Hackenberg, T.D. (2009).
Realism without Truth: A review of Giere’s Science without
Laws and Scientific Perspectivism.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 91, 391-400.
An increasingly popular view among philosophers of science is
that of science as action—as the collective activity of
scientists working in socially-coordinated communities. Scientists
are seen not as dispassionate pursuers of Truth, but as active
participants in a social enterprise, and science is viewed on a
continuum with other human activities. When taken to an extreme,
the science-as-social-process view can be taken to imply that
science is no different from any other human activity, and
therefore can make no privileged claims about its knowledge
of the world. Such extreme views are normally contrasted
with equally extreme views of classical science, as uncovering
Universal Truth. In Science Without Laws and Scientific
Perspectivism, Giere outlines an approach to understanding
science that finds a middle ground between these extremes.
He acknowledges that science occurs in a social and historical
context, and that scientific models are constructions designed
and created to serve human ends. At the same time, however,
scientific models correspond to parts of the world in ways that
can legitimately be termed objective. Giere's position,
perspectival realism, shares important common ground with
Skinner's writings on science, some of which are explored
in this review. Perhaps most fundamentally, Giere shares
with Skinner the view that science itself is amenable to
scientific inquiry: scientific principles can and should
be brought to bear on the process of science. The two
approaches offer different but complementary perspectives
on the nature of science, both of which are needed in a
comprehensive understanding of science.
Key words: science, verbal behavior, epistemology, radical behaviorism,
perspectival realism