Theories of Evaluation

Abstract

Every field of inquiry deals with some subject matter: it studies something rather than nothing or everything. Thus it should be able to tell, at least roughly, what sort of objects it is concerned with and how its objects of study differ from those studied by other disciplines. If a discipline were unable to offer a characterization of its subject matter, we would be entitled to suspect that its representatives do not really know what they are talking about. Evidently, what holds for all fields of inquiry also holds for a particular discipline such as the philosophy of science. Therefore, it belongs to the job description, so to speak, of the philosopher of science to tell us what that thing called science is.