Some Reflections on Fuzzy Set Theory as an Experimental Science

The development of fuzzy set theory has been always constellated by dichotomies and contrapositions; something, perhaps, which can be considered very natural in every young field which propounds new ideas. It seems, however, that the contrapositions in such field have been particularly frequent and violent in style. A measure—in our view—of the fact that the intrinsic innovativeness of the basic ideas was so strong that a normal assimilation was not possible is given by the emergence of a few epistemological problems, which should be carefully studied and understood. We should, perhaps, summarize in a simplified way the situation through the following remark: in the first years of the development of fuzzy set theory, it was not completely clear the range of the proposed innovation.