HOW INEVITABLE ARE THE RESULTS OF SUCCESSFUL SCIENCE?
Ian Hacking
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Keywords: science, dynamics of scientific knowledge, scientific truth, contingency
Abstract
Obviously, we could have failed to be successful scientists. But a serious question lurks beneath the banal one stated in my title. If the results of a scientific investigation are correct, would any investigation of roughly the same subject matter, if successful, at least implicitly contain or imply the same results? Using examples ranging from immunology to high-energy physics, the paper presents the cases for both positive and negative answers. The paper is deliberately non-conclusive, arguing that the question is one of the few serious philosophical issues that divides protagonists in the «science wars».
|
