 A final point to make about aims is that the constructive empiricist distinguishes between the aim of an individual scientist or group of scientists (which may be fame, glory, or what have you) and the aim of science itself. The aim of science determines what counts as success in the enterprise of science as such (van Fraassen 1980, 8). Because constructive empiricists do not identify the aim of science with whatever goals the majority of scientists may have, they deny that constructive empiricism is a thesis in sociology subject to the kind of empirical confirmation or disconfirmation any scientific thesis faces. Instead, constructive empiricism is to be understood as a philosophical description of science that seeks to explain how an empiricist can regard the activity of science as consistent with the empiricist’s own standards of rational activity. Like the interpretation of any human activity, constructive empiricism is constrained by the “text” of the scientific activity it interprets. Within those constraints, it succeeds or fails according to its ability to provide an interpretation of science that contributes to our understanding of science, making intelligible to us various elements of its practice. (van Fraassen 1994, 188–192)