The relation between rationality in science and rationality in moral discourse is of interest to philosophers and sociologists of science, to educators and moral philosophers. Apparently conflicting conceptions of rationality can be detected at the core of two current socio-educational controversies: the creationievolution controversy and that concerning “moral education.” This paper takes as its starting point the recorded views of participants in these controversies; exhibits the contradictions and their effect on the public; relates these contradictions to developments in the philosophy (...) and history of science; and suggests, in a preliminary way, one approach for dealing with the problem. (shrink)

The hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to the natural sciences has a special interest in the interpretive phases of these sciences and in the circumstances, cognitive and social, that lead to divergent as well as convergent interpretations. It tries to ascertain the role of the hermeneutic circle in research; and to this end it has developed, over the past three decades or so, a number of adaptations of hermeneutic and phenomenological concepts to processes of experimentation and theory-making. The purpose of the present essay (...) is to show how appropriate these concepts are to an important current research program (solar neutrinos) and thus to point out what difference they make to our understanding of science as a whole. This goal is pursued by means of comparison. The program of social constructivism in natural science has produced alternative but parallel concepts, embodied in an alternative and parallel vocabulary. The contrast between this vocabulary and that of hermeneutics and phenomenology reveals, so I argue, the advantages of the latter. But actually it does more: It reveals as well the pre-understanding or prejudgment of science embedded in each approach. (shrink)

Comments on my essay, “A Tale of Two Controversies,” were made by Daniel R. DeNicola, Thomas F. Green, Mary Hesse, Holmes Rolston 111, and Abner Shimony. This reply focuses first on three issues: that very recently moral philosophy has taken a turn toward a more traditional, particularistic approach, which could mitigate the problems I described; second, that because creationism is essentially antiscientific, my more philosophical concerns miss the mark; third, that the relativism of the “new philosophy of science” ought not (...) be uncritically accepted. Finally, I compare Hesse's position with that of Shimony, indicating how the former implies a narrowing of distance between scientific description and moral prescription. (shrink)