The Rationality of the Chemical Revolution
The Rationality of the Chemical Revolution
复制标题
化学革命的合理性
作者：
A. Pyle
库恩在他的《科学革命的结构》（SSR）中对科学的描述招致了科学哲学家们的许多敌意批评。库恩被指责犯了唯心主义、相对主义和非理性主义等可怕的罪行，怀疑科学的合理性和客观性。库恩本人在对批评者的一系列回应中做出了一些让步，并对他的许多更夸张的主张进行了限定或淡化。[3]但是，在历史上，特别是在科学社会学中，可以在库恩的一些弟子中找到更有力的回应。[4]他们坚持认为，库恩在SSR中只是如实地讲述了它，即，准确地描述了科学过去和现在的工作方式。当然，从表面上看，这样的解释仅仅是描述性的，对规范方法论没有任何影响。如果我们发现科学家是顽固的非理性个体，即使面对强大的反证，也顽固地坚持旧的理论，我们可以简单地将这样的发现视为人类脆弱的令人遗憾的证据，但没有认识论意义。然而，一个规范性的因素可能会通过对科学英雄的历史研究从后门悄悄地进来。我们能想象发现哥白尼、伽利略、牛顿、拉瓦锡、达尔文和爱因斯坦都是糟糕的科学家吗？也许科学的规范已经隐含在科学探究的实践中，而不是等待哲学家的先验方法来发现。如果真实的科学真如库恩所描述的那样，他的弟子们可以争辩说，归纳主义者和波普尔派的方法论准则就更糟糕了。要算是科学哲学，方法论的叙述必须对物理学、化学、生物学等领域的实际情况敏感。
Kuhn’s account of science, in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions 1 (SSR) attracted a lot of hostile criticism from philosophers of science.2 Kuhn was accused of such terrible sins as idealism, relativism, and irrationalism, of casting doubt on the rationality and objectivity of science. Kuhn himself, in a series of replies to his critics, made a number of concessions, and qualified or toned down many of his more extravagant claims.3 But a more robust response can be found among some of Kuhn’s disciples in the history and especially in the sociology of science.4 They insist that Kuhn, in SSR, was simply telling it as it is, i.e., describing accurately the way that science was (and is) done. Prima facie, of course, such an account would be merely descriptive, and would have no implications for normative methodology.5 If we were to find out that scientists are stubbornly irrational individuals, perversely hanging on to old theories even in the face of powerful counter-evidence, we could simply dismiss such a finding as regrettable evidence of human frailty, but of no epistemological significance. A normative element might, however, creep in by the back door, by way of a historical study of the heroes of science. Can we imagine discovering that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin and Einstein were all bad scientists? Perhaps the norms of science are already implicit in the practice of scientific enquiry, rather than waiting to be discovered by the a priori methods of philosophers. If real science is as Kuhn describes it, his disciples can argue, so much the worse for the methodological canons of inductivists and Popperians. To count as philosophy of science at all, accounts of methodology must be sensitive to what actually goes on in physics, chemistry, biology, etc.