Universal Aspects of Scientific Practice: Commitment, Methodology, and Technique

This book provides a unique contribution to philosophy of science from the perspective of the practice of science. It focuses on processes that generate scientific knowledge and seeks general and universal features that characterize scientific practice; features that are inherent to the practice of science. Science is an activity, and the scientist is an agent who pursues some practice, which in one way or another engages evidence. In science, claims to knowledge are typically supported by argument that engages evidence at some point in explanation, in prediction, or indeed in any mode of presenting data and its interpretation. Thus, the practice of science includes at least three elements so that an argument can be formulated: presuppositions, modes of inference, and consequences that relate to evidence. The authors discuss in detail eight cases in chronological order with which they illustrate how commitment, methodology, and technique come into play in the practice of an individual physicist or a group of researchers in the physical sciences. Each case highlights aspects of the roles these categories play in scientific practice, where the goal is to generate and extend scientific knowledge.


Giora Hon, Professor (emeritus) of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Haifa, has published widely on the concept of error in science and philosophy. His edited book with J. Schickore and F. Steinle, Going Amiss in Experimental Research, appeared in 2009 (Springer). His recent work with Bernard R. Goldstein was published by Routledge (2020): Reflections on The Practice of Physics: James Clerk Maxwell's Methodological Odyssey in Electromagnetism.
Bernard R. Goldstein, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, has written extensively on the history of astronomy from antiquity to early modern times and has co-authored a number of studies with Giora Hon, notably, From Summetria to Symmetry: The Making of a Revolutionary Scientific Concept (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008).