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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2022
It may sound strange, if not heretical to suggest, as I wish to do, that there is no such thing as the rationality of science. At best we can talk about rationalities of science. Both historically and contemporarily we have used different criteria for explaining and justifying the alleged rationality of science. By giving different criteria for the justification of rationality, we ipso facto constitute different scopes for rationality.
This immediately poses the question. If so, which of these criteria are more “justifiable” than others ? Which rationality is preferable to other rationalities ? Now the point is that in justifying a set of criteria which would elucidate for us a given concept of rationality, in other words, in outlining the scope of a given rationality, we do so by resorting to some kind of rationality. And it would be strange if the hidden rationality we resort to, in order to justify the explicit one, would be much different from the explicit one.
1 On the post mortem of Logical Positivism see especially: John Passmore ‘Logical Positivism’ in which he writes: “Logical Positivism, then, is dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes.” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Paul Edwards, ed.), Vol. V., p. 56.
2 For a further discussion of the impact of Kuhn on Popper and his school see: Henryk Skolimowski, ‘Karl Popper and the Objectivity of Scientific Knowledge', in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Vol. XIV of The Library of Living Philosophers, 1974.
3 Thomas Kuhn, ‘Reflections on my Critics,’ in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, (Imre Lakatos, ed.), 1970, p. 235.
4 For a further discussion of this point see Henryk Skolimowski's: ‘Science and the Modern Predicament', New Scientist, February 11, 1972; ‘Science in Crisis’, The Cambridge Review; “ The Scientific World View and the Illusions of Progress', Social Research, Spring 1974.
5 See Campbell's contribution of The Philosophy of Karl Popper, op. cit.
