Scientific Progress

What constitutes a scientific discovery? What role do discoveries play in science, its dynamics and social practices? Must every discovery be attributed to an individual discoverer (or a small number of discoverers)? The paper explores these questions by first critically examining extant philosophical explications of scientific discovery—the models of scientific discovery, propounded by Kuhn, McArthur, Hudson, and Schindler. As a simple, natural and powerful alternative, we proffer the “change-driver model”: in a nutshell, it takes discoveries to be cognitive scientific results (...) that have epistemically advanced science. The model overcomes the shortcomings of its precursors, whilst preserving their insights. We demonstrate its intensional and extensional superiority, especially with respect to the link between scientific discoveries and the dynamics of science, as well as the award system of science. Both as an illustration, and as an application to a recent scientific and political controversy, we apply the considered models of discovery to one of the most momentous discoveries of science: the expansion of the universe. We oppose the 2018 proposal of the International Astronomers’ Union as too simplistic vis-`a-vis the historical complexity of the episode. The change- driver model yields a more nuanced and circumspect verdict: (i) The redshift-distance relation shouldn’t be named the “Hubble-Lemaître Law”, but “Slipher-Lundmark-Hubble-Humason Law”; (ii) Its interpretation in terms of an expanding universe, however, Lemaître ought to be given credit for; but (iii) The establishment of the expansion of the universe, as an evidentially sufficiently warranted result, is a communal achievement, emerging in the 1950s or 1960s. (shrink)

Was kann und sollte der wissenschaftliche Realist auf die These(n) der semantischen Inkommensurabilität entgegnen?

We call for a change-of-attitude towards reviews of scientific literature. We begin with an acknowledgement of reviews as pathways for the advancement of our scientific understanding of reality. The significance of the scientific struggle propelling the putting together of pieces of knowledge into parts of a cohesive body of understanding is recognized, and yet undervalued, especially in empirical sciences. Here we propose a nudge, which is prefacing the insights gained in reviewing the literature with: 'Our review reveals' (or an equivalent (...) phrase), that can bring about the desired cultural shift in the practice of science. The resulting elevation of the status of reviews to that of original findings would also bring about the desirable smoothening of the undesirable schism between theorists and experimentalists. (shrink)

Many philosophers regard the persistence of philosophical disputes as symptomatic of overly ambitious, ill-founded intellectual projects. There are indeed strong reasons to believe that persistent disputes in philosophy (and more generally in the discourse at large) are pointless. We call this the pessimistic view of the nature of philosophical disputes. In order to respond to the pessimistic view, we articulate the supporting reasons and provide a precise formulation in terms of the idea that the best explanation of persistent disputes entails (...) that they are pointless. We then show how to answer the pessimistic argument. Taking a well-known mathematical controversy as our paradigm example, we argue that some persistent disputes reflect substantive disagreements at the “meta-analytic” level, i.e., disagreements about the best way, among quite different candidates, to understand the topic at issue, and the best associated cluster of analytic truths one should accept concerning it. Moreover, our concrete example shows that such meta-analytic disagreements can in principle be settled and yield a genuine theoretical (as opposed to merely pragmatic) breakthrough. We conclude optimistically that persistent disputes can be an important means of fostering epistemic progress. (shrink)

According to some prominent accounts of scientific progress, e.g. Bird’s epistemic account, accepting new theories is progressive only if the theories are justified in the sense required for knowledge. This paper argues that epistemic justification requirements of this sort should be rejected because they misclassify many paradigmatic instances of scientific progress as non-progressive. In particular, scientific progress would be implausibly rare in cases where (a) scientists are aware that most or all previous theories in some domain have turned out to (...) be false, (b) the new theory was a result of subsuming and/or logically strengthening previous theories, or (c) scientists are aware of significant peer disagreement about which theory is correct. (shrink)

In the course of developing an account of scientific progress, C. D. McCoy (2022) appeals centrally to understanding as well as to problem-solving. On the face of it, McCoy’s account could thus be described as a kind of hybrid of the understanding-based account that I favor (Dellsén 2016, 2021) and the functional (a.k.a. problem-solving) account developed most prominently by Laudan (1977; see also Kuhn 1970; Shan 2019). In this commentary, I offer two possible interpretations of McCoy’s account and explain why (...) I do not find it entirely compelling on either interpretation. (shrink)

I defend a novel account of scientific progress centred around justification. Science progresses, on this account, where there is a change in justification. I consider three options for explicating this notion of change in justification. This account of scientific progress dispels with a condition for scientific progress that requires accumulation of truth or truthlikeness, and it emphasises the social nature of scientific justification.

This review article discusses the book Understanding How Science Explains the World by Kevin McCain, published by Cambridge University Press (2022). With an impressive combination of clarity and depth, McCain provides the reader with a firm grasp of how science works, of what science aims to achieve, and of what makes science a successful epistemic enterprise. The review article reconstructs the book’s overall dialectic and identifies one potential point of tension which concerns the role of truth or accuracy in scientific (...) knowledge. -/- . (shrink)

I discuss a contemporary solution to the dynamic problem of old evidence (POE), as proposed by Sprenger. Sprenger’s solution combines the Garber–Jeffrey–Niiniluoto (GJN) approach with Howson’s suggestion of counterfactually removing the old evidence from scientists’ belief systems. I argue that in the dynamic POE, the challenge is to explain how an insight under beliefs in which the old evidence E is known increased the credence of a scientific hypothesis. Therefore, Sprenger’s counterfactual solution, in which E has been artificially removed, does (...) not resolve the problem. I consider several potential responses. (shrink)

Epistemic pluralists in the philosophy of science often argue that different epistemic perspectives in science are equally warranted. Sandra Mitchell – with her Integrative Pluralism (IP) – has notably advocated for this kind of epistemic pluralism. A problem arises for Mitchell however because she also wants to be an epistemological pluralist. She claims that, not only are different epistemic perspectives in science equally warranted in different contexts, but different understandings of these epistemic perspectives in science are also equally warranted in (...) different contexts. The problem is that Mitchell argues that her understanding of epistemic perspectives in science (IP) is the correct one, and it is dilemmic to then claim that there is more than one such understanding. As solution, I suggest that we abandon epistemological pluralism and instead follow Feyerabend in being opportunistic pluralists. We can adopt pluralism as a short-term strategy in the pursuit of a long-term unitary goal. This unitary goal is what philosophers of understanding call objectual understanding, the kind of understanding that Integrative Pluralism tacitly aspires to anyway. (shrink)

Background and Objectives: In this research article, the researcher addresses the issue of creating public understanding in a democratic society about the progress of science, with an emphasis on pluralism from philosophers of science. The idea that there is only one truth and that there are just natural laws awaiting discovery by scientists has historically made it difficult to explain scientific progress. This belief motivates science to develop theories that explain the unity of science, and it is thought that diversity (...) in the way different ideas presented by scientists is a problem that results in time being wasted in search of the most accurate theory. Some scientists perceive a benefit in having a range of scientific hypotheses, though. One benefit that is frequently cited is that scientific diversity as a whole contributes to the development of a democratic society that permits the expression of a range of viewpoints. The road to accountable scientific pluralism is fraught with difficulties, though. Therefore, it is crucial to take into account both pluralism's advantages and disadvantages. This research aims at: 1. analyzing in an epistemological way the interpretation of scientific theories and the progress of science from the perspectives of scientific pluralists; 2. analyzing the relationship between science and democracy in explaining scientific significance and progress; and 3. synthesizing new knowledge on epistemic dependentism and to argue that it plays a significant role in evaluating research issues related to scientific pluralism. Methodology: The research methodology involves the application of documentary investigation along with philosophical discourse. The method of philosophical argumentation involves analyzing the lines of arguments found in relevant academic publications in order to assess their validity and soundness. Main Results: One key argument of the pluralists is the use of the concept of theoretical pluralism, which suggests that scientific knowledge is created from a variety of perspectives according to the social and cultural context of knowledge creation. It is found that part of Longino's argument is based on the negation of rational/social dichotomy. Moreover, her theory is a departure from philosopher of science Philip Kitcher, who advocates the creation of scientific knowledge and the evaluation of scientific progress through the means of democratic society. He explains that these procedures will lead to "well-ordered science" in democratic society. Discussions: The researcher examines the underlying ideas accepted by these two philosophers of science and finds that although their opinions differ, they have common ground in the acceptance of consensus. However, the views of both philosophers still lack weight in explaining the knowledge itself. The researcher argues that the acceptance of pluralism as a way of understanding scientific progress necessarily lends itself to dependentism, which points to interdependence in comparisons of superiority/inferiority between scientific theories. It is undeniable that the situation has emerged all the time, even though the success of the scientific theories being compared to each other comes from different social and cultural grounds of thought. Conclusions: Some popular models of scientific pluralism in the philosophy of science still lack a compelling justification, particularly on the epistemic grounds. By elucidating the epistemic significance of the interdependence of these things, scientific pluralism can be strengthened by incorporating the notion of epistemic dependentism into the analysis of scientific progress. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers have argued that their discipline makes no progress (or not enough in comparison to the “hard sciences”). A key argument for this pessimistic position appeals to the purported fact that philosophers widely and systematically disagree on most major philosophical issues. In this paper, we take a step back from the debate about progress in philosophy specifically and consider the general question: How (if at all) would disagreement within a discipline undermine that discipline’s progress? We reject (...) two arguments from disagreement to a lack of progress, and spell out two accounts of progress on which progress is compatible with disagreements that persist or increase over time. However, we also argue that disagreement can undermine our ability to tell which developments are progressive (and to what degree). So, while disagreement can indeed be a threat to progress, the precise nature of the threat has not been appreciated. (shrink)

Universities are knowledge institutions. Compared to several other knowledge institutions (e.g. schools, government research organisations, think tanks), research universities have unusual, anarchic organisational features. We argue that such anarchic features are not a weakness. Rather, they reflect the special standing of research universities among knowledge institutions. We contend that the distributed, self-organising mode of knowledge production maintains a diversity of approaches, topics and solutions needed in frontier research, which involves generating relevant knowledge under uncertainty. Organisational disunity and inconsistencies should sometimes (...) be protected by institutional structures and procedures in order for research universities to best serve their purpose as knowledge institutions. The quality control for the knowledge produced stems from knowledge fields, clusters of knowledge and research that exist beyond the confines of individual organisations. The diversity of epistemic contributions is therefore kept in check by the order imposed by the internal logic of science as a social practice. Our argument provides a new defence for the autonomy of research conducted at universities. (shrink)

Philosophical debates on how to account for the progress of science have traditionally divided along the realism-anti-realism axis. Relatively recent developments in epistemology, however, have opened up a new knowledge-understanding axis to the debate. This chapter presents a novel understanding-based account of scientific progress that takes its motivation from problem-solving practices in science. Problem-solving is characterized as a means of measuring degree of understanding, which is argued to be the principal epistemic (or cognitive) aim of science, over and against knowledge. (...) This account is then defended against knowledge reductionism by showing how each plays an important and distinctive role in science. (shrink)

This paper defends the usefulness of the concept of philosophical progress and the common assumption that philosophy and science aim to make the same, or a comparable, kind of progress. It does so by responding to Yafeng Shan's (2022) arguments that the wealth of research on scientific progress is not applicable or useful to philosophy, and that philosophy doesn't need a concept of progress at all. It is ultimately argued that while Shan's arguments are not successful, they reveal the way (...) forward in developing accounts of philosophical progress. (shrink)

Metascientists have studied questionable research practices in science. The present article considers the parallel concept of questionable metascience practices (QMPs). A QMP is a research practice, assumption, or perspective that has been questioned by several commentators as being potentially problematic for metascience and/or the science reform movement. The present article reviews ten QMPs that relate to criticism, replication, bias, generalization, and the characterization of science. Specifically, the following QMPs are considered: (1) rejecting or ignoring self-criticism; (2) a fast ‘n’ bropen (...) scientific criticism style; (3) overplaying the role of replication in science; (4) assuming a replication rate is “too low” without specifying an “acceptable” rate; (5) an unacknowledged metabias towards explaining the replication crisis in terms of researcher bias; (6) assuming that researcher bias can be reduced; (7) devaluing exploratory results as being more “tentative” than confirmatory results; (8) presuming that questionable research practices are problematic research practices; (9) focusing on knowledge accumulation; and (10) focusing on specific scientific methods. It is stressed that only some metascientists engage in some QMPs some of the time, and that these QMPs may not always be problematic. Research is required to estimate the prevalence and impact of QMPs. In the meantime, QMPs should be viewed as invitations to ask questions about how we go about doing better metascience. (shrink)

Bird’s new book, Knowing Science, provides an exemplar of how to do epistemology and philosophy of science together. While I wholeheartedly appreciate his attempt to bridge the gap between epistemology and philosophy of science and find his project promising, I am not convinced by the central thesis of the book that knowledge plays a central role in science. In this article, I focus on Bird’s epistemic account of scientific progress, which is the view that the nature of scientific progress is (...) the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Contra Bird, I argue that scientific progress cannot be fully characterised as the accumulation of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

William Whewell’s philosophy of science is often overlooked as a relic of 19th century Whiggism. I argue however that his view – suitably modified – can contribute to contemporary philosophy of science, particularly to debates around scientific progress. The reason Whewell’s view needs modification is that he makes the following problematic claim: as science progresses, it reveals necessarily truths and thereby grants a glimpse of the mind of God. Modifying Whewell’s view will involve reinventing his notion of necessary truth as (...) the pragmatist notion of superassertibility. And, if scientific progress does not uncover necessary truths, then it does not reveal the mind of God. The result is an outline of an account of scientific progress that is piecemeal and fallibilist in nature, yet at the same time maintains key Whewellian themes of consilience and the unity of science. (shrink)

When science makes cognitive progress, who or what is it that improves in the requisite way? According to a widespread and unchallenged assumption, it is the cognitive attitudes of scientists themselves, i.e. the agents by whom scientific progress is made, that improve during progressive episodes. This paper argues against this assumption and explores a different approach. Scientific progress should be defined in terms of potential improvements to the cognitive attitudes of those for whom progress is made, i.e. the receivers rather (...) than the producers of scientific information. This includes not only scientists themselves, but also various other individuals who utilize scientific information in different ways for the benefit of society as a whole. (shrink)

Roughly, the noetic account characterizes scientific progress in terms of increased understanding. This chapter outlines a version of the noetic account according to which scientific progress on some phenomenon consists in making scientific information publicly available so as to enable relevant members of society to increase their understanding of that phenomenon. This version of the noetic account is briefly compared with four rival accounts of scientific progress, viz. the truthlikeness account, the problem-solving account, the new functional account, and the epistemic (...) account. In addition, the chapter seeks to precisify the question that accounts of scientific progress are (or should be) aiming to answer, viz. “What type of cognitive change with respect to a given topic or phenomenon X constitutes a (greater or lesser degree of) scientific improvement with respect to X?”. (shrink)

Contemporary debate surrounding the nature of scientific progress has focused upon the precise role played by justification, with two realist accounts having dominated proceedings. Recently, however, a third realist account has been put forward, one which offers no role for justification at all. According to Finnur Dellsén’s (Stud Hist Philos Sci Part A 56:72–83, 2016) noetic account, science progresses when understanding increases, that is, when scientists grasp how to correctly explain or predict more aspects of the world that they could (...) before. In this paper, we argue that the noetic account is severely undermotivated. Dellsén provides three examples intended to show that understanding can increase absent the justification required for true belief to constitute knowledge. However, we demonstrate that a lack of clarity in each case allows for two contrasting interpretations, neither of which serves its intended purpose. On the first, the agent involved lacks both knowledge and understanding; and, on the second, the agent involved successfully gains both knowledge and understanding. While neither interpretation supports Dellsén’s claim that understanding can be prised apart from knowledge, we argue that, in general, agents in such cases ought to be attributed neither knowledge nor understanding. Given that the separability of knowledge and understanding is a necessary component of the noetic account, we conclude that there is little support for the idea that science progresses through increasing understanding rather than the accumulation of knowledge. (shrink)

Intuitively, science progresses from truth to truth. A glance at history quickly reveals that this idea is mistaken. We often learn from scientific theories that turned out to be false. This chapter focuses on a different challenge: Idealisations are deliberately and ubiquitously used in science. Scientists thus work with assumptions that are known to be false. Any account of scientific progress needs to account for this widely accepted scientific practice. It is examined how the four dominant accounts—the problem-solving account, the (...) truthlikeness account, the epistemic account, and the noetic account—can cope with the challenge from idealisation, with an eye on indispensable idealisations. One upshot is that, on all accounts, idealisations can promote progress. Only some accounts allow them to constitute progress. (shrink)

If one follows the accounts by philosophers of science and the discussions in scientific communities, there can be little doubt that failure is an essential part of scientific practice. It is essential both in the sense of being integral to scientific practice and of being necessary for its overall success. Researchers who create new scientific knowledge face uncertainties about the nature of the problem they are trying to solve, the existence of a solution to that problem, the way in which (...) a solution can be found, and their ability to find such a solution (Gläser, 2007, 247). The existence of these uncertainties means, in turn, that each research process carries the risk of failure. (shrink)

A methodology of science must satisfy two requirements: (i) It must be ampliative: the theories which it generates must make statements that go far beyond any data or observations that may have motivated those theories in the first place. (ii) It must be epistemically probative: it must somehow provide a warrant for believing that the theories so produced are correct, or at least partially correct, even if they can never be fully confirmed. These two requirements pull in opposite directions, and (...) attempts to specify the “scientific method” often focus on one to the exclusion of the other. On a few points there now exists something approaching a consensus. (i) Scientific hypotheses — including, particularly, statements about unobserved or unobservable entities or mechanisms — remain conjectural, no matter how frequently predictions based on those hypotheses are found to coincide with data. (ii) A good (best?) indicator of a theory’s verisimilitude is its ability to successfully predict phenomena which it was not specifically designed to predict. I discuss these ideas with particular reference to cosmological theories. (shrink)

Declaring a cosmopolitan right to scientific progress risks perpetuating many of the inequities it aims to overcome. This calls for a re-imagination of science that directly responds to science’s links to violent nationalist projects and the harms of capitalism.

At first glance, what scientific progress means seems to be a quickly answered question. It is not easy to think of the sciences without progress; sciences and the notion of progress seem identical in general. Describing the nature of scientific progress is an important task that will have practical and theoretical consequences. The approach, which argues that the background on which sciences are based does not have a historical or cultural character following the positivist interpretation, accepts sciences as testing the (...) validity of observation and experiment data to a large extent. On the other hand, the tendency that emphasizes that the complex functioning of the history of science has an indelible mark on scientific theories prefers to build sciences on a historical and social basis. How both major approaches ground the idea of scientific progress profoundly affects both our understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge and the way we do science. This paper aims to evaluate scientific progress based on the views of prominent philosophers of science in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Scientific progress is a hot topic in the philosophy of science. However, as yet we lack a comprehensive philosophical examination of scientific progress. First, the recent debate pays too much attention to the epistemic approach and the semantic approach. Shan’s new functional approach and Dellsén’s noetic approach are still insufficiently assessed. Second, there is little in-depth analysis of the progress in the history of the sciences. Third, many related philosophical issues are still to be explored. For example, what are the (...) implications of scientific progress for the scientific realism/antirealism debate? Is the incommensurability thesis a challenge to scientific progress? What role does aesthetic values play in scientific progress? Does idealisation impede scientific progress? This book fills this gap. It offers a new assessment of the four main approaches to scientific progress (Part I). It also features eight historical case studies to investigate the notion of progress in different disciplines: physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, seismology, psychology, sociology, economics, and medicine respectively (Part II). It discusses some issues related to scientific progress: scientific realism, incommensurability, values in science, idealisation, scientific speculation, interdisciplinarity, and scientific perspectivalism (Part III). (shrink)

The functional approach to scientific progress has been mainly developed by Kuhn, Lakatos, Popper, Laudan, and more recently by Shan. The basic idea is that science progresses if key functions of science are fulfilled in a better way. This chapter defends the function approach. It begins with an overview of the two old versions of the functional approach by examining the work of Kuhn, Laudan, Popper, and Lakatos. It then argues for Shan’s new functional approach, in which scientific progress is (...) defined as an increase of usefulness of exemplary practices. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson and Sebastian Sunday-Grève discuss the question of where philosophy starts, and the idea of philosophy as a non-natural science.

Weber's 'science as a vocation' has often been viewed as a therapeutic concept with no functional significance in the fully bureaucratized and professionalized modern science. However, development in the philosophy of science in the last century, especially the Kuhn thesis of the discontinuity of scientific progress and the Duhem-Quine thesis of underdetermination, shows that Weber's distinction between science as a vocation and science as a profession (career) can potentially answer one of the oldest questions in science studies: What makes scientific (...) breakthroughs possible? (shrink)

In this editorial, I explain how Paul Feyerabend's Principle of Proliferation is adopted and adapted as a publication model for the Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems (JKSS). Critical views on the limitations of both non-dynamic publishing models and government- and industry-based models of research are expressed.

What is scientific progress? This paper advances an interpretation of this question, and an account that serves to answer it. Roughly, the question is here understood to concern what type of cognitive change with respect to a topic X constitutes a scientific improvement with respect to X. The answer explored in the paper is that the requisite type of cognitive change occurs when scientific results are made publicly available so as to make it possible for anyone to increase their understanding (...) of X. This account is briefly compared to two rival accounts of scientific progress, based respectively on increasing truthlikeness and accumulating knowledge, and is argued to be preferable to both. (shrink)

Hermann von Helmholtz hat als Naturforscher sowohl die Physik als auch die Physiologie um eine beeindruckende Anzahl grundlegender Erkenntnisse bereichert, ihr heutiges Selbstverständnis entscheidend mitgeprägt, ihre Verfahren auf neue Gegenstandsbereiche angewendet und war führend an ihrem institutionellen Ausbau zu Laborwissenschaften beteiligt.

Academic freedom has often been defended in a progressivist manner: without academic freedom, creativity would be in peril, and with it the advancement of knowledge, i.e. the epistemic progress in science. In this paper, I want to critically discuss the limits of such a progressivist defense of academic freedom, also known under the label ‘argument from truth.’ The critique is offered, however, with a constructive goal in mind, namely to offer an alternative account that connects creativity and academic freedom in (...) a way that goes beyond mere reference to epistemic progress and involves reference to the freedom to think independently as the freedom we mean when we point to creativity and when we point to academic freedom. The resulting causal independence account is not only epistemologically stronger than a progressivist account, it also allows to counter the curbing of academic freedom in the name of progress. The latter becomes key, for instance, when authoritarian political regimes limit or negate academic freedom with reference to an epistemic progress suitably defined for that regime. (shrink)

According to Karl Popper, science cannot verify its theories empirically, but it can falsify them, and that suffices to account for scientific progress. For Popper, a law or theory remains a pure conjecture, probability equal to zero, however massively corroborated empirically it may be. But it does just seem to be the case that science does verify empirically laws and theories. We trust our lives to such verifications when we fly in aeroplanes, cross bridges and take modern medicines. We can (...) do some justice to this apparent capacity of science to verify if we make a number of improvements to Popper’s philosophy of science. The key step is to recognize that physics, in accepting unified theories only, thereby makes a big metaphysical assumption about the nature of the universe. The outcome is a conception of scientific method which facilitates the criticism and improvement of metaphysical assumptions of physics. This view provides, not verification, but a perfect simulacrum of verification indistinguishable from the real thing. (shrink)

Moral, social, political, and other “nonepistemic” values can lead to bias in science, from prioritizing certain topics over others to the rationalization of questionable research practices. Such values might seem particularly common or powerful in the social sciences, given their subject matter. However, I argue first that the well-documented phenomenon of motivated reasoning provides a useful framework for understanding when values guide scientific inquiry (in pernicious or productive ways). Second, this analysis reveals a parity thesis: values influence the social and (...) natural sciences about equally, particularly because both are so prominently affected by desires for social credit and status, including recognition and career advancement. Ultimately, bias in natural and social science is both natural and social— that is, a part of human nature and considerably motivated by a concern for social status (and its maintenance). Whether the pervasive influence of values is inimical to the sciences is a separate question. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate over the nature of scientific progress in philosophy of science by taking a quantitative, corpus-based approach. By employing the methods of data science and corpus linguistics, the following philosophical accounts of scientific progress are tested empirically: the semantic account of scientific progress, the epistemic account of scientific progress, and the noetic account of scientific progress. Overall, the results of this quantitative, corpus-based study lend some empirical support to the epistemic (...) and the noetic accounts over the semantic account of scientific progress, for they suggest that practicing scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ significantly more often than the term ‘truth’ when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works. But the results do not favor the epistemic account over the noetic account, or vice versa, for they reveal no significant differences between the frequency with which practicing scientists use the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ when they talk about the aims or goals of scientific research in their published works. (shrink)

So far, various approaches have been proposed to explain the progress of science. These approaches, which fall under a fourfold classification, are as follows: semantic, functional, epistemic, and noetic approaches. Each of these approaches, based on the intended purpose of science, defines progress on the same basis. The semantic approach defines progress based on the approximation to the truth, the functional approach based on problem-solving, the epistemic approach based on knowledge accumulation, and the noetic approach based on increased understanding. With (...) a stratified description of the world, Roy Bhaskar sees science as the movement toward deeper layers aimed at discovering productive mechanisms. He also explains progress based on the layering and acquisition of knowledge of the underlying layers. But because he believes in the social nature of science and considers knowledge a social product and subject to change, he acknowledges the fallibility of cognition. Hence, it is believed that moving to a new layer does not necessarily lead to the progress of science. However, it is possible that by acquiring knowledge about the new layer, our previous knowledge will be revised and corrected. In this article, while expressing the Bhaskar theory of scientific progress and explaining its contingency with respect to the fallibility of cognition, we pursue a basic goal. This goal is summarized in the review of all four approaches in order to show their lack of attention to the fallibility of cognition and its effect on explaining progress. What has been done in this article is based on two phases: explaining the contingency of the progress of science for Bhaskar and examining the four approaches to the progress of science in order to show their inattention to the fallibility of cognition. In his philosophy, referring to the two dimensions of transitive and intransitive, Roy Bhaskar considers the purpose of science to be the acquisition of knowledge about intransitive objects, and this knowledge is achieved through a social activity. Since this cognition is a social product and belongs to the transitive dimension of science, it will be fallible and subject to change. Bhaskar concludes with philosophical arguments that the world contains generative mechanisms, but that it is the task of science to discover their nature and exactly what mechanisms are at work. This requires work in two theoretical dimensions, namely the use of conceptual tools and a practical dimension, that is, the use of experimental tools. Now, as the theoretical and technical conditions under which cognition is formed and evaluated are themselves expanding and subject to change and modification, our knowledge may also be expanded or corrected. In this study, it was found that the semantic approach is unaware of the effect of fallibility on the evidence used to estimate the approximation to the truth and, consequently, progress. The functional approach ignores this effect in solving the problems posed by theories. The epistemic approach does not take into account the fallibility of evidence used to justify and validate the evidence, and finally, the noetic approach neglects the effect of the fallibility on what the explanation and prediction are based on. These have led to these approaches, which consider the satisfaction of the criteria in question necessarily leads to progress. (shrink)

Recent work takes both philosophical and scientific progress to consist in acquiring factive epistemic states such as knowledge. However, much of this work leaves unclear what entity is the subject of these epistemic states. Furthermore, by focusing only on states like knowledge, we overlook progress in intermediate cases between ignorance and knowledge—for example, many now celebrated theories were initially so controversial that they were not known. -/- This paper develops an improved framework for thinking about intellectual progress. Firstly, I argue (...) that we should think of progress relative to the epistemic position of an intellectual community rather than individual inquirers. Secondly, I show how focusing on the extended process of inquiry (rather than the mere presence or absence of states like knowledge) provides a better evaluation of different types of progress. This includes progress through formulating worthwhile questions, acquiring new evidence, and increasing credence on the right answers to these questions. I close by considering the ramifications for philosophical progress, suggesting that my account supports rejecting the most negative views while allowing us to articulate different varieties of optimism and pessimism. (shrink)

El propósito del ensayo es ofrecer una reflexión sobre la profesión del investigador novel desde la experiencia del autor a la luz de las ideas y reflexiones ofrecidas por Pierre Bourdieu en su obra “El oficio de científico” con cuestiones actuales y retos a los que se enfrentan la comunidad científica en el ámbito de las ciencias de la educación. El texto se articula con relación a los temas que surgen de la lectura del libro de Bourdieu que se irán (...) nutriendo de los aportes de otros textos y artículos relacionados con la materia. Como señala Martel (2016), se pretende aportar un trozo de este espejo roto que es la profesión del investigador para reconstruirlo a modo de aviso para navegantes para los que vienen detrás desde la experiencia del investigador novel. (shrink)

Scientific progress has many facets and can be conceptualized in different ways, for example in terms of problem-solving, of truthlikeness or of growth of knowledge. The main claim of the paper is that the most important prerequisite of scientific progress is the institutionalization of competition and criticism. An institutional framework appropriately channeling competition and criticism is the crucial factor determining the direction and rate of scientific progress, independently on how one might wish to conceptualize scientific progress itself. The main intention (...) is to narrow the divide between traditional philosophy of science and the sociological, economic and political outlook at science that emphasizes the private interests motivating scientists and the subsequent contingent nature of the enterprise. The aim is to show that although science is a social enterprise taking place in historical time and thus is of a contingent nature, it can and in fact does lead to genuine scientific progress - contrary to the claims of certain sociologists of science and other relativists who standardly stress its social nature, but deny its progressive character. I will first deal with the factual issue by way of introducing the main concepts and mechanisms of modern institutional theory and by applying them to the analysis of the cultural phenomenon that we call modern science. I will then turn to the normative issue: what is the appropriate content of the institutional framework, for scientific progress to emerge and be sustained at which level should it be set and by whom? Addressing this problematic is equivalent to conducting a constitutional debate leading to a Constitution of Science. (shrink)

In the process of scientific discovery, knowledge ampliation is pursued by means of non-deductive inferences. When ampliative reasoning is performed, probabilities cannot be assigned objectively. One of the reasons is that we face the problem of the unconceived alternatives: we are unable to explore the space of all the possible alternatives to a given hypothesis, because we do not know how this space is shaped. So, if we want to adequately account for the process of knowledge ampliation, we need to (...) develop an account of the process of scientific discovery which is not exclusively based on probability calculus. We argue that the analytic view of the method of science advocated by Cellucci is interestingly suited to this goal, since it rests on the concept of plausibility. In this perspective, in order to account for how probabilities are in fact assigned in uncertain contexts and knowledge ampliation is really pursued, we have to take into account plausibility-based considerations. (shrink)

This paper offers a new angle on the common idea that the process of science does not support epistemic diversity. Under minimal assumptions on the nature of journal editing, we prove that editorial procedures, even when impartial in themselves, disadvantage less prominent research programs. This purely statistical bias in article selection further skews existing differences in the success rate and hence attractiveness of research programs, and exacerbates the reputation difference between the programs. After a discussion of the modeling assumptions, the (...) paper ends with a number of recommendations that may help promote scientific diversity through editorial decision making. (shrink)

* Einige Gemeinplätze über Tatsachen und Wissenschaft * Postfaktische Kommunikation und »alternative Fakten« * Ist nur Unumstößliches Tatsache? * Woran starb Ramses II.? * Ist der naive Realismus nicht seit Kant überwunden?

This paper argues that philosophers of science have before them an important new task that they urgently need to take up. It is to convince the scientific community to adopt and implement a new philosophy of science that does better justice to the deeply problematic basic intellectual aims of science than that which we have at present. Problematic aims evolve with evolving knowledge, that part of philosophy of science concerned with aims and methods thus becoming an integral part of science (...) itself. The outcome of putting this new philosophy into scientific practice would be a new kind of science, both more intellectually rigorous and one that does better justice to the best interests of humanity. (shrink)

I present a recent historical case from cosmology—the story of inflationary cosmology—and on its basis argue that solving explanatory problems is a reliable method for making progress in science. In particular, I claim that the success of inflationary theory at solving its predecessor’s explanatory problems justified the theory epistemically, even in advance of the development of novel predictions from the theory and the later confirmation of those predictions.

Lyons (2016, 2017, 2018) formulates Laudan’s (1981) historical objection to scientific realism as a modus tollens. I present a better formulation of Laudan’s objection, and then argue that Lyons’s formulation is supererogatory. Lyons rejects scientific realism (Putnam, 1975) on the grounds that some successful past theories were (completely) false. I reply that scientific realism is not the categorical hypothesis that all successful scientific theories are (approximately) true, but rather the statistical hypothesis that most successful scientific theories are (approximately) true. Lyons (...) rejects selectivism (Kitcher, 1993; Psillos, 1999) on the grounds that some working assumptions were (completely) false in the history of science. I reply that selectivists would say not that all working assumptions are (approximately) true, but rather that most working assumptions are (approximately) true. (shrink)

This article develops and defends a new functional approach to scientific progress. I begin with a review of the problems of the traditional functional approach. Then I propose a new functional account of scientific progress, in which scientific progress is defined in terms of usefulness of problem defining and problem solving. I illustrate and defend my account by applying it to the history of genetics. Finally, I highlight the advantages of my new functional approach over the epistemic and semantic approaches (...) and dismiss some potential objections to my approach. (shrink)