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Consensus and Evolution in Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Gonzalo Munevar
Gonzalo Munevar*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska at Omaha
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Extract

The bulk of this paper will be divided into three sections. I will first sketch what I take to be the main problem in the epistemology of science and explain how the issue of consensus is related to this problem. I will then try to solve the problem by using a social conception of scientific rationality based on evolutionary ideas. And I will finally elaborate that social conception by responding to several objections.

For over two decades now, many philosophers have talked about the existence of a crisis in the epistemology of science. This crisis presumably came about as the result of the dispute between two schools of thought: the logical and the socio-historical. The logical school is associated with the analytic and empiricist tradition in the field and is supposed to defend the rationality of science. The socio-historical, whose most notorious exponents are Kuhn (1970) and Feyerabend (1975), has been accused of irrationalism.

Type
Part IV. Science Studies
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 120 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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