The Progress of Science from the Viewpoint of Philosophy of Science: The Necessity of Changing Approach from Scientific Activity to Scientific Progress

The concept of scientific progress has different definition in the philosophy of science. The purpose of this paper is to understand scientific progress and evaluate and analyze the concept from different viewpoints.

This study in term of nature is theoretical-philosophical, and in term of method is deductive and analyzes various texts, theories and perspectives on the scientific progress.

There are three approaches to characterizing scientific progress: (i) the epistemic approach, (ii) the semantic approach, and (iii) the functional-internalist approach. Each of these approaches provides different narrations of the scientific progress. The epistemic or traditional approach is the cumulative knowledge account and takes knowledge to be the concept in order to understand the progress. The semantic approach considers science's success as the result of approximate truth, authentication, the reference of original notions or a combination of these, and emphasizes the idea of ​​convergence, accumulation and adaptation in science. The functional approach is problem-oriented, and considers progress in science as a result of scientific revolutions. The latest approach holds that progress is made when a scientific revolution or development succeeds in fulfilling a certain function. The proponents of this approach or the post-realists are relativists. These relativists are accused that their claims lead to relativism and weakening the credibility and power of the scientific method. Moreover, there is no scientific accumulation due to the overthrowing nature of the revolution, Conversely, realists who do not believe revolutionary changes in scientific theories have typically sought an account of progress in term of increasing verisimilitude rather than increasing knowledge.

Despite the difference in theories, all three approaches consider the scientific progress as a cognitive concept, not as textual or scientific information.