Why there is no scientific method: And why it is not a problem

Authors

  • Jean Bricmont Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.0.4040

Keywords:

epistemology, demarcation line, defense of common sense

Abstract

This article briefly reviews and criticizes various strategies that have been proposed by philosophers of science in order to establish a distinction between science and non-science. It also proposes a more modest, but easier, way to make such a distinction. Throughout this text I will first address the problems of the demarcation criteria of the philosophy of science during the first half of the twentieth century; then, I will defend that they absolutely do not justify the radical conclusions reached during the second half of the century.

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Author Biography

Jean Bricmont, Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium).

Professor at the Centre of Geometry, Physics and Probability Reesearch. Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium).

References

Einstein, A., 1936. «Physics and Reality». In Einstein, A., 1954. Ideas and Opinions of Albert Einstein. Crown publishers. New York.

Feyerabend, P., 1975. Against Method. New Left Books. London.

Grunbaum, A., 1984. The Foundations of Psychoanalysis; A Philosophical Critique. University of California Press. Berkeley.

Haack, S., 1993. Evidence and Inquiry. Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology. Blackwell. Oxford.

Hume, D., 2014 [1748]. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Barnes & Noble. New York.

Kuhn, T., 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.

Popper, K. R., 2002 [1935]. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge. New York.

Quine, W. V. O., 1980 [1953]. «Two Dogmas of Empiricism». In Quine, W. V. O. From a Logical Point of View. 2nd ed., revised. Harvard University Press. Cambridge.

Roseveare, N. T., 1982. Mercury’s Perihelion from Le Verrier to Einstein. Clarendon Press. Oxford.

Sokal, A. and J. Bricmont, 1999. Fashionable Nonsense. Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. St Martin’s Press. New York.

Stove, D. C., 1982. Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists. Pergamon Press. Oxford.

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Published

2015-04-16

How to Cite

Bricmont, J. (2015). Why there is no scientific method: And why it is not a problem. Metode Science Studies Journal, (5), 183–187. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.0.4040
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Issue

The light of science (2015)

Section

What is science? A multidisciplinary approach to scientific thought

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