ON THE ESSENTIAL INSTABILITY THESIS OF SCIENCE
ON THE ESSENTIAL INSTABILITY THESIS OF SCIENCE

Summary/Abstract: The hitherto philosophers of science assumed that justification had a thoroughgoing logic and therefore a philosophical account of discovery must be in terms of a logic of discovery. However the recognition that it is impossible to provide an algorithmic or semi-algorithmic scheme and the recognition that justification itself if viewed more in terms of historical authenticity is un-amenable to a logical articulation and more than that, the realization that discovery has a philosophical relevance independent of its relation to justification have replaced the "logic of discovery" by the "methodology of discovery". This paper begins with the category shift from the idea of an unchanging set of principles that is supposed to underlie and persist through the changing content of science to the idea of radical instability of science, according to which nothing remains stable in the shifts that scientific theorizing undergoes. Thus, it is a categorical shift from the idea of an essentially stable core of science to the idea of an essential instability of science. This replacement of stability by instability is one of the hallmarks of post-Positivist philosophy of science. An attempt is made in this paper to discuss the views of Dudley Shapere who very effectively enunciates the thesis of essential instability of science.

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