Scientific Progress: A Study Concerning the Nature of the Relation Between Successive Scientific Theories

For the philosopher interested in the idea of objective knowledge of the real world, the nature of science is of special importance, for science, and more particularly physics, is today considered to be paradigmatic in its affording of such knowledge. And no understand­ ing of science is complete until it includes an appreciation of the nature of the relation between successive scientific theories-that is, until it includes a conception of scientific progress. Now it might be suggested by some that there are a variety of ways in which science progresses, or that there are a number of different notions of scientific progress, not all of which concern the relation between successive scientific theories. For example, it may be thought that science progresses through the application of scientific method to areas where it has not previously been applied, or, through the development of individual theories. However, it is here suggested that the application of the methods of science to new areas does not concern forward progress so much as lateral expansion, and that the provision of a conception of how individual theories develop would lack the generality expected of an account concerning the progress of science itself.

Kuhn and Feyerabend formulated the problem. Dilworth provides the solution.

In this highly original and insightful book, Craig Dilworth answers all the questions raised by the incommensurability thesis. Logical empiricism cannot account for theory conflict. Popperianism cannot account for how one theory is a progression beyond another. Dilworth’s Perspectivist conception of science does both.

While remaining within the bounds of classical philosophy of science, Dilworth does away with the logicism of his competitors. On the Perspectivist view theory conflict is not contradiction, and theory superiority does not consist in deductive subsumption or set-theoretic inclusion. Here the relation between theories is analogous to the application of individual concepts, and the question of theory superiority becomes one of relative applicability. In this way Dilworth succeeds in providing a conception of science in which scientific progress is based on both rational and empirical considerations.

"[Dilworth] convincingly works out how from his point of view it is possible to explain the conflict between two theories as an incompatibility of perspectives, and at the same time avoid sliding into relativism by giving criteria for scientific progress." Dialectica