Appendix 2: How Aim-Oriented Empiricism Would Benefit Science

A major consideration in favour of aim-oriented empiricism is that it has fruitful implications for science. This chapter concentrates on fruitful implications for physics. As I have already indicated, aim-oriented empiricism facilitates the improvement of the metaphysical assumptions of physics. Specific metaphysical assumptions made by physics, whether explicitly acknowledged or not, influence the discovery, assessment, and interpretation of physical theories. In facilitating the improvement of the metaphysical assumptions of physics, aim-oriented empiricism is thus able to improve the discovery, assessment, and interpretation of physical theories, and thus improve physics itself, and contribute to its progress. It is argued that the historical failure to put aim-oriented empiricism into practice—the failure to hold metaphysical theses associated with physics conjecturally, so that they became open to improvement—substantially delayed acceptance of Newtonian theory, Maxwellian electrodynamics, and still delays discovery of an acceptable version of quantum theory, nearly 100 years after Heisenberg and Schrödinger created the unsatisfactory version of the theory we have today, orthodox quantum theory. Finally, it is argued that Einstein exploited the rational, if fallible, method of discovery of aim-oriented empiricism in discovering both special and general relativity. Subsequently, Einstein misapplied his method of discovery, and met with failure.