Uma filosofia da ciência "aplicada"

Reconstructing Prehistory, de James Bell (1994)

Abstract

This article aims at a criticai review of James Bell's Reconstructing Prehistory: Scientific Method in Archaeology ( 1994). Although particularly addressed to archeologists and philosophers of science, this book becomes an example of a philosophy of science that is usefully applied in a much broader sense. It provides a criticai reflection about the main contemporary views of science and scientific method: the inductive, the "paradigmatic", the "refutationist", and the "anarchist" views . ln a very clear way, this book raises and examines basic problems, concepts, methodological assumptions and suggestions embedded in those views or criticized by them. Its author also makes original contributions to the view he acknowledges as the most influential on his thought, the "refutationist" view. His approaches to the problems of "induction" and "testability" are some of those contributions. With his philosophical tools, the author analyzes two influential methodological tendencies in Archaeology: "holism" and "methodological individualism ", and provides a methodological checklit to be followed in generating and evaluating the explanations in this field. The present review emphasizes the close, although unintended by Bel/, connections between some of his ideas and some basic ideas of Paul Feyerabend's "epistemological anarchism ".