Rationalism in modern science
d'Alembert and the esprit simpliste
pp. 51-61
in: Graham Solomon (ed), Witches, scientists, philosophers, Berlin, Springer, 2000Abstract
In the comparison of methods reputed to yield reliable knowledge, it is fashionable to point out that scientific method is the only universally acceptable method of getting knowledge, because scientific claims can always be confronted with the "facts, " can be checked against "experience. " Every schoolboy knows this is true because he has been taught it many times. It is likely too that he will never forget the other part of the lesson: knowledge gained from experience yields the power to transform the world. As the mountain of technologically engineered objects grows higher and higher the evidence is incontrovertible that science, by sticking to the facts of experience, "produces the goods. " And ever since the genuinely remarkable John Dewey fused the Puritan notion of "work-to-beat-hell " with the value hierarchy associated with Yankee ingenuity, we in this country have been content "to buy " (note the pragmatic ring of the phrase) the method which produces the goods. In addition to this widespread contemporary stress on engineering in science, there are prominent philosophies of science that overemphasize the empirical, the inductive, and the pragmatic sides of science.2
