The Inductive Style
A scientific paper is supposed to be innovative, to comprise a contribution to the stock of human knowledge. The trouble is, we do not know what innovation is, what the stock of human knowledge is, and how the one augments the other. The discovery of the
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The Inductive Style
A scientific paper is supposed to be innovative, to comprise a contribution to the stock of human knowledge. The trouble is, we do not know what innovation is, what the stock of human knowledge is, and how the one augments the other. The discovery of the New World is a paradigm case; should we ascribe it to the first humans who crossed the Bering Sea, to the first Vikings who crossed the Atlantic Ocean, to Christopher Columbus, or to Amerigo Vespucci? Each of these options rests on a theory that is hardly articulated, much less open to critical assessment. Western-type universities require that doctoral dissertations be assessed as contributions to human knowledge, yet they offer no criterion of novelty. This is no censure. As we seldom ask for a criterion of beauty when we enjoy art, we may well treat scientific novelty that way, as Michael Polanyi has repeatedly suggested. How does the system operate without criteria? Polanyi suggested that the system relies on expert opinion in a manner that defies all criteria. He was in error—on both facts and philosophy. Boyle certainly could not rely on a criterion such as that articulated by Polanyi since the experts he knew were no good. Boyle invented what we now deem the height of common sense: he treated scientific papers as open letters and suggested that they should comprise mainly observation reports; these should be informative: they should include material that is new to their unspecified receivers. This seems reasonable but possibly it misses a significant desideratum: the intended readers are supposed to be interested in the information offered. To this two answers are possible. First, readers can choose. This answer involves technicalities: the cost of providing information, the problems of storing it and more so of retrieving it. All this was beyond Boyle’s horizon. The second answer is very much within his field of vision: Bacon had said, in research excess information is impossible. Still, it is possible to consider this matter practically. Take for example Boyle’s posthumous (1692) questionnaire (Daston, 2011, 89) to travelers (General heads for the natural history of a country great or
179 J. Agassi, The Very Idea of Modern Science: Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 298, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5351-8_14, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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14 The Inductive Style
small drawn out for the use of travellers and navigators), concerning weather, flora and fauna, and local customs.1 It was published repeatedly, Fulton reports, by instrument makes. (It is the kernel of the tradition that current inductivist Notes and Queries maintains; it began in the mid-nineteenth century—soon after Boyle’s writings lost their popularity.) Assent to information generally seems easier than assent to a theory. Bacon went further and said, all information should be on record, as filters are prejudicial; misinformation will be filtered out in the stage of theorizing, he promised. This is
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