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Scientific Progress and Conceptual Consistency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Edward MacKinnon*
Affiliation:
California State University, Hayward

Extract

There is a conflict between the intuition of scientists, and even many nonscientists, who see science as making progress, as being, in fact, the paradigm case of what it means to have progress in knowledge, and the writings of many philosophers of science who may be labeled ‘historicists’. For the most part the historicists do not deny progress outright. However, they have undercut previously accepted accounts of how science progresses.

Type
Part V. Progress and Incommensurability
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1984

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