On Means and Metis: Frameworks for Rational Scientific Discovery in Contexts of Chance and Circumstance

Samantha M. Copeland

I have pointed in past work to the persistent gap in ways of formulating the so-called logic of discovery—rather than attending to the rationality of determining when something is a potential finding, the tendency is to push the gap further to one side or the other, leaving an empty space where that rationality would be. In this talk, I consider two alternative ways of understanding the logic of perceiving potential value. One, effectual reasoning, is drawn from entrepreneurial theory and offers an alternative to assessing the value of a finding as a means to a known end. The other, metis, offers an alternative to techne and episteme as a way to rationally assess the world as it is, complementing the role of the hunt in Bacon's philosophy of science. In sum, this exploratory talk posits that our understanding of the logic of discovery and thus finding is undercut only by the constraints philosophers have put on what counts as rationality, and that these constraints are not warranted.