Representations

Abstract

The science is that human enterprise in which scientists cooperate in performing experiments and collecting observations, in reasoning and theorizing about the world, and in discussing and making public their results. This social phenomenon may be divided it into smaller cognitive units called scientific practices. These are defined by groups of agents within science who use and discuss similar representations of the world, experimental methods, mathematical canons and standard notation, standards for recognizing correct and incorrect problem solutions, standard idealizations, and heuristics of thought. Many of these are never explicitly stated but are present only as tacit understanding underwriting scientists’ concrete practices. As I use the term, “scientific practices,” roughly covers Kuhn’s “paradigms” and Laudan’s “research traditions,” but I include all the embedded understanding carried over from one practice to another.¹