The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Abstract

In Chapter 2 1 assumed the existence of a body of knowledge and asked how it could be applicable to the world. My particular concern was to establish its universality (transfactuality). I now want to turn to the question of how such knowledge, given that it is transfactually applicable to the world, comes to be produced; and in particular to the question of how law-like statements come to be established as necessary. My con­ cern shifts here then from the synchronic to the diachronic aspects of science, and in particular to the question of how, in the social activity of science, natural necessity comes to be ascribed. In the course of this chapter I will consider to what universality and necessity is properly ascribed, and what must be the case for these ascriptions to be possible.