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Epistemic obstacles and the marriage of fantasy to rigor: A response to suchting

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Abstract

Reality is difficult to know because the projection of reality onto experience creates misleading similarities and differences. Also, the projection is one-to-many in the appearance-to-reality direction, a fact that prevents us from reasoning from appearance to reality. The mode of thought that is associated with the Galilean revolution in science is a response to these epistemic obstacles. Its main characteristic is a marriage between imagination and formalization. This mode of thinking is as universal within post-Galilean science as the epistemic obstacles it is designed to overcome, but it is not salient in either common sense or Aristotelian science.

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  1. Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, 15260, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Stellan Ohlsson

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  1. Stellan Ohlsson
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Ohlsson, S. Epistemic obstacles and the marriage of fantasy to rigor: A response to suchting. Sci Educ 4, 379–389 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00487759

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