| Abstract [eng] |
Since the 1960s the problem of justification of scientific development has been an important problem in the philosophy of science. Larry Laudan provides a mature analysis of scientific development. Laudan generalises the models of scientific advancement provided by inductivists, deductivists and the historical school of philosophy of science. Unfortunately, Laudan's theory of scientific development has important shortcomings, the most important of which is that concept of science is not defined. The problem field of this work is the controversy of normative and non-normative positions in the philosophy of science. Laudan aims to provide an adequate solution that accounts for the differences of evaluations of scientific advancement in the theories of scientific rationalists and scientific irrationalists. The following thesis is defended: Larry Laudan's suggestion to separate the factual, methodological and axiological layers of scientific theories when evaluating scientific advancement is superior to other suggestions, but this model of evaluation of scientific advancement is not well-founded and inadequately defined. Primary sources of this work are „Science and Values“ (Laudan 1984), „Progress and Its Problems“ (Laudan 1997) and „The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“ (Kuhn 2003). Criticism of Laudan's conception of science and his theory of a triadic network of justification (Folse 1990, Fuller 1986, Lugg 1986, Quinn 1986, Stanford 2000, Worrall 1989) is evaluated. Laudan criticizes Kuhn's model of scientific advancement by pointing out that the Kuhnian model can not justify concensus in post-revolutional science rationally. However, like Kuhn, Laudan does not explain how to distinguish between revolutional science from normal science. Laudan explains the possibility of scientific consensus within Kuhn's model of paradigm change by basing concensus on rational intertwined relations between structural components of a paradigm. Laudan changes Kuhn's model of scientific advancement as paradigm change, because the network model of concensus is concerned with not with change of paradigm as a whole but only change of distinct factual, methodological and axiological structural components of the paradigm. The evaluation of scientific advancement by separating the factual, methodological and axiological layers of a theory may not be applied universally because these layers can only be distinguished in scientific theories that appeared after the scientific revolution in the 17th century. Before a universal justification of scientific advancement can be presented, we should come to an agreement on what is science. |
