Clues to the Puzzle of Scientific Evidence

Abstract

The evidence with respect to scientific claims is like empirical eviderwe generally — only more so: more complex, more dependent on instruments, etc., and usually a shared resource. Warranted scientific claims are always warranted by somebody's, or somebodies', experience, and somebody's or, somebodies', reasoning; so a theory of warrant must begin with the personal and then move to the social before it can get to grips with the impersonal sense in which we speak of a well-warranted claim or ill-founded conjecture.