Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought: Memoirs, American Philosophical Society (vol. 75) (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society)

The Am. Philosophical Soc. (APS) Jayne Lectures for 1968. Sir Peter Medawar, eminent biologist of the British National Institute for Medical Research, states: ''These lectures began in my mind in the form of a question: why are most scientists completely indifferent to--even contemptuous of--scientific methodology?...the answer could only be 'because what passes for scientific methodology is a misrepresentation of what scientists do or ought to do.' I therefore thought it important to explain what is wrong with the traditional methodology of 'inductive' reasoning...& to show that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with the names of Whewell & Peirce & Popper can give the scientist a certain limited but useful insight into the way he thinks.'' In this alternative scheme, the energizing force of scientific enquiry comes from an imaginative preconception of what might be true--a preconception which is at once exposed to critical analysis, to find out whether or not the imagined world corresponds with the real one. Scientific enquiry is thus essentially a dialogue between imaginative insight & critical appraisal; between the possible & the actual; between what could be true & what is in fact the case.