Scientific Logic

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 no

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ent so would be the image of nature. Feyerabend's perspective seems to switch the "research program" from a facts-propositions confrontation to one of theory-theory. He argues that every theory is falsified by a myriad of facts and that new theories never accept all the facts of the old theories, but only those which the new theories or the metaphysics associated with them consider legitimate. Every new theory decides which facts are scientifically relevant, hurling back a whole other series of facts as futile anecdotes (Kahn, 1962). Feyerabend's principle of incommensurability lies in this relativism of facts. This principle states that two different paradigms are incommensurable (but not uncommunicative) because they cannot appeal to a neutral, outside reference, as would the "facts." Different paradigms not only interpret facts differently, they also regard as "facts" completely different events. However this position of Feyerabend does not lead him to a total skepticism since he never denied the success of science. What he seemed to deny was that philosophers could identify precisely the reasons for these successes. He acknowledged that science was a rational enterprise, but denied that this rationality could be des

Category: History - S