Can Anomalies Be Treated as Falsifying Instances?
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In his book Science and Subjectivity (1967) Israel Scheffler raises several criticisms against Kuhn´s theory of science. Among these criticisms, I would like to examine the accusation according to which, some of the notions that Kuhn rejects in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (hereafter SScR), such as the notion of “falsification”, reappear under new labels in other parts of this book. According to Scheffler, the notion of “falsification” reappears under the label of “anomaly”, “crisis” and “lack of faith”. In this paper, I intend to show that Scheffler’s main accusation is not well justified. To this purpose, I shall show that the notions of “falsification” and “anomaly” are not semantically equivalent. I shall motivate my position based on a contrast between these two notions, in the light of which I shall signal some of their more significant epistemological differences.
- Anomalies
- anomalies
- Falsification
- falsification
- Refuting instances
- refuting instances
- Semantic differences and epistemic differences
- semantic differences and epistemic differences.
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