1.前言科学方法论的理论似乎陷入了困境。过去方法论曾为自己在科学哲学中的地位感到骄傲,如今,很多人对它的前景满怀狐疑。费耶阿本德自称他已证明了所有的方法都同样好(因此同样不好);库恩主张方法论标准太含糊,从来不曾决定竞争的理论之间的选择。波普尔总地来说把方法论规则看做约定,其中没有合理的选择。拉卡托斯走得很远,断定方法论者不会提出有根据的建议,告诉当代科学家接受或放弃哪个理论,这样他就完全剥夺了方法论的规范能力。奎因、普特南、哈金、罗蒂等人根据各自的理由,主张我们能做的充其量不过是描述自然科学家使用的方法,因为规范的方法论并无存在的余地。在这个领域,大家都 1. Introduction Theory of scientific methodology seems to be in trouble. Past methodologies have prided themselves on their place in the philosophy of science, and today many are skeptical of its prospects. Feyerabend claims he has proved all methods to be equally good (and therefore equally bad); Kuhn argued that methodological standards are too vague to decide on the choice between competing theories. Popper, on the whole, regards the rules of the law as a convention, of which there is no reasonable alternative. Lakatos has gone so far as to conclude that methodologists will not make well-founded proposals and tell contemporary scientists which theories to accept or to forgo, so that he completely deprives the methodological norms of ability. Quinn, Putnam, Harkin, and Rorty, for their own reasons, advocate that we can at best do nothing more than describe the methods used by natural scientists because there is no room for a normative methodology. In this area, everyone