In this work, a philosophical account of two distinct, closely related dimensions of scientific knowledge is argued for. The first one is a view of knowledge that, starting from a principled criticism of the classical tripartite view of knowledge, incorporates a coherentist notion of epistemic justification as well as a role for values in an organic, constitutive manner, departing from an inferential-deductive, propositional, realist image of science. Second, an account of scientific rationality, called a "co-variant" one, is proposed, also incorporating coherentist justification (under the "macroscopic" guise of reflective equili brium), as well as giving values a major role, which, together with the notion of widening the axiological horizon, allows one to find a adequate balance between contingency and invariance, and proves to be appro priate for modelling a rationality in permament flux, with no fixed points. The structural and dynamic elements of both dimensions of the present account are compatible with the models proposed by Hugh Lacey, Larry Laudan and the structuralist metatheory, and the main links between epistemolo gy and rationality are seen to be coherence and values, against the background of a nondeductive picture of science.
Scientific rationality; Epistemic justification; Coherence; Inconsistency; Reflective equilibrium; Structuralist metatheory; Lacey; Laudan; Non-deductive image of science
