PHILOSOPHIA POLITICA

This study analysed the quest for discovery of a vaccine for Covid-19 using the units of appraisal of science advanced by Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, ImreLakatos and Paul Feyerabend. The study observed that scientific and clinical phases towards discovery of a Covid-19 vaccine and other vaccines involve the logic of scientific discovery and the trial and error method of Popper; the stages of science of Kuhn; the research programme of Lakatos, and that all these are tailored toward the growth of science or scientific progress. The successful vaccine makes the paradigm-shift, the Gestalt switch. Nevertheless, there are alternative ad hoc attempts towards treatment of Covid-19 which do not necessarily follow the scientific procedure, but are still aimed at the same goal of saving lives, for instance, attempts to treat Covid-19 through herbal medicine. This latest dimension is equally given a philosophically theoretical back-up in Feyerabend’s Against Method, where he declared that: “Anything Goes!”, thus suggesting methodological pluralism. This paper concluded that sustaining human life and health may sometime go beyond the corridors of the canonical scientific methodology, since life is larger than science.

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