Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

experiment would require large publicexpenditures.3. While scientific norms have palpably changedover time, these changes have been rarely theresult of formal legislation; rather, they havereflected a statistical drift toward imitating thepractice of acknowledged winners.These three non-game-like features of science haveserved to impede any global evaluation of the stateof organised inquiry in relation to its putative goals.One is simply encouraged to follow the inertialtendencies of tradition because it would seem thattoo much would be placed at risk to do otherwise.Thus, from a strict Popperian standpoint, contemporary‘Big Science’ is a regressive form of organisedinquiry. This is not to deny that science maysucceed as an economic productivity multiplier or,for that matter, a Keynesian job-creation scheme forthe surplus of over-educated people. Science mayserve several social functions at once, but rarely allequally well. Indeed, science’s success as a source ofsocietal governance and economic growth mayhave been at the cost of its progress as a form ofinquiry.If the history of politics has made any progress atall, it has been by the introduction of periodicelections for fixed terms of office. This institution,50