Science’s Image: Bringing Douglas into Focus

In these set of comments, I first introduce a bit of special jargon—what I call “an image of science”—in order to discuss some core commitments that inform Douglas’ science communication proposal. Second, I highlight three big-picture commitments I discern in Heather Douglas’ project: (1) inductive risk, (2) epistemic (so-called “Knightian”) uncertainty, and (3) a Popperian (albeit not falsificationist!) sensibility. In recent times, interest in (1) has been revived by Douglas and so should not come as a surprise. Third, I call attention to these three commitments in order to argue that in Douglas’ science communication proposal—the topic of the third Descartes lecture—her image of science is a normative one, despite her tendency to present it as empirical. I argue that this entails that Douglas needs to develop her science communication proposal to cover situations that do not live up to her normative ideal and to make more explicit the significance of her normative commitments.