Solomon’s Concept of Vectors, Its Context and Meaning

In this paper, we introduce Miriam Solomon's theory of decision-making vectors, which provides a comprehensive framework for capturing various biases, stereotypes, effects, and heuristics that accompany the activities of scientists. In the introduction we will return to Francis Bacon's doctrine of idols, one of its precursors, although it is nearly four centuries that separate them. We will then describe in detail Solomon's conception, especially the typology of vectors and its applications and limitations, which will be illustrated with concrete examples from the history of science. We will also discuss its relevance to the philosophy and sociology of science, for example in relation to contingency theory, epistemic neutrality, and the concept of the "invisible hand", taking into account the contemporary context and parallel developments in other disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology. In the concluding section we will return to a comparison of Bacon's normative ideal and Solomon's descriptive theory, and to the question of whether, after centuries of development, any generalizing judgment can be made at all about the role of biases in science.