Science as the Work of a Community

Abstract

The bare bones logicism that dominated philosophy of science in the fifties and sixties has given way to a much richer conception of the way science is created as a cognitive enterprise. Patrick Heelan has been one of the contributors to this enrichment by drawing in to the discussion philosophical traditions other than the orthodox Russellian logicism. Enrichment has come from other sources too. The humanity of scientists is also revealed in the fact that they are social beings, like the rest of humanity. Science is not the work of automata, programmed with something called “scientific method.” Some, having realized the essential role of concepts and linguistic conventions in how we see the world have moved to the other extreme, treating both the world and our knowledge of it as social constructions. We will try to find a point of view which acknowledges the disciple of logic without falling into the paradoxes of logicism and which acknowledges the constructive role of concepts and the influence of the scientific community both on their origins and how they are employed without slipping in the nihilism of post-modernism.