Abstract

Rescher examines Peirce’s view of science in terms of four major topics, each of which forms one of the four chapters of the book: the self-correctiveness of science, scientific progress and completability, the efficiency of scientific inquiry, and the economy of research. In the first chapter, Rescher defends Peirce’s position against the attack that though Peirce considers self-correctiveness a crucial aspect of scientific methodology in general, and recognizes that the inductive methodology of science includes not only quantitative but also qualitative induction, yet he establishes the self-correctiveness of quantitative induction only. In his defense of Peirce, Rescher shows the way in which self-correctiveness in the sense of "performance-monitoring" proceeds by quantitative induction which, as a part of induction as a whole, functions as self-corrective for induction as a whole, while theory improvement, which, unlike quantitative induction, is neither mechanical nor automatic, is a function of scientific method in general. The chapter presents an illuminating discussion which clearly captures Peirce’s anti-reductivisitic understanding of scientific methodology as a dynamic, complex, and interlaced whole.