Читать книгу Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science: A History (Third Edition) - Thomas J. Hickey - Страница 81

Over the last three hundred years empirical science has evolved into a social institution with its own distinctive and autonomous professional subculture of shared views and values.

The institutionalized aim of science is the cultural value system that regulates the scientist’s practices of basic research.

Idiosyncratic motivations of individual scientists are historically interesting, but are largely of anecdotal interest to philosophers of science, except when such idiosyncrasies have produced results that have initiated an institutional change.

The literature of philosophy of science offers various proposals for the aim of science. The three modern philosophies of science mentioned above set forth different philosophies of language, which influence their diverse concepts of all four of the functional topics including the aim of science.