No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Relativism and Experimental Inference
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Extract
The task of the philosophy of science, according to Churchman, is twofold. It is, one, “to determine the ideal of science by scientific methods,” and, the other, “to describe the manner in which science can most efficiently approach its ideals” (190). The primary purpose of this book on experimental inference is to deal with these two subjects as they bear upon what is commonly called material or empirical science, rather than upon formal or analytic science, though it is recognized that no absolute separation can be made between these two different types of science, or between the performance of the above tasks in connection with each. The kind of science, then, whose objective and methods are to be elucidated is the kind in which in some broad sense of these terms decisions are necessarily made on the basis of empirical observation and testing. Some observation or series of observations is made, and it is the task of the scientist to make an inference based upon these observational data. What is his aim in doing this, and what are the most efficient ways in which he can proceed?
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1951
Footnotes
1
A review of C. W. Churchman's Theory of Experimental Inference, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1948. Pp. xii, 292.
References
2 At this point Churchman's relativist adversaries may comment that what he is confronting here is what he has been trying futilely to escape all along, namely, the relativity of error, when error is conceived in a broad philosophical way, such as it is when science is considered as having the purpose of pursuing truth and avoiding error. For if what constitutes wrongness, or a mistake, in the estimation of any empirical matter, is relative always to some purpose, then what constitutes correctness or truth in the estimation is likewise so relative. Or, to put the matter in Churchman's own terms, if what is precision for one purpose is error for another, then it makes little sense to speak of the purpose of all scientific activity as that of becoming absolutely precise, or to think that in descrying among scientific activities purposes which can be described in terms of reducing “error” one has found a unity which is anything more than verbal.