ABSTRACT
Science is the greatest intellectual achievement of humankind and the only source of reliable knowledge about anything natural in the universe, and it has enriched human life immeasurably. Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most influential books in the philosophy of science of the 20th century. Science upholds positions on "knowing" that strong social constructionists abhor, such as empiricism, objectivity, reductionism, determinism, and essentialism. The primary tool for rationalism is reason, and for empiricism it is sense experience. Rationalism and empiricism are rival epistemologies, although neither school of thought disregards the primary tool of the other. Empiricism is the path of modern science. Empiricists do not deny that concepts can be independent of experience but maintain that if those concepts refer to the tangible world, the truth about them can be established only by observation and experiment. Francis Bacon's aggressive empiricism represents the dreaded "master's tools" that reveal unwelcome facts to be challenged.
