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Objectivity, Scientific Change, and Self-Reference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Carl R. Kordig
Carl R. Kordig*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Extract

Kuhn, Feyerabend, Polanyi, and Whorf would at times maintain that scientific objectivity is a myth. Kuhn writes:

We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigms carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth. ([10], p. 169)

He says that he

…would argue, rather, that in these matters neither proof nor error is at issue. ([10], p. 150)

On the basis of his interpretation of the history of science, Polanyi, also, feels that in a strong sense scientific knowledge is not objective ([11], p. 16). On the basis of his study of widely differing languages Whorf makes a similar claim:

The relativity of all conceptual systems, ours included, and their dependence upon language stand revealed. ([15], pp. 214-215)

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1970 , 1970 , pp. 519 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1970

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Footnotes

*

I wish to acknowledge my debt to Professor Richmond H. Thomason for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

References

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