The Bactra Review Error and the
Growth of Experimental Knowledge
One further comment, which falls outside the ambit of methodology, though still
within that of the broader philosophy of science. Mayo, a child like the rest
of us of the victorious Scientific Revolution, takes it for granted that the
goal of science, of natural philosophy is reliable knowledge, subject to
experimental controls, about phenomena and their efficient causes. But this is
very far from being the only conceivable goal of natural philosophy, and
someone who pursued it with a different aim --- obtaining, e.g., knowledge of
God through the allegorical interpretation of Her creations, or an inner
conviction that one has grasped the ineffable yet meaningful interconnections
of Nature --- would be led to a radically different kind of science, and find
not merely our theories or our methods but our methodology totally beside the
point. I think she's quite right about how affairs are conducted
under the Revolutionary flag, but doesn't advance our understanding of
how that flag first came to be flown, of how to justify the Revolution and the
Open Society of Science which it creates, against the Old Regime and
counter-revolutionaries, if indeed it can be justified.