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The Ideal Scientific Theory: A Thought Experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Ervin Laszlo
Ervin Laszlo*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Geneseo
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Abstract

To overcome sociopsychologism and historical relativism, the growth of science is deduced from the combined effect of postulated invariant controls, in the form of enduring ideals of science, in their interaction with nature. The thus constituted “cybernetics-of-science” concept permits extrapolation from present to future states of science. The ideal scientific theory is the goal or target toward which the scientific process is oriented, by virtue of its invariant controls. The form of the ideal theory can thus be extrapolated, and some speculative hypotheses advanced as to its contents, taking those of the recently emerged constructs of science as basis which best accord with the predicted form of the theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 1973 , pp. 75 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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