ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the significance of scientific practice and several hermeneutical conceptions of scientific practice. Scientific research activities are not intended to make the theory better but to explore the unknown world. Scientific research involves the intervening and opportunistic characteristics. According to the traditional view of science, scientific research is considered as activity while scientific knowledge is a theoretical system. In various methodological principles on scientific research, there is a principle often named as ‘feasibility principle’, which means that scientific research needs to correspond to the capabilities and based on objective and subjective criteria. In Joseph Rouse’s view, four types of practice: discursive, scientific, experimental, and laboratory. In Rouse’s view, scientific research is a ‘circumspective activity’, by taking place against a practical background of skills, practice, and equipment rather than a systematic background of theory. In a traditional view of science, laboratories only play a role in producing scientific knowledge, which will disappear as a local context later.
