Science, as distinguished from some other domains, has its progressive nature in contrary to art, morality, politics, philosophy and religion, since clear normative criteria exist for identifying advances and enhancements in science. As a multi-layered complex system to produce new knowledge, science and notion thereof refer to a social institution characterized with method of inquiry, research process and scientific knowledge. The aspects of scientific progress encompass different considerations, cognitive progress showing success in knowledge-seeking. On the other hand, philosophical discussions of scientific progress address the type of developments in science, as cognitively put, with one theory replacing the other one in a way providing an improvement. Truthlikeness, solving problems (functional account), accumulation of knowledge (epistemic account) as well as enhancing comprehension (noetic account) adjudicate one another. A feature built into all these accounts can make a scientific progress with agents having variable cognitive states making up scientific progress [Dellsén, F. (2023)].
Accumulation of scientific knowledge is an episode in science in a particular scientific field or theory, and it is deemed progressive when there is further knowledge at the end of the episode than at the beginning. The epistemic conception of scientific progress signifies its straight-forward and intuitive history with venerability. The close conceptualization and association between scientific realism and theoretical progress generates repercussions for the comprehension of progress in general, which is accepted to be result-oriented. The evaluative concept applying to positive achievements also manifests its open-ended nature, while the epistemic conception provides universal accounts of scientific progress [Saatsi, J. (2019)]. Besides being one significant pillar of scientific progress, accumulation of knowledge also points to the way which theories latch more optimally onto the unobservable and unpredictable reality, signaling the way for further dimensions.
A scientific explanation is known to employ measurements and observations for explaining an element existent in the natural world. Scientific explanations are supposed to correspond to the evidence and to be plausible, or they are expected to match as much of the evidence as possible. Several centuries ago, Galileo investigated the laws of material bodies with success. The laws were later stated by Newton in somehow the same form they are provided currently. The legitimate results of the doctrines governing the forces used to be assumptions that each particle in the universe was acted upon by numberless forces. The balancing of the forces showed the particle remaining at rest, and to overbalance the opponents the body had to move, showing that the related phenomena of physical nature result from the warfare of infinite number of forces. The discovery as well as adoption of the scientific method represents the greatest intellectual acquirement, and it is only in those compartments of human knowledge to which the scientific method can be entirely or partially applied that the intellectual achievements of the current era can surpass those pertaining to the former eras, which happen to constitute the indispensable element(s) of scientific progress.
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