Embedding “Practicalism” as an Intrinsic Constituent of the Philosophy of Science: Positioning “Practicalism” as an Essential Pre-Requisite for Rapid Scientific Progress

Abstract

We begin this paper by reviewing various standard terminologies around the English word “practical”, and its derivatives such as practicalism, and practicality. We also define the English term pragmatism, and review the chief and core tenets of the pragmatic school of thought in philosophy, and the philosophy of science, as proposed by William James, John Dewey, Immanuel Kant and others. We also examine, and evaluate the principles, dynamics, and contours of the aforesaid pragmatic school of thought and lay bare its weaknesses, the chief one being that it is not entirely free from nerdism, and does not dedicate itself entirely to the cause of society, so that these can become the springboard for the creation of a new school of thought known as ‘practicalism’. Additionally, we also review the essence of various strands of the philosophy of science in general so that several components of various schools of philosophical thought can be imbued by this new school of thought. The doctrines of positivism, logical positivism, neopositivism, postpositivism, and antipositivism are also explored to the extent they have a bearing on our paper, besides the tenets of the proposed twenty-first century school of intellectualism. We do hope that this new approach and technique will catapult science to an altogether different league. We also then proceed to show why this approach is in keeping with our general philosophy of ‘the globalization of science’.