The nature of scientific justification

Abstract

Mikkel Gerken’s book Scientific Testimony is a welcome step in reconnecting contemporary analytic epistemology with the philosophy of science. The central topic of the book—as it says in the title—is testimony, which has been a major area of research for epistemologists for the last couple of decades. Testimony refers to the process by which we can acquire knowledge or justified belief from what others have told us. Roughly speaking, epistemologists agree that testimony is an important source of knowledge but disagree over the exact conditions under which testimony can lead to knowledge. But for philosophers of science, learning from one another and pursuing inquiry collectively is so central to the scientific enterprise that testimony—as epistemologists understand it—was hardly recognized as a distinct phenomenon warranting its own systematic investigation. Rather, philosophers of science have turned their attention primarily to studying much more prosaic instances of knowledge transmission, like science communication or the interface between science and policy. In this commentary, I examine Gerken's characterization of scientific justification and argue for a social concept of scientific justification that arises out of philosophy of science.