What is the difference between a prescriptive and a descriptive philosophy of science?
Simply put: descriptive philosophy of science attempts to describe what science actually does, and prescriptive philosophy of science describes what science should do. The problem with determining which is which, is that prescriptive philosophy of science often seems to mask itself in language that sounds an awful lot like descriptive philosophy of science. For instance, if you read Karl Popper, and had never heard of science before, you would think that he was describing science, not setting up some rules for it. I believe the latter is true, simply because there are obvious historical instances to counter falsificationism as an actual scientific process. But, leaving aside these marginal cases, it might be better to illustrate the prescriptive side of philosophy of science with a more definitive example. The chapter heading from Pearson’s The Grammar of Science, ‘Essentials of Good Science’ seems in itself to be quite prescriptive (this is what good science should be…) but, even mo
