What is Scientific Progress? Lessons from Scientific Practice

Abstract

In a recent debate about the nature of scientific progress, Alexander Bird and Darrell Rowbottom have argued for two competing accounts of progress. According to Bird, scientific progress consists in the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Rowbottom, on the other hand, thinks that truth alone is necessary for progress. Both use thought experiments and appeal to intuitions in support of their views, and it seems fair to say that the debate has reached an impasse. In an attempt to avoid this stalemate, I propose to abandon appeals to intuitions and turn to scientific practice instead. I propose to examine the institution of the Nobel Prize, where scientists award their peers for what they consider to be important contributions to science, in order to shed new light on the question of scientific progress. I discuss two case studies that illustrate the way in which scientists make judgments about progress. As far as scientists are concerned, progress is made when scientific discoveries contribute to the increase of scientific knowledge of the following sorts: empirical, theoretical, practical, and methodological. I then propose that we should articulate an account of scientific progress that does justice to the way in which scientists evaluate progress. I discuss one way of doing so, namely, by abandoning the distinction between 'knowing that' and 'knowing how' and granting that know-how counts as scientific knowledge.

The Role of Justification in the Ordinary Concept of Scientific Progress

“…In the meantime however, we have some independent reasons for expecting such a study to align with our current findings. A survey of the history of science and the practices of scientists reveals that scientists themselves talk about progress in terms of knowledge and evaluate progress relative to epistemic criteria (Mizrahi 2013b). It is also worth mentioning here that our experimental sample above-while not displaying any significant differences for several measures of exposure to scientific training-did include participants with diverse backgrounds in the sciences, ranging from a few college courses to advanced doctoral degrees (see footnote 8).…”

The Case Study Method in Philosophy of Science: An Empirical Study

“…Full disclosure: I have used case studies as evidence for and/or against meta-scientific theses in my own work as well(Mizrahi 2013b). Since then, however, I have seen the error of my ways and I have changed my ways (for the better, one would hope).…”

Scientific Progress, Understanding, and Knowledge: Reply to Park

“…Mizrahi (2013) argues that scientific progress often consists in increasing know-how, and argues for 'expanding' the notion of scientific knowledge to include both propositional knowledge and know-how in order to accommodate this point within a broadly-speaking epistemic account.…”