Scientific Progress, Astrobiology and the Pursuit of Knowledge

In this paper, I argue that the fact that a discipline is rarely able to secure knowledge is entirely compatible with the idea that acquiring knowledge is aim of that discipline. What’s more, I maintain that progress towards this aim can be made, and measured, even if a discipline has failed to produce any such knowledge. In motivating this controversial view, I appeal to a field which has been almost entirely ignored by the scientific progress literature: astrobiology.