigates the various answers that have been given to a certain issue, like that of the problem of knowledge, the justification of theories, the notion of culture, etcetera. These answers are often mutually contradictory which, by the way, facilitates their overview (like the schemes of rationalism-empiricism, justification-discovery, universalism-relativism). A second approach starts from the problems (or: “problematique”) behind the divergent answers (e.g., foundationalism behind both, empiricism (...) and rationalism).In the following sections the issue of discovery is discussed. Here the second line of approach has been followed, not only by making visible a same problematique, but more by trying to set out the common context of the discussion about context of discovery and context of justification. The idea is that this discussion, or better the shift taking place in that discussion, finds its reason in a context in which the distance between traditional methodology and contemporary scientific practice, also between scientific knowledge and the experience of reality has become greater. This is related to the deepening awareness of the cultural context of scientific method. Man and world, scientific method and cultural context are always interacting.From this point of view quite different philosophical approaches show nevertheless similar features pointing to new solutions. A more psychological approach to scientific method (like: Gordon's and Grmek's, even perhaps Gutting's reinterpretation of Popper) and a sociological one (e.g., Barnes, Bloor, and already Durkheim) are opposed to a more logically structured analysis of Nagel, Hempel, and also Popper. Nevertheless the view on the flexibility of scientific method defended along different lines by for instance Achinstein, Bachelard, Hesse, Piaget, Polanyi, Toulmin manifests a certain convergence in those divergent standpoints, the more so since often the cultural context of science is being stressed (e.g., Ladriére, Prigogine, Needham).The miscellany of philosophical orientations, presented in the following sections, can in this way perhaps give profile to deeper tendencies: to relate again scientific method to the context of culture and of human strategy in general. This does not blend, however, the distinction between context of justification and context of discovery. By changing their roles a new overview of this dilemma becomes possible. There is no juxtaposition of both, nor has the one to be absorbed by the other. The conclusion will be that there are still two contexts, but that one is wider, less defined and demarcated from the wider field of daily culture, and that the other is more restricted, functioning as a kind of safetydevice on behalf of the wider strategy of discovery. In such a way discovery is regarded as the wider context of the more restricted context of justification. (shrink)

Summary The recent turn to the ‘context of discovery’ and other ‘postmodernist’ developments in the philosophy of science have undermined the idea of a universal rationality of science. This parallels the fate of the classical dream of a logic of discovery. Still, justificational questions have remained as a distinct perspective, though comprising both consequential and generative justification — an insight delayed by certain confusions about the (original) context distinction. An examination of one particular heuristic strategy shows its local rationality; even (...) as an efficient procedure of hypothesis generation, it carries probative weight. It will be explored in which respects such a strategy can be normative or contain normative elements. (shrink)

Scientists routinely solve the problem of supplementing one’s store of variables with new theoretical posits that can explain the previously inexplicable. The banality of success at this task obscures a remarkable fact. Generating hypotheses that contain novel variables and accurately project over a limited amount of additional data is so difficult—the space of possibilities so vast—that succeeding through guesswork is overwhelmingly unlikely despite a very large number of attempts. And yet scientists do generate hypotheses of this sort in very few (...) tries. I argue that this poses a dilemma: either the long history of scientific success is a miracle, or there exists at least one method or algorithm for generating novel hypotheses with at least limited projectibility on the basis of what’s available to the scientist at a time, namely a set of observations, the history of past conjectures, and some prior theoretical commitments. In other words, either ordinary scientific success is miraculous or there exists a logic of discovery at the heart of actual scientific method. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that metaphysical assumptions, commitments and presuppositions play an important role in science. Yet according to the empiricist there is no place for metaphysics as traditionally understood in the scientific enterprise. In this paper I aim to take a first step towards reconciling these seemingly irreconcilable claims. In the first part of the paper I outline a conception of metaphysics and its relation to science that should be congenial to empiricists, motivated by van Fraassen’s work on ‘stances’. (...) There has been a considerable amount of recent work devoted to van Fraassen’s ‘stance’ view, but it has not on the whole been noticed that the view has the potential to motivate a general empiricist conception of the relation between science and metaphysics. In the second and third sections I discuss two examples from biology to illustrate this conception: metaphysical punctuationism, and its relation to and influence on the thesis of punctuated equilibrium; and dialectical biology as defended by Levins and Lewontin. (shrink)

The distinction between context of discovery and context of justification points out to the difference between the generation a new idea or hyphotesis and the testing of it. Although the distinction is attributed to Hans Reichenbach and Karl Popper, Larry Laudan argues that the history of distinction is dates back to the debates of scientific in the seventeenth century. While in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was no need to distinguish between discovery and justification, in the twentieth century discovery (...) and justification were considered two separate processes. In this paper, it will be argued that the distinction between the context of discovery and justification is untenable given that the history of science is a part of scientific research, as expressed by philosophers such as Kuhn and Feyerabend. (shrink)

Bilime ve bilimsel bilgiye yönelik yaygın görüş, bilimin objektif bir faaliyet olduğudur. Bu görüş bilimsel bilginin elde edilmesinde, bilim insanlarının nesnel bir tavır sergilediğini ve onların sosyal faktörlerden etkilenmediğini varsaymaktadır. Yirminci yüzyılın ikinci çeyreğinde, Viyana Çevresi ve Karl Popper’ın düşünceleri ile bilimde sosyolojik ve psikolojik unsurların keşif bağlamı içerisinde görülebileceği, bilimsel kuramların ve araştırmaların gerekçelendirilmesine yönelik girişimlerin ise yalnızca nesnel, epistemik çalışmalardan oluştuğu ileri sürülmektedir. Keşif bağlamı ve gerekçelendirme bağlamı adı altında yapılan bu ayrıma ilişkin iddialar, Thomas Kuhn’un 1962 yılında (...) yayımlanmış olan ‘Bilimsel Devrimlerin Yapısı’ adlı kitabında vurguladığı argümanlar ile sekteye uğramaktadır. Kuhn, sosyal ve psikolojik etkenlerin her iki bağlamda da yer aldığını ifade etmekte ve bu sebeple keşif ve gerekçelendirme ayrımına karşı çıkmaktadır. Bu çerçevede makalede, Kuhn’un ulaşmış olduğu sonuçlar Güçlü Program’ın öne sürmüş olduğu argümanlar çerçevesinde desteklenerek ortaya konulmaktadır. (shrink)