Selected Episodes from the History of Modern Natural Science as Illustrations of the Diversity of Argumentation in Scientific Discourse and Its Philosophical Significance for the Freedom of Science

Abstract

In Philosophy of Natural Science, Carl Gustav Hempel references the argumentation advanced by the seventeenth-century astronomer Francesco Sizi, who challenged the validity of Galileo’s observations of the moons of Jupiter. Hempel found Sizi’s reasoning unacceptable and deemed it “irrelevant”. In analysing Sizi’s argument, I wish to emphasize that the scholar formulated his conclusions operating within a different paradigm (epistemic frame of reference) that was incommensurable with that of Galileo. Any evaluation of his views must take this context into account. The clash of perspectives between these two scholars also raises the question concerning the freedom of science, of scientific discourse. Does this freedom entail a confrontation only between arguments grounded in different paradigms, or can it also exist within a shared paradigm? Given the paradigmatic uniformity of contemporary science (naturalism, materialism, mathematization) and its pervasive institutionalization, we may ask whether this homogeneity restricts the intellectual and conceptual freedom of scholars or if such paradigm adherence might instead safeguard it?