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Open inquiry12 min4 historical perspectives

What makes an inquiry scientific?

Use an all-explaining theory, an anomaly inside a successful paradigm, and a community closed to criticism to compare testing, history, and social standards of science.

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  1. 11620Bacon — Organized exclusion instead of hasty generalization

    Francis Bacon · Novum Organum

    What changes when observations are designed to eliminate possible explanations rather than collect favorite examples?

    Bacon replaces hasty ascent from a few cases with tables of presence, absence, and degree that progressively exclude candidate natures.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Francis Bacon

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §5.1 The Idols; §5.2 The System of Sciences and the method of induction

      Open source

    His analysis of the idols examines recurring sources of error in human nature, individual formation, language, and inherited systems.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Francis Bacon

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §5.1 The Idols

      Open source
    1. The Novum Organum presents discovery as an error-reducing procedure rather than a lucky flash of insight.

      1620

  2. 21934Popper — Risky tests rather than piles of confirmations

    Karl Popper · The Logic of Scientific Discovery

    Does what a theory forbids matter more than the number of observations that seem to support it?

    Popper argues that finite observations cannot verify a universal theory, while empirical science requires claims exposed to possible counterinstances.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Karl Popper

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §2.3 Demarcation and §2.4 Basic Statements and Falsifiability

      Open source

    Because real tests involve auxiliary assumptions, measurement error, and statistical judgment, the slogan that one observation automatically discards one theory oversimplifies both Popper and later debate.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Karl Popper

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3.1–§3.3, corroboration, conventionalist stratagems, and methodology

      Open source
    1. The Logic of Scientific Discovery locates a boundary of science in claims that risk being wrong.

      1934

  3. 31962Kuhn — Normal-science puzzles and paradigm change

    Thomas Kuhn · The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

    Should a successful research tradition keep solving puzzles despite an anomaly, and when should it change frameworks?

    Kuhn's normal science solves puzzles under shared exemplars and standards; anomalies become conditions for crisis and revolution when they accumulate or become especially consequential.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Thomas Kuhn

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §2.2 Paradigms and Normal Science; §2.3 Crisis and Revolutions

      Open source

    Incommensurability is not the simple claim that choice ignores evidence or reasons; Kuhn describes values such as accuracy, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness as relevant to judgment.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Thomas Kuhn

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3.1 Methodological Incommensurability; §4.1 Objectivity and Value Judgment

      Open source
    1. Published in Chicago, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions depicts scientific time as alternating normal work and revolutionary change.

      1962 · Chicago · 출판

  4. 41990Longino — Objectivity through communities where criticism can work

    Helen Longino · Science as Social Knowledge

    Does objectivity depend less on a neutral individual than on structures that expose assumptions to criticism and revision?

    Longino's contextual empiricism holds that data support hypotheses through background assumptions, so objectivity depends on public criticism capable of transforming those assumptions.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Scientific Objectivity

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §4.3 Feminist and Social Epistemology, Longino on transformative criticism

      Open source

    Venues for criticism, shared standards, uptake of criticism, and tempered equality of intellectual authority are conditions for effective criticism, not mere diversity of opinion.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Scientific Objectivity

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §4.3, criteria for transformative criticism

      Open source
    1. Science as Social Knowledge locates objectivity in critical social structures rather than individual detachment.

      1990