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186880

A discourse on method

Carlo Cellucci

pp. 133-148

Abstract

How is knowledge acquired? In the past century it has been generally believed that this question is vacuous, because there is no method for acquiring knowledge, the basic laws of science can be reached only by intuition, then, from them, conclusions are deduced and compared with experience. This belief has had a very negative impact on logic, the method of science, and philosophy, and contrasts with the views on knowledge from antiquity to the nineteenth century. This chapter maintains that the belief in question has no foundation. It also maintains that there is no more foundation in the claim that today there is no longer need for the traditional approach to science, based on the scientific method, because powerful algorithms can explore huge databases and find correlations and regularities therein, providing rules for prediction.

Publication details

Published in:

Cellucci Carlo (2017) Rethinking knowledge: the heuristic view. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 133-148

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-53237-0_11

Full citation:

Cellucci Carlo (2017) A discourse on method, In: Rethinking knowledge, Dordrecht, Springer, 133–148.