Abstract

One of the central claims of Alexander Bird’s book Knowing Science is that the concept of knowledge is central to understanding science. In light of this, it is unsurprising that Bird construes scientific progress solely in terms of the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Although his account of scientific progress is itself promising, there is an underlying tension between Bird’s support for the knowledge-centric account of scientific progress and his case against rival accounts of scientific progress. Specifically, Bird criticizes semantic accounts of scientific progress on the grounds that they allow achievements that fall short of knowledge to count as genuinely progressive. However, he also acknowledges that there are historical examples where scientific progress was made even though knowledge was not accumulated. In this article, I explicate this tension underlying Bird’s arguments concerning scientific progress, suggest how it might be resolved, and explain the implications for Bird’s take on scientific progress.