EMPIRICAL TOOLS AND EMPIRICISM 157 



laws. But Tycho's empirical data do not themselves proclaim Kepler's 

 laws: to discover them the conceptual insight of a Kepler is requisite. 



The Scientific Method 



Empiricism, fact, and logic loom large enough in science to give some 

 color to the popular conception of a "scientific method" ( sometimes 

 even The Scientific Method) infallible because it relies on nothing 

 but systematic empiricism, hard fact, and cold logic. But this alluring 

 conception of routinized Method is indefensible in the face of mul- 

 tiple objections, not the least being Polanyi's comment on just those 

 great turning points that have made the history of science what it is. 



Major discoveries change our interpretative framework. Hence it is 

 logically impossible to arrive at these by the continued application of 

 our previous interpretative framework. ... by the diligent perfonn- 

 ance of any previously known and specifiable procedure. 



Consider too that, given Method, the advance of science should be 

 as smooth and unfaltering as, indeed, it may appear in the long-term 

 perspective of textbook presentations which are analytical rather 

 than historical. Conant, however, remarks that: 



The stumbling way in which even the ablest of the scientists in 

 every generation have had to fight through thickets of erroneous ob- 

 servations, misleading generalizations, inadequate formulations, and 

 unconscious prejudice is rarely appreciated by those who obtain their 

 scientific knowledge from textbooks. It is largely neglected by those 

 expounders of the alleged scientific method who are fascinated by 

 the logical rather than the psychological aspects of experimental 

 investigations. 



Even cursory scrutiny of the actual historical record— the modern no 

 less than the ancient— yields ample evidence that in close-up perspec- 

 tive the advance of science is sporadic, laborious, tortuous. 



Given Method, there should be a major element of sameness in the 

 practice of those to whom science is indebted for its major advances. 

 Examination of the historical record reveals not sameness but over- 

 whelming diversity. At the very least we might expect to find unani- 

 mous acceptance of the basic tenet of empiricism: the supreme 

 authority of brute fact. But quite the contrary situation is implied by 



