Introduction

Abstract

What is science? Today more substantiated, diverse answers to this question present themselves than ever before in the history of European culture and ideas. On the one hand, lingering, yet lively traditions in logical empiricism and critical rationalism still fundamentally and methodologically discern scientific knowledge from other, namely, aesthetic, kinds of knowledge. On the other hand we find equally convincing arguments, as propounded by Paul Feyerabend and Richard Rorty that no grounds can be found for distinguishing various kinds of knowledge from one another.1 While some would characterize modern empirical science as simply a technically organized, basically inhumane mastery of nature, others have equally strong reasons for thinking that scientific knowledge is precisely what we need for dealing with nature rationally.2 While some criteria for science are linked to universality, some notably sociological approaches reject all uniform concepts of science altogether and define science by a plurality of contingent, merely locally valid conditions.3 This confounding diversity of debatable definitions in the theory of science stands in notable contrast to the unanimity with which, in the theory of science, doubt about science's increasing cultural and social relevance is practically nonexistent. While science's growing significance remains uncontroversial, the sciences themselves, as a topic of reflection, continue to unravel into coexisting, partly diverging, partly converging concepts.