Introductory Essay: Scientific Discovery and the Future of Philosophy of Science

Abstract

In this essay I shall try to help the general reader find his way about the issues by sketching in the relevant background or by pointing out the papers which do, either in this volume or in its companion,Scientific Discovery: Case Studies.2 Most of the papers which follow are accessible to the nonexpert, as philosophers of science themselves are just now finding their sea legs in the hitherto unnavigable waters of scientific discovery. But I also want to critically analyze, clarify, and expand upon several themes and new developments discernible in the many and varied contributions to the first Leonard Conference. My topics will include the discovery/justification ‘dichotomy’ and its recent abandonment in favor of (at least) a three-fold distinction; the degree to which contemporary discussion has advanced beyond the bold and stimulating challenge of N. R. Hanson; reasons why, after more than a century, scientific discovery itself is once again widely perceived to be a philosophically important topic; the emergence of the scientific problem and of scientific judgment as important units of and for the philosophical analysis of science; the move from logic to rationality and the rejection of the received conception of rationality; and some large-scale proposals for the future of philosophy of science by Larry Laudan, Dudley Shapere, and Marx Wartofsky. I shall present the issues and evaluate the arguments as fairly as I can, but I shall hardly be writing from a neutral perspective.