Introduction

This book has extended a fallibilist realist conception of science in terms of the view that we change our immediate reality in terms of our ideas while simultaneously changing our ideas to match reality. It has conceded to scepticism that we do not reach certainty in scientific conclusions; the fragments of fully explicit scientific reasoning are set within frames of optimising judgements about wider considerations. The rigorous science that we explicitly consider depends on contextual assumptions which are subject to change. At least some values are present even in our most nearly objective conclusions. Inevitably, then, the way we evaluate science is affected by local and short term factors. I have argued that there are many cognitive frameworks in an open society and that we produce science by trying to reconcile them at several levels of cognitive activity. In this way we hope to minimise the dependence of science on very localised contexts. So far I have offered techniques for optimising scientific judgements in the present. Must we lose touch with the science of the remoter past? Must future science be unclear to us? Are we locked into our own historical period? It would be unfortunate if we were. Relativism across time is as problematic a philosophy as relativism across the spatially dispersed cultures of the present. On such a view, we could not hope to understand the past and we could not hope to anticipate the future.