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Scope of Scientonomy - Descriptive and Normative (view source)
Revision as of 09:51, 17 March 2018
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|Prehistory=Logical positivists were concerned with justifying scientific knowledge and progress. In their case, it was about increasing the probabilities. As a consequence, they believed that a theory of scientific change should be normative. After all, the actual scientific practices may concern many changes in belief that were not justified on epistemic grounds. An illustration of this tendency can be found in [[Alfred Jules Ayer]]'s work engaged with questions of justification such as whether the principle of verifiability is justified rather than empirical questions about the behavior of the scientists.[[CiteRef::Ayer (1952)|p. 6]]
Likewise, [[Karl Popper]] believed that his theories were meant to be normative and he did not focus on studying the actual examples of science.[[CiteRef::Popper (1959)]] However, both group occasionally employed examples from the history of science to persuade other philosophers. For instance, Popper used Eddington’s confirmation of Einstein’s theory to illustrate his concept of crucial experiments.[[CiteRef::Popper (19591963)|p. 220]]
[[Imre Lakatos]] distinguished between internal and external history of science. The latter is concerned with what actually happened during an episode of scientific change while the former is about justifying the scientific change on grounds that are epistemically acceptable.[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1971a)|p. 91]] Internal history of science is about reconstructing a scientific episode and justifying it by using the normative theories we possess.[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1971a)|p. 91]]
After the Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published, [[Thomas Kuhn]] changed the view of the entire field. He showed that many of the scientific changes were completely different from the normative philosophical views of how good science ought to be conducted. For example, scientists often tolerated the existence of anomalies which would not be permitted according to the naive falsificationist view Popper defended in his work the Logic of Scientific Discovery.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)|p. 62]] [[CiteRef::Popper (1959)]]This led to a disenchantment over the normative theories due to the fact that it they were not justifying the actual science as it is conducted. Given that the main reason for normative justification of various scientific practices was justifying the epistemic authority of science, philosophers of science began accepting that the actual practice of science should be the starting point of philosophical theories. This move away from the purely normative theories to the historically informed theories of science is often called the historicist turn in the philosophy of science literature.
Sociologists of scientific knowledge focused on the workings of actual science as well. Proponents of the Strong Programme had many case studies where they examined individual case studies. For example, one study focused the role of Pasteur’s beliefs on the scientific positions he held.[[CiteRef::Farley and Geison (1974)]] This work applied an empirical framework instead of a priori theorizing about what Pasteur might have believed.[[CiteRef::Farley and Geison (1974)]]