F Coda
In this chapter, I've reviewed three alternative programs for conducting science that, for the most part, abandon the hypothesis and even the Scientific Method.
Both Curiosity-Driven and QMB programs do make key points that are independent of the hypothesis; however, I think their vigorous rejection of the hypothesis is uncalled for.
Their antagonism stems largely from obsolete notions of what a hypothesis is, and both programs reject the hypothesis in part for extraneous reasons that are based on highly dubious assumptions—that it causes bias, that their programs are immune from bias, and others. I believe that, in forswearing the hypothesis, they weaken their own positions, which in many respects are actually quite compatible with the hypothesis. Scientists are not really faced with the all-or-none choices that their arguments take for granted.In the third part of the chapter, I explored why science might be forced to leave the hypothesis behind as it ventures into territory beyond the boundaries of empiricism. Yet the relationship between Conjectures and Criticism and the hypothesis in most experimental science is not settled, and, at the moment, there seems to be no compelling reason for the average scientist to let go of the hypothesis. Even in the ethereal reaches of theoretical physics, the acceptability of the hard-to-vary criterion as a substitute for more traditional methods is uncertain. When all is said and done, the most enduring contribution of Conjectures and Criticism may be to show how to extend the practice of critical thinking to fields other than science.
As this chapter suggests, many of the objections to the hypothesis raised here—biases, the origin of hypotheses, induction, etc.—are related to matters better dealt with by cognitive science than by the philosophy of science. We turn to these topics in the next two chapters.