Abstract
The ever growing interest in problems of methods in the sciences has raised the correlated problems of proper education of the philosopher of science (methodologist), and of the proper methodological training for the scientist. Connected with these two problems is the even more general task of humanizing the sciences and making the humanities more scientific. Educators, scientists, methodologists, and humanitarians alike are faced with the task of developing an educational program which will provide these services. As a step in this direction, I offer here for consideration plans for a Department of Methodology. The educational program built around this department has three aspects: (1) it will provide courses for majors in scientific fields to enable them to become acquainted with the basic methods of science, (2) it will train individuals to specialize in methodology by becoming actively familiar with general methodological problems as they arise in specialized research, and (3) it will train non-scientists to appreciate what science can do and to understand how it can be made to do it. Philosophy of science courses are taken to be central in the sense that they will serve as meeting points, where the methodologist has the opportunity of becoming more fully acquainted with the methodological demands of the specialist and the ethical demands of society. Further, they will acquaint the specialist with the ways methodology can contribute to his research. The age of specialization within science has led to the consequence that no single specialist can expect to be an expert in general methodology, statistical techniques, and his own field as well. We cannot hope to train the young scientist to take over all these functions. As a consequence, this program is designed to show the scientific specialist where and how he can make use of the specialist in other fields. Liberal education in a free society has no meaning in any sense but this: it should train specialists in all fields to work cooperatively for the good of mankind. Hence this proposal is for a department designed to produce cooperative teamwork between the scientific specialist, statistician, historian of science, general methodologist, and representatives of all non-scientific phases of social activity. Descriptions of the courses in the outline below are given at the end of this discussion.
Published Version
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