THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE DENIAL OF THE DIVORCE THESIS
THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE DENIAL OF THE DIVORCE THESIS

Summary/Abstract: The contemporary philosophical understanding of scientific rationalityfundamentally distinguishes itself from the conservative positions by what may beconsidered a categorial reorientation by which it is meant that it replaces the oldcategories by the new ones in terms of which the essential nature of the structure anddynamics of science are described and explained. In the beginning, the radicalizationof the categorial framework has been brought through category transformation,which is very well exemplified in the nullification of the discovery-justificationdistinction. Apart from this parasitic semantic content, ‘discovery’ carried a negativemeaning in terms of what it is not. With the nullification of the distinction, thesemantic content of discovery has become not only autonomous, and positive butalso, comprehensive so much as to become the focal concept in grasping the essenceof scientific activity. These changes have fundamentally altered the discourse aboutdiscovery in ways that can be of momentous significance to science education(Schickore and Steinle, 2006). An attempt is made in this paper to illuminate how thedenial of the divorce thesis has been justified by the philosophical arguments ofMarcello Pera(1981, 1994), Robert McLaughlin (1982), John Worrall(1985,2003)and Jarrett Leplin(1987,1997,2009) and ThomasNickels(1985,2003,2014).

• Details
• Contents