We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The scientific enterprise is embedded in the institutional framework of the society consisting of informal and formal institutions. What we call “science” is not a means toward the accomplishment of anything. It is, instead, the institutional embodiment of the processes of constructing and criticizing solutions to theoretical problems that are entered into by individuals in their several abilities and skills. What we call the Scientific Method is constituted by the informal institutions that have originally emerged and diffused during the Scientific Revolution, consisting of essentially three types of rules, the scientific conventions, the moral rules and the scientific techniques. The term should be understood as a type, with the different informal institutions of science being the tokens. The scientific method may take very different forms, but as long as it consists in the techniques of bringing the products of our theoretical imagination in contact with empirical data by scientists following the scientific conventions of their time and the moral rules necessary for this kind of epistemic problem-solving, it remains a distinctive way of grasping the structure of the world.
How can science be protected, by whom and at what level? If science is valued positively as the incubator of the most successful solutions to representational problems of reality as well as the basis of the most effective interventions in the natural and social world, then its constitutional foundations must be protected. This book develops a specific normative outlook on science by introducing the idea of a 'Constitution of Science'. Scientific activities are special kinds of epistemic problem-solving activities unfolding in an institutional context. The scientific enterprise is a social process unfolding within an intricate institutional framework that structures the daily activities of scientists and shapes their outcomes. Those institutions of science which are of the highest generality make up the 'Constitution of Science' and are of fundamental importance for channelling the scientific process effectively.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.