The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

by Michael Strevens

understand why it has been so difficult to chase down. Those who have searched for a scientific method—the methodists—have been looking for a logical and behavioral directive that expunges human whim from scientific thought, replacing it with a standardized rule or procedure for judging theories in the light of evidence that explains science’s stupendous knowledge-producing capacity. The rule that governs science and explains its success is far weaker, however, than the methodists have supposed: it tells you what counts as evidence but offers no system for interpreting that evidence. Indeed, it says nothing about the significance of evidence at all. Further, the rule does not reside where the methodists have expected to find it, in scientists’ heads. It does not tell scientists what to think privately; it merely regulates how they argue publicly. It is not a method of reasoning but a kind of speech code, a set of ground rules for debate, compelling scientists to conduct all disputes with reference to empirical evidence alone.