A useful document for sharpening one's understanding of Peirce's conception of a science by considering a conception opposed to his which, however, shares in common with his view the understanding of a science as primarily an association of persons. The conception of science implicit in this recent proposal is of people bound together by allegiance to what Peirce would call "the method of authority" inasmuch as it is essentially a proposal to establish discipline-based central committees, constituted initially by people selected by the proposers or those in agreement with them (who else?), whose task is to grade academic research papers, certifying them as recognized officially as being fit or unfit to print, providing thereby a basis for developing cumulative profiles of individual researchers as competent or incompetent, and to what extent, for purposes of controlling hiring, tenure, promotion, grant applications, and so forth. Let me underscore that this is not Peirce's view, but it is well worth reading closely to see what is at stake in how science is conceived.
or
Go back to LINKS page
