ABSTRACT
How is one to conceive of cognitive progress? Is it simply a matter of more and more? Just exactly what is at issue here?
Progress in science is often characterized in terms of historical ten dencies regarding question-and-answer relationships. Perhaps the most rudimentary theory of this sort is the traditional cumulationist view that later, more advanced stages of science are characterized as such by virtue of their answering more questions-questions over and above those answered at earlier stages of the game:
t l< ,2=>[Qf(St / ) c Q ? ( S ,2)]
This expansionist view of progress has it that later, superior science answers more questions, that is, answers all of the formerly answered questions (albeit perhaps differently), and furthermore answers some previously unanswered questions. Progress, according to this theory, is a matter of rolling-snowball analogous knowledge-accumulation: as science progresses, the set of answered questions is an ever-growing whole.
