Czy badania poznańskiej szkoły metodologicznej są nowoczesne?

Research carried out by the Poznań School of Methodology is state-of-the-art research because it is aimed to ensure that scholars’ methodological awareness keeps up with changes in the methods that they actually use. Based on the examples of the history of physics and astronomy, the author shows that scholars are somewhat rarely aware of what methods they employ. This is mostly because methodological awareness among scholars themselves and methodologists of science does not develop fast enough to match the methods they use at a given time. A thesis that is popular today (and was also popular in the past) not only among those who have ties to science but also among scholars is that the inductive method, which involves generalizing from empirical facts, is the major scientific method. In fact, however, the inductive method is dominant in particular sciences only at the initial, pretheoretical stage of their development. When these enter a mature, theoretical stage, induction is replaced by deductive methods, which are more complex. Deductive methods involve making bold assumptions and hypotheses which are not the result of inductive generalization, but which lead to conclusions that are compatible with experience. According to the Poznań School, the idealization method is the basic method that is used in mature science. In ancient times, this method was only employed by few of the most eminent scholars, such as Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, and Euclid, whereas in modern and contemporary times, it has dominated all developed sciences. The main advantage it has over the inductive method is that while induction leads to general but superficial knowledge, the idealization method reaches ever-deeper levels of reality, thus uncovering the hidden causes of and mechanisms behind particular phenomena as well as the laws that govern them