In modern American society scientific rationality appears to represent the supreme intellectual perspective. Science and its "logic" is often presented as the ultimate arbiter of truth and value. However there are perspectives quite critical of this "immaculate conception" of science and the scientific method. The analysis which follows will focus on the insights of Paul K. Feyerabend into the relationship between theory and reality and in the process suggest a more humble but hopefully more accurate definition of scientific logic.
Feyerabend (1987) has pointed out how scientific progress is only incidentally rational. He maintains that science advances by continuously changing methods, often proceeding in total disregard of the epistemological principles of a particular period. He also criticizes the ideal images scientists usually deploy to describe what they do.
Feyerabend (1987) argues that every scientific epoch has its "reason." Newton thought that not everything in the universe could be explained by mechanical causes. Yet his theoretical system required interference from God (e.g. in explaining attraction at a distance). This interference however seemed irrational to Laplace, whose famous answer to Napoleon regarding divine intervention was: "I do not need this hypothesis." And according to Feyerabend Lapace, in turn, would have been scandalized by quantum mechanics--a theory which allows that certain phenomena do not have a cause.
The message which Feyerabend (1987) is apparently trying to get across is that every scientific epoch elaborates its specific criterion of "science," in what he calls an opportunistic way.
Feyerabend believes that laws, theories, basic patterns of thinking, facts, even the most elementary logical principles are transitory results, not defining properties in this process. He sees scientists as engaging in skilled labor in a largely craft occupation. He maintains that scientists t...