Intuitionistic meta-methodologies, which abound in recent philosophy of science, take the criterion of success for theories of scientific rationality to be whether those theories adequately explicate our intuitive judgments of rationality in exemplary cases. Garber's (1985) critique of Laudan's (1977) intuitionistic meta-methodology, correct as far as it goes, does not go far enough. Indeed, Garber himself advocates a form of intuitionistic meta-methodology; he merely denies any special role for historical (as opposed to contemporary or imaginary) test cases. What all such (...) positions lack is a base from which to inform, criticize, or restructure our core methodological intuitions. To acquiesce in this is to deny that exemplary cases can serve the sort of warranting role required for intuitionism. This point is reinforced by a series of reasons for denying the warranting role of pre-analytic judgments of rationality. These reasons point the way toward an improved approach to meta-methodology. (shrink)

In the recent philosophy of science literature, several authors have stressed the many-faceted and evolving nature of the scientific enterprise. Dudley Shapere (1984, pp. xiii-xv) characterizes a central weakness of the logical empirical program as its focus on the formal logical structure of scientific theories to the exclusion of the process by which these theories were constructed, thus ignoring the possibility of fundamental changes in the nature of science itself. He has stressed the importance of formulating a view of science (...) based on an accurate description of actual scientific practice, which includes attention to how the meaning of a scientific term is rooted in this evolving matrix of practice. Janet Kourany (1982) has attempted” …to lay the foundations for a purely empirical method for establishing a theory of science” (p. 526). In arguing that the a priori has no place in such an approach and in responding to the charge that such an empirical method cannot produce an absolutely fixed set of criteria, Kourany (p. 546) reminds us of Popper’s observation about another empirical enterprise and suggests that we apply this same admonition to our expectations for an empirical method of constructing a theory of science itself. (shrink)