Kennis, geschiedenis, objectiviteit:een filosofische reflectie op enkele ontwikkelingen in de wetenschapstheorie

According to Popper's hypothetico-deductive conception of science, scientific knowledge starts not from experience, nor from collecting 'facts', but from problems. The edifice of science is not erected upon a solid foundation or reliable facts; it is rather raised on piles above a swamp: we can only enunciate hypotheses, fallible conjectures, which are subsequently to be submitted to vere criticism. The sciences take their alleged objectivity not from the reliability of their anchorage in experience, but form the critical method they pursue. It is the falsifiability of scientific statements that constitutes the criterion of objectivity. In Popper, this 'fallibilistic' view is connected with a 'realistic' thesis, according to which it is up to the sciences to furnish us with increasingly better conjectures about 'reality outside us'. Fallibilism and scientific realism constitute the main elements of Popper's attempt to offer an explanation, within the framework of a theory of science, of the possibility of scientific knowledge and of the increase of our knowledge: the development of the science is not brought about by means of positive verification, but by means of 'progress by refutation'. In the discussion that, also owing to Popper's theories, has arisen since, the issue of the development that, also owing to Popper's theories, has arisen since, the issue of the development and possible growth of our knowledge is likewise pivotal. Notwithstanding the turn towards the history of the sciences and increasing attention to scientific practice that has been apperent in several theories of science in recent decades, we may infer that the epistemological presuppositions underlying this new orientation have remained largely unchanged. Zie: Summary