Part Three
MAKING KNOWLEDGE
No theory of knowledge should attempt to explain why we are successful in our attempts to explain things … there are many worlds, possible and actual worlds, in which a search for knowledge and for regularities would fail.
– Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge (1972)1
Part Three contains the central chapters of this book. All of them are concerned with the development of a new language for thinking about, talking about and writing about science. In each chapter questions of language are intertwined with direct engagements with nature on the one hand, and with broader conceptual and philosophical questions on the other. The argument is simple: the language we use when thinking about scientific questions is almost entirely a construction of the seventeenth century. This language reflected the revolution that science was undergoing, but it also made that revolution possible.