Breaking the Link between Methodology and Rationality. A Plea for Rhetoric in Scientific Inquiry

Abstract

“What ultimately decides the fate of a theory is the result of a test”.¹ I do not know of any past or present-day scientists who would not readily agree with this favourite maxim of Popper’s. It has much to be said for it, indeed: as a description of what is going on in science, it seems to be adequate; as advice, it is easy to apprehend and, at first sight, easy to apply; as a slogan for publicity, it is appealing. It voices the old, venerated tradition that science is an objective, impersonal game whose only players are ideas and facts, without any intrusion of subjective factors unless they can be isolated or rendered harmless. Science, Popper also says, is “knowledge without a knowing subject”;² likewise, Galileo remarked that science only relies on “sensible experience and necessary demonstrations”, so that “in the natural science the art of oratory is ineffective”.³