Module 1 : Science as Culture Social Context of the Production of Scientific Knowledge

Lecture 1 : Methods of Science: Issues and Perspectives


If according to inductivism, the hallmarks of scientific knowledge are certainty and breadth, according to hypothesism, they are novelty and depth. That is to say, science must aim at knowledge which is new in the sense of being trans-observational and deep in the sense of referring to entities underlying the phenomena given to us in observations. In other words, whereas inductivists insist that science must remain from beginning to end at the level of observations, hypothesists maintain that science begins only when it goes beyond observations. According to hypothesism, genuine science must not remain content with generalizations based on observations but must seek to explain observations in terms of the unobservable or deeper entities and processes. The term, “hypothesis” in seventeenth century meant a statement regarding unobservable entities and processes though today by hypothesis we only mean a tentative solution to a problem or hunch. Whereas there is no place for hypotheses in the inductive scheme, the hypothesists maintain that the aim of science is to generate hypotheses to explain what we observe. The term, “theory” means a statement of a set of statements involving at least one theoretical term. A theoretical term (for example, “electron”, “proton”, etc.), unlike an observational term, does not designate observable or measurable. Inductivists are empiricists, and empiricists maintain that anything which exists must be observable. Hence, inductivists do not admit that theoretical term designates real entities. They contend that theoretical entities are fictitious entities conjured up by us for the purposes of either economic description of observations or prediction. Hence, according to inductivists, theories are not descriptions of a real world of unobservables. As against this, the hypothesists maintain that the theoretical terms designate real entities not given to us in observations and theories, are descriptions of a real world of unobservable entities. Therefore, while hypothesists are called realists, inductivists are called anti-realists.
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