ABSTRACT
Common sense provides us with a way of spinning fairy tales about what might be going on 'out there', and while we continue to believe in them we have a firm foothold in reality. For while all paradigms, and all the more specific theories of which they are composed, do have a fairy-tale quality, like all fairy tales, there are points at which they coincide - either potentially or actually - with observable phenomena. Finally, belief in the methods of science ensures that certain rituals of research will lead to ¿evidence? believed to be indicative of Truth. At the points where various paradigms make statements about the real world, that is at the points where they generate judgments which are contingent-upon-something-or-other, we can indulge in a game called testing. Thus most scientists and philosophers of science see the aims and rationale of scientific activity as the establishment of bodies of knowledge which effectively link plausible fairy tales with truths.
