ABSTRACT
In the last chapter I put forward a range of positive arguments in defence of the notion that a genuinely critical methodology of science must be based upon philosophy and will stand in a normative relation to the practices of scientists. In this chapter I shall turn to examine the main arguments which have been put forward against such a position, and by disposing of those counter-arguments I shall thereby seek to buttress, by a negative path, the positive arguments in favour of a critical philosophically-based methodology already put forward. 1 I shall identify three main approaches to scientific methodology which have rejected the notion that it should be based upon a normative philosophical critique of the methods of science: first, crude descriptivism and, secondly, and also, thirdly, the ‘anti-philosophies’ 2 of positivism and of relativism. In the course of the discussion which follows it will become clear that while ‘descriptivism’ is a rather naive position which simply ignores the possibility of carrying out a philosophical critique of the sciences, positivism and relativism reject a philosophically-based methodology as a direct result of a wider rejection of all speculative philosophy. Since this latter is a much more serious charge to bring I shall devote most of my attention in this chapter to an attempted refutation of positivism and relativism.
