Abstract
The main goal of our article is to discuss briefly the possibility to apply the theoretical tools of the so-called Science Studies to peripherical countries like Brazil. We do this with and against the Science Studies, looking for less conservative goals on the evaluation of scientific levels accomplished by countries considered as being underdeveloped
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- 1.
As far as is known, those expressions were used, for the first time, by Reichenbach in his book Experience and Prediction in 1938. In this work, the contex of discovery and the context of jutification signify the process of the origin of knowledge and the public presentation of acquired results, respectively (Reichenbach, 1970).
- 2.
As it is well known, Popper did not consider metaphysics as an enemy to be eradicated. Curiouly, two theories, pretentiously presented as scientific at his times, Freud’s psychoanalysis and Marxism, became the targets of his criticisms, because they were seen as irrefutable.
- 3.
Some philosophers of science, as Goerge Reisch (1991), since the beginning of the nineties, has tried to show that Kuhn was much more closer to Carnap than it is normally accepted.
- 4.
In Larvor’s judgment (2003), Kuhn’s history of science is only a bad use of a historicist philosophical background, since he uses uncounscious the same general methodological principles to observe the historical development as a whole. That is: Kuhn, as positivits, continuously elaborate idealizations of present scientific practice.
- 5.
This is, for example, the evaluation of Nola (2000), for whom Kuhn should not be included in the group of the Strong Program. Nevertheless, our criticism to Nola is that the latter movement is not anti-science as he supposses.
- 6.
After The Struture of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn published some philosophical articles, in which he had tried to answer his critics.
- 7.
- 8.
For a very interesting discussion about misunderstandings of this expression, see Hacking (1999).
- 9.
A critical analysis of Galison’s ideas is done in Mendonça and Videira (2009).
- 10.
Latour’s ideas are discussed in Mendonça (2008).
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Videira, A., Mendonça, A.L.O. (2011). Contextualizing the Contexts of Discovery and Justification: How to do Science Studies in Brazil. In: Krause, D., Videira, A. (eds) Brazilian Studies in Philosophy and History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 290. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9422-3_17
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