Will the Real Scientists Please Stand Up? Dead Ends and Live Issues in the Explanation of Scientific Knowledge

Reflection on the method of science has become increasingly thinner since Kant. If there’s any upshot of that part of modem philosophy, it’s that the scientists didn’t have a secret. There isn’t something there that’s either effable or ineffable. To understand how they do what they do is pretty much like understanding how any other bunch of skilled craftsmen do what they do. Kuhn’s reduction of philosophy of science to sociology of science doesn’t point to an ineffable secret of success; it leaves us without the notion of the secret of success.