Inter-Theoretic Criticism and the Growth of Science

Abstract

This paper is intended to be a small contribution to a future comprehensive Theory of Scientific Growth. I take it that such a theory would give an idealized description of the repeating patterns of growth found within the history of science and show how these developmental patterns are different from those found in the case of theories such as witchcraft, on the one hand, and the patterns found in the growth of the ‘practical arts’, such as pottery-making, on the other. The theory would go on to explain why such patterns might be expected to produce scientific knowledge by pointing out the critical forces which are operating and the rationality of the responses to them. In short, an adequate philosophical theory in this area should not only give the kinetics of scientific growth, but also the dynamics of that process.