Towards a Non-Aristotelian Epistemology of Science (2003)

the one point of agreement among philosophers of science lies in the consensus of belief that the traditional 'scientific method' as outlined in many introductory science textbooks seems incorrect and 1. Introduction PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE have long struggled to define what constitutes the nature and limits of science. Even so, There has been little agreement concerning a criterion of the character of theories, notes Lakatos. (1) Of the many approaches proposed, few have escaped criticism, including Bacon's and Newton's inductive method, Popper's criterion of falsification, Kuhn's sociological approach, the anti-definitional perspective, the vocational-functional approach, and the radical positivist position supported by a federal trial court judge in the 1982 McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education decision. Perhaps the one point of agreement among philosophers of science lies in the consensus of belief that the traditional scientific method as outlined in many introductory science textbooks seems incorrect and defective. I believe that one of the fundamental reasons for the consistent criticism and non-agreement in the many approaches generated over the past few centuries lies in the attempt to constrain science to the limited and specific Aristotelian logical forms. For an example of this, see Brody's article explicitly entitled Towards an Aristotelean Theory of Scientific Explanation. (2) I present this paper in an attempt to rectify this situation, or at least to stimulate others to do so, by moving toward a non-Aristotelian epistemology of science, within the framework of the non-Aristotelian system initially outlined in Alfred Korzybski's 1933 work Science and Sanity. I have organized this paper into four sections. 1. Introduction: the above and this section. 2. Epistemological Considerations: before one can formulate a non-Aristotelian description of science one must necessarily outline in general terms some of the fundamentally important epistemological considerations. 3. Traditional Aristotelian Purposes and Methodologies: a survey of what some traditional philosophers of science have to offer. 4. A Suggested Non-Aristotelian Formulation: from my arguments in preceding sections, in the light of Korzybski's statements regarding the work and goal of science, I offer a non-Aristotelian formulation of science. 2. Epistemological Considerations Bois regarded general semantics as an up-to-date epistemology. (3) We may describe epistemology as that branch of philosophy which investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowing. In this context, this paper will examine the epistemology of science. Procedural Assumptions We who consider ourselves [sane.sup.2003] must understand that the abstracted world in which we participate via sensory input exists for us as an approximation of the whole, and as such, tends to distort, shrink, or otherwise modify what we call reality. (4) Many of the great advances in understanding in the past 100 years have contributed to a most extra-ordinary perspective, easily defying common sense. Therefore, one can extract and summarize a number of differential postulates between the limited Aristotelian approach and the more extensive non-Aristotelian approach: Most of the above table appears self-explanatory although a few comments on universal logic seem appropriate. I coined the phrase universal logic in an attempt to affirm that the universe simply exists, regardless of what we may think or say as we attempt to describe it. (5) Universal logic, then, appears as an analogue of the un-speakable event in Korzybski's structural differential (6)--unattainable through the use of words, models, or mathematics, etc. The map/territory metaphor asserts the same thing, i.e. that the map consists of an abstraction of the territory, not the territory itself, and not all of the territory. …