Laudan

Laudan, R. (1987) From Mineralogy to Geology The Foundations of a Science, 1650-1830 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London). 

This is actually the pessimistic meta-induction associated with Larry Laudan among other philosophers. L. Laudan, A Confutation of Convergent Realism, Philosophy of Science, 48 1-49, 1981. 

Laudan, Larry. Science and Values the Aims of Science and Their Role in Scientific Debate. Berkeley University of California Press, 1984. 

Laudan, L. (1996) The pseudo-science of science The demise of the demarcation problem. In Laudan, L. (ed.) Beyond Positivism and Relativism. Theory, Method and Evidence. Westview Press, Boulder, pp 166-192. 

Theodore Porter, The Promotion of Mining and the Advancement of Science The Chemical Revolution of Mineralogy, Annals of Science 38, 1981, 543-570 Rachel Laudan, From Mineralogy to Geology (University of Chicago Press, 1987) Evan M. Melhado, Mineralogy and the Autonomy of Chemistry around 1800, Lychnos, 1990, 229-261. 

Rejecting the orthodox view - shared by positivists and postpositivists alike - that only empirical considerations are relevant to the justification of scientific theories, Laudan, along with Toulmin and Gerd Buchdahl, recognized the... 

The transition from defensive empiricism to greater reflexive sophistication is considered in L. Laudan, Progress and Its Problems Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth (Berkeley, CA University ot California Press, 1977), pp. 164-7 S. Shapin, History of Science and Its Sociological Reconstructions , History of Science, 20 (1982), pp. 157-211, pp. 157-177. 

On the history and philosophy of positivism see Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, ch. 4-6. On the contrast between Comtean positivism and Logical Positivism see L. Laudan, Science and Hypothesis Historical Essays on Scientific Method (Dordrecht ... 

See Lakatos, History of Science , pp. 2-9 Laudan, Science and Hypothesis, pp. 91-3. 

See Laudan, Progress andTts Problems, pp. 196-222 for a critical discussion of the arationality assumption and the standoffbetween philosophers of science and sociologists of scientific knowledge. 

Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 8-9 Laudan, Progress and Its Problems, p. 156. 

See G. Doppelt, Review Discussion Laudan s Pragmatic Alternative to Relativist and Holist Theories of Science , Inquiry, 24 (1981), pp. 253-71, p. 269 H. LeGrand, Theory and Application The Early Chemical Works of J. A. C. Chap tai , British Journalfor the History of Science, 17 (1984), pp. 31-46, p. 39 Toulmin, Human Understanding, pp. 41-130 McEvoy, Continuity and Discontinuity in the Chemical Revolution . 

---