The epistemologically problems of the contemporary scientific knowledge
The Copernican revolution introduced in philosophy by Kant proposes the accumulative development of knowledge, the view that human knowledge develops and progresses in a linear fashion. The critique that has been addressed to this position on the other hand, sees any philosophical and scientific revolution as merely another form of knowledge, not necessarily of a higher nature. The philosophical arguments that have been put forward to defend the above claim, have formulated the relativistic theorisation of knowledge and can be summarised as follows:
i) Experience and the observational data, as well as the experimental outcome is theory laden.
ii) The asymmetry of scientific theories. The objective comparison between two theories presupposes the existence of the linguistic medium in which their propositions are being set forth. The development of language however, incurs corresponding changes to the language used to enunciate the scientific theories, resulting to the asymmetry between the languages used by scientists in different historic periods. So, some propositions of an antecedent language are impossible to formulate in accordance to the terms and conditions of a posterior language and in this sense it is impossible to characterise them a posteriori as true or false.
iii) The position of underdetermination of theory, i.e. the position that observational data and the empirical observation in general, do not unilaterally determine one and only scientific theory. There are many theories (potentially infinite) that are compatible with finite amount of data. This is a phenomenon that we may often come across in scientific practice.
iv) The Duhem-Quine position, according to which, observation and experiment control a set of hypotheses and theories but never an isolated hypothesis. When the experimental outcomes are in contradiction to the set of original hypotheses that frame this outcome, we know that one or more of them is false. We cannot know however which one exactly. In this case we may alter some of these hypotheses with a view to re-establish the accordance between observation and theory. This gives us the possibility to keep a hypothesis that at first sight seems to be falsified by observation and experiment.
The relativist theorisation of philosophy of science problematized and called into question the belief that the comparative evaluation of scientific theories is governed by objective criteria, and also highlighted the importance of the non-rational forces in play at the “construction” of a scientific theory. Allowing for the subjective, casual and accidental element at the formulation of a scientific theory does not lead to a rejection of the notion of scientific rationality; it nevertheless mitigates the extreme rational belief for a linear progress of science that leads to the one and only Truth, the establishing of a unique theory that would represent the ‘view from nowhere’ (Thomas Nagel). But also the extreme relativist conviction in favour of the lack of progress can be empirically refuted by the fact that the scientific theories and the rational processes that create them, lead to verifiable projections. The effectiveness of scientific theories is widely noticeable through their technological applications, which lead to the transformation of nature. If the efficacy of scientific theories would not be reached also by the use of rational methods we would surely be talking about an inexplicable miracle. As we see in the previous discussion, the history and the philosophy of science are characterised by refutation at the same length as by affirmation: oppositely to the position that there exist inter-subjective and eternal criteria/values which govern the scientific activity, lies the thesis which supports the contemporaneous, local and subjective expression of all those criteria.
The rationality of the scientific thought that justifies the incessant development of scientific progress, is confronted with the non-rational and contingent element, subscribing to the discontinuity and the antievolution of scientific progress. The above mentioned antitheses become meaningful within the framework of the formal and dogmatic core of Reason (of a metaphysical origin), which confronts the rational with the non-rational element of human cognition, necessity against randomness, the unexpected and intercalary element. The ontology-metaphysics established by the current philosophy of nature is relational (uniform and differential) and in this sense the previously mentioned antitheses are renounced: Necessity and continuity, randomness and discontinuity, causality and normality, indeterminacy and contingency, topicality and universality, synchronicity and diachroneity, are all complementary to each other and are brought together in an open unity, spirally unfolding from the pan-chronicity of the World. Moreover, the critique that has emerged within the context of the relational conviction on knowledge, has re-established and ratified the non-rational dimension of cognition, as a formative agent for the scientific discovery. Imagination, intuition, instinct, the empathic understanding of experience, or the psychological element together with the rational, exceed the Platonic and Cartesian metaphysics of body and mind, and highlight the uniform and differential operation of thought: corporeality, emotions and sensations, intuitions and insights, the imaginative abilities, the rational and reflective power, the personal undergoing of experience and the trials of practice, all constitute the It, what is the radical imaginative, what constitutes the condition of existence and the precondition for human activity.
The above critical presentation entails the revocation of humanistic belief that characterises the thought of Hegel and Kant, i.e. the conviction that the epistemic and epistemological progress would also bring social and historic progress. In modern thinkers, the conviction to the evolutional and progressive nature of knowledge, as well as the reliance on the incessant moral improvement of humanity, are being strongly opposed and rejected. Surely the convictions of the humanistic tradition, related to the evolutionary and linear nature of knowledge, are founded on the Newtonian deterministic physics, which pro-claimed the linear and unambiguous concept of time. The conviction to the evolutionary and progressive nature of scientific knowledge was nurturing the hope for the socio-historic progress and the emancipation of man from psychological and social bondage, as they had been shaped within the framework of the mythical-religious image of the world, but also the release from the constraints of nature. The myth-deconstructing and de-mystifying effect of scientific speech, the rational interpretation, organisation and rearrangement of natural world, a world that allows for an infinite and inexhaustible determination, brought about the break with the primeval relation of man with nature and relinquished the immediateness and naturalism of life.
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