Respecifying the Natural Sciences as Discovering Sciences of Practical Action

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Abstract
What is the work of a discovering science? This question is thematic throughout the bibliographies of science Studies. It also shadows their number and obvious expertise with a curious absurdity. We can learn from them the relation between theory and practice in Hellenistic science, lists of Chinese medicines, the advent of experimental demonstrations in physics, the use of computable heuristics in scientific discovery, or the politics of Nobel prizes. But after these matters have been discussed an intractably questionable and material fact remains. Elusive and unexamined, it inhabits every page of this scholarly industry. Given that a physicist earns his living making discoveries in physics, and a mathematician must discover and prove mathematical structures, what does a physicists or mathematicians discovering work consist of in its discipline-specific work-site details as the most ordinary organizational achievements of practical reasoning and practical action in the world? That questionable matter reaches with irremediable relevance into every line, acknowledged but tacit and unexamined, an unstated musical theme heard and understood in the midst of endless variations.

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