Scientific Realism And Social Constructivism Comparative Study - Discussion From The Appearance View Of Science To The Practice Of Scientific Outlook,

Ever since 1960's, the double effect of Science made itself get into a dilemma. With the influence of such discourses as uncertainty, finality and other post-modern theories and so on, modern scientific epistemology encountered an unprecedented crisis of rationality as well as representation. The foremost question was whether scientific epistemology held the epistemological privilege, ad hoc the traditional view of scientific knowledge was facing with great challenge. The related problems are something like these: What is the thing called Science? How to represent Science? Who has right to represent Science? Where will Science go? Facing with such problems, to echo what other says, or go our own way? All these problems need unremitting exploration and reasonable reconstruction.Grounding on the principle of the consistence of logic with history, following the developmental context of scientific view, I firstly analyzed two typical kinds of scientific explanation mode, namely scientific realism and social constructivism, which are both representative and competitive. I chiefly discussed their common meta-physical groundwork, that is, they all seek for the validity of knowledge, they all have the tendency of presumption and fundamentalism, and they all go along from representationalism to practice. And then, I compare the differences between them from aspects of objectivity, truth and methodology, which can be seen as the core of scientific view. From all above I try to draw the outline of a theoretical picture of scientific development and grasp the theoretical foundation of scientific view.Then I give a theoretical investigation and practical scan by putting scientific research into an open perspective. After the review and reflection of the history and theory of science, and tracing the current development of contemporary scientific study, I argued that the absolutely perfect and unsubstitutable scientific view NEVER exist, since the cognitive abilities of the subjects are limited while the objects are infinitely abundant and the reality has always been covered, and the logic is imperfect as well. Each scientific study has made individual contribution to the development of science, yet they inevitably held some limitation.I put forward in this article that all the past scientific view had been built on the representionalism, which held the subject/object dichotomy and regarded everything as object, so they can't interpret science well and therefore can't realize the emancipation of human being. According to the multiple analyses of the history of science and the developmental logic of the philosophy of science, a promising choicemaybe insist on "exoteric rationality" and "science as practice". The exoteric rationality appeal to the dialogue with irrationality and keep tensive critique and tolerance to science; it ask us to leave and reflect, to surpass the premise rather than conclusion, and ask us to realize the confluence of science and humanities. Besides the epistemological meaning of "science as practice", this attitude had been endowed with more ontological significance for its wide perspective, profound connotation and whole dimension of practice. The attitude of taking science as practice has such feature as contextuality, intersubjectivity, historicalness and reflectionality. In terms of the attitude of taking science as practice, science is self-modulated, self-consummated and self-developed in a dynamic network, which consists of cognitive factors and social factors, and then is an open system in forming and flowing process. The resultant force which come from all these factors make science get the power to consummate itself gradually in a kind of tensive freedom. Such scientific view also persists in a kind of reality, which is a certain inflexibility in the variety of everything, and then remains the relatively special character and has the possibility to make progress. So the study of science should go back to life world, and then can we realize the unity of free science and the emancipation o...