Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

People once believed a fabulous engine called the Scientific Method harvests empirical evidence through observation and experimentation, discards subjective, error ridden chaff, and delivers objective, veridical residues from which to spin threads of knowledge. Unfortunately, that engine is literally fabulous. Lacking a single method whose proper application always yields epistemically decisive results, real-world scientists make do with messy, quirky techniques and devices for producing and interpreting empirical data which proliferate as investigators improvise fixes for practical and theoretical problems which bedevil their research. Their evolution is punctuated rather than linear – marked as much by abandonment and modification of previously accepted tools and techniques as by conservation and accumulation. Failing as they did to take into account the diversity and malleability of observational and experimental practice, twentieth century philosophers of science who tried to derive highly general a priori epistemic directives from theories of logic, rationality, judgment, and the like, have been unable to answer important questions about the design and conduct of scientific research. This chapter's moral is that because of this failure, philosophers of science should pay more attention to nuts and bolts details of observation and experimentation. Although experiment and observation ... log in or subscribe to read full text