The Am. Philosophical Soc. (APS) Jayne Lectures for 1968. Sir Peter Medawar, eminent biologist of the British National Institute for Medical Research, states: ''These lectures began in my mind in the form of a question: why are most scientists completely indifferent to--even contemptuous of--scientific methodology?...the answer could only be 'because what passes for scientific methodology is a misrepresentation of what scientists do or ought to do.' I therefore thought it important to explain what is wrong with the traditional methodology of 'inductive' reasoning...& to show that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with the names of Whewell & Peirce & Popper can give the scientist a certain limited but useful insight into the way he thinks.'' In this alternative scheme, the energizing force of scientific enquiry comes from an imaginative preconception of what might be true--a preconception which is at once exposed to critical analysis, to find out whether or not the imagined world corresponds with the real one. Scientific enquiry is thus essentially a dialogue between imaginative insight & critical appraisal; between the possible & the actual; between what could be true & what is in fact the case.

Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought: Memoirs, American Philosophical Society (vol. 75) (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society)

Politics & Social Sciences

Medawar, Peter Brian

Philosophy

The American Philosophical Society Press

The Uniqueness of the Individual

History

Legare Street Press

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