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The Bearing of Discovery on Justification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jarrett Leplin
Jarrett Leplin*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC27412-5001, U.S.A.
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Extract

The point of the traditional distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification is to insist on the normative character of epistemology. The point is not to dismiss from epistemology merely the genesis of ideas; into the context of discovery go also descriptions of evaluative practices and decisions. However ideas are created, scrutinized, and judged, it is only the approbation to which they are entitled, accorded or not, that allegedly matters to epistemology. The criticism, familiar since N.R. Hanson's Patterns of Discovery, that philosophy ought not to ignore the genesis of ideas is ironically conservative. If what is not normative epistemology is to be ignored, then the distinction would have us ignore even the reception and appraisal of scientific ideas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 805 - 814
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 Hanson, N.R. Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1969)Google Scholar

2 For discussion and examples, see Siegel, H. ‘Justification, Discovery and the Naturalizing of Epistemology,’ Philosophy of Science 47 (1980), 300fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 ‘Epistemology Naturalized,’ in Quine, W. V. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 van Fraassen, Bas C. The Scientific Image (Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Imŕe Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,’ in Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980)Google Scholar

6 See, for example, McMullin, E. ‘A Case for Scientific Realism,’ in Leplin, J. ed., Scientific Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press 1984)Google Scholar.

7 Leplin, Cf. J. ‘The Concept of an Ad Hoc Hypothesis,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 5 (1975) 309–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Leplin, Cf. J. ‘The Assessment of Auxiliary Hypotheses,’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33 (1982) 335–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Proposition XVIII, Book III, cites Flamsteed and Cassini in the first edition of the Principia; it refers simply to the ‘observations of astronomers’ in the second edition.

10 See Gardner, M. ‘Predicting Novel Facts,’ The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33 (1982), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for review of this literature.

11 Zahar, E. ‘Why Did Einstein's Programme Supercede Lorentz's?’ The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24 (1973) 223–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I doubt that Lakatos, whose view Zahar is seeking to improve, ever intended such a constraint. Long before Zahar, Lakatos construed previously known but unexplained results as novel for the theory explaining them by relativizing the individuation of facts to theories. See ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,’ 66-70.

12 Ibid. 103

13 Zahar ought to say that the Michelson-Morley result ‘governed’ the construction of special relativity. But as he thinks that the result was novel for special relativity, he is obliged by his analysis to deny my supposition. Of course he has no evidence to support his denial, and it is a considerable convenience, philosophical as well as historical, to be able to admit the supposition.