Protoscience
Protoscience (from Greek πρώτος Protos , German , first ' ) is a 1970 by science historian Thomas Kuhn Samuel introduced term with which he refers to teachings that are in a pre-scientific stage and have not yet developed into a mature science. Although they can still have many properties in common with pseudosciences and are often surrounded by a cordon of such, they have the potential to develop into scientifically recognized theories. However, there is also a possibility that they turn out to be in error.
Protosciences according to Kuhn
According to Kuhn, the main difference between protoscience and recognized science is the lack of a generally accepted paradigm , a framework that enables normal science : solving research problems (puzzle solving). For Kuhn, it is precisely this puzzle-solving process that is an essential characteristic of science.
A protoscience achieves the status of a recognized science if it enables normal science. Since science often has to adapt its way of working to the phenomenon to be studied, the emerging hypotheses are vague and the methodology is only in the process of being developed.
Examples of protosciences
Kuhn cited as examples of protosciences chemistry and electricity before the mid-eighteenth century, heredity and tribal history before the mid-nineteenth century, and the general situation in the social sciences in his day.
Michael Devitt has formulated for the search for identification criteria of natural types (e.g. pain sensations) that we often find ourselves in the status of a protoscience, where a reliable theory is missing and basic intuitions and expert advice are instead guiding.
Classical philosophical attempts at theory, such as John Locke's color theory or Aristotle's explanations of nature, are often referred to as protoscience.
Husserl had conceived phenomenology as a descriptive protoscience in something other than that intended by Kuhn , which identifies basic types of intentional objects and acts on which systematic knowledge can then be built.
In more recent epistemological debates the background assumptions of everyday psychology (folk psychology) and certain theoretical sketches of the philosophy of mind , etc. a. Reference theories and theories of a language of thought called protoscience, for example by Larry Hauser, Stephen Stich , David Papineau, Michael McGinn and others. a. Eliminativists argue that by transferring psychology from a protoscience to a modern science, basic mentalistic concepts of everyday psychology such as “opinion”, “desire”, “sensation” etc. can and should be reduced to materialistic concepts. But naturalistic theoretical proposals are of course often referred to as protoscientific insofar as they have not yet been worked out in the same way as is required of other modern theories, such as Richard Dawkins' so-called memetics .
Differentiation from the concept of the previous sciences
These Kuhnian protosciences are not to be confused with the preliminary sciences that precede some sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and others), which are called protosciences in methodical constructivism .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Uwe Rose: Thomas S. Kuhn: Understanding and misunderstanding. The history of its reception . (PDF; 2.8 MB) Dissertation
- ^ Thomas Kuhn: Reflections on my critics. In: I. Lakatos, A. Musgrave (Ed.): Criticism and the growth of knowledge. Cambridge University Press, London 1974 , pp. 231-278.
- ^ Intuitions in Linguistics, 2005
- ^ E.g. in Catherine Wilson: Is the History of Philosophy Good for Philosophy? In: Tom Sorell, GAJ Rogers (Ed.): Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy. OUP, Oxford 2005, pp. 61-82
- ↑ Larry Hauser: Act, Aim, and Unscientific Explanation. In: Philosophical Investigations 15/4. 1992, pp. 313-323
- ↑ Stephen Stich: Deconstructing the Mind. 1996, p. 6
- ^ David Papineau: The Rise of Physicalism.
- ↑ Michael McGinn: Mental Content. 1989, p. 122
- ↑ Kenneth Mondschein: Meme. In: New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Pp. 1416-1418