ABSTRACT

The deductivist, transcendentalist and objectivist view of science advocated here, differs in a truly fundamental way from any inductivist, psychologistic and subjectivist view of science such as the one advocated by (for example) modern positivism. Inductivism (positivism) regards our perceptions (and perhaps other experiences also) as the foundation of all knowledge, of all science. This basic theme is common to all positivist approaches, although they interpret it in a variety of different ways. Some go so far as to regard scientific statements as being “only” logical constructions of experiences; others regard the concepts of empirical science as “only” logical constructions (classes of classes, classes of relations) of elementary experiences. The transcendental untenability of this view, and the logical difficulty of treating irrational elements (which is what our experiences are) logically and rationally, lead positivism ultimately (while not abandoning its basic position) to replace irrational experiences with rational constructs, namely with perceptual statements (“protocol sentences”). The foundations of science are to be constituted no longer by our irrational perceptions, but by the rationalised linguistic expression of these perceptions.