|
|
SCIENCE STUDIES EVENTS
CREATING FACTS: THE FORM AND FUNCTION
OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
Kenneth Caneva
Department of History
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
April 9, 2004
Friday, 12:30pm
Sumwalt College, Room 102
The starting point of this investigation is the fact that what many
scientists are famous for having discovered is not at all what they thought
they had discovered. From one perspective, this might appear to be simply
a matter of historical falsification that the historian can set straight.
From the perspective represented by the mature scientific consensus, there
is no problem because that process of transformation has become invisible.
From the perspective of Ludwik Fleck and others, however, the path from
initial formulation to general acceptance represents nothing less than the
collective construction of the facts that constitute the putatively
objective base of scientific knowledge. Most studies of scientific
discovery have looked at discovery as an individual creative process, while
the language of "context of discovery" versus "context of justification"
implies further that the role of the scientific community is to either
accept or reject claims put before it. Neither of these approaches
provides a realistic way of understanding just how "discoveries" function
in the production of consensus scientific knowledge. Although vigorously
"constructivist," the analysis advocated here is not intended to impugn the
authority of science by relativizing its knowledge claims, but rather to
understand the legitimate basis of that authority precisely by relativizing
it to its own history. The acceptance of an essential element of
historical contingency in the production of scientific knowledge does not
impugn its truth-value — such as it is.
 |
|
