Gellner has taken this critique one step futher, by pointing to the social disruption entailed by the concept of disinterested and supra-human truth. Since so many social bonds turn on loyalty to ideas, a general scepticism towards ideas is already highly disruptive. Refusing all loyalty except to truth, and placing truth beyond human control, is still more disruptive. Gone are all guarantees of loyalty to actual existing social bonds. Such bonds are themselves now hostage to the vagaries and vicissitudes of nature. This may be the most decisive objection to taking science as a model for social institutions in general. [187-8]
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
Recent Comments
- PeterM on Scientific methodology (German edition)
- PeterM on The logic of scientific methodology
- Fakten? Welche Fakten? – Wissenschaftskommunikation.de on The power of logic
- Fakten? Welche Fakten? – Wissenschaftskommunikation.de on The mental process of critical rationalism
- Fakten? Welche Fakten? – Wissenschaftskommunikation.de on The role of explanation in science
- PeterM on Die neue Freiheit
Tags
authority
critical rationalism
criticism
demarcation
democracy
discussion
education
enlightenment
experiment
explanation
fact
falsifiability
falsification
freedom
freedom of speech
hypothesis testing
induction
justification
knowledge
Kuhn
learning
liberty
logic
method
morality
objective knowledge
objectivity
open society
opinion
philosophy
politics
Popper
power
problems
progress
rational discussion
rationality
religion
science
scientism
society
statistics
theory
truth
World 3
Authors
- .Adams, John (1)
- Journal (1)
- .Adorno, Theodor W. et al. (1)
- .Agassi, Joseph (1)
- .Albert, Hans (28)
- .Albert/Popper (1)
- Briefwechsel (1)
- .Andersson, Gunnar (3)
- .Bacon, Francis (3)
- New Organon (3)
- .Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo (1)
- Poor Economics (1)
- .Benn, Tony (1)
- .Bergson, Henri (1)
- .Blackburn, Simon (1)
- Truth (1)
- .Boghossian, Peter (1)
- .Bronowski, Jacob (8)
- .BVerfG (1)
- “KPD-Verbot” (1)
- .Byrnes, Sholto (1)
- .Churchill, Winston (1)
- .Cockburn, Patrick (1)
- .Colquhoun, David (1)
- .Cox, Brian (4)
- .Dahrendorf, Ralf (5)
- .Darwin, Charles (4)
- .Dawkins, Richard (1)
- .Dawkins/Law (1)
- .Deutsch, David (45)
- .Dewey, John (2)
- .Dryzek, John S. (1)
- .Eidlin, Fred (1)
- .Einstein, Albert (1)
- .Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1)
- .Enserink, Martin (1)
- .Ferrone, Vincenzo (1)
- .Feyerabend, Paul (2)
- Against Method (2)
- .Feyerabend/Albert (2)
- Briefwechsel (2)
- .Feynman, Richard (5)
- .Fisher, R.A. (7)
- .Fuller, Steve (10)
- Kuhn vs. Popper (10)
- .Gadenne, Volker (1)
- .Gladwell, Malcolm (1)
- .Goldacre, Ben (2)
- Bad Science (2)
- .Goodin, Robert (4)
- .Gould, Stephen Jay (6)
- .Grayling, A.C. (6)
- .Harris, Sam (3)
- .Hitchens, Christopher (1)
- .Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno (4)
- .Hume, David (3)
- .Jarvie, Ian (17)
- .Jörke, Dirk (1)
- .Kant, Immanuel (1)
- .Kiesewetter, Hubert (2)
- .Kohl, Helmut (1)
- .Krugman, Paul (1)
- .Kuhn, Thomas (1)
- .Lakatos, Imre (1)
- .Laudan, Larry (1)
- .Lipton, Peter (1)
- .Livio, Mario (1)
- .Lockhart, Paul (2)
- .Magee, Bryan (5)
- .Medawar, Peter (4)
- .Meehl, Paul E. (5)
- .Mill, John Stuart (35)
- On Liberty and Utilitarianism (35)
- “On Liberty” (32)
- “Utilitarianism” (3)
- On Liberty and Utilitarianism (35)
- .Morgenstern/Zimmer (1)
- Karl Popper (1)
- .Mosley, Michael and John Lynch (2)
- .Nagel, Thomas (1)
- .Newton, Roger G. (3)
- .Notturno, Mark (20)
- .Paine, Thomas (1)
- .Papineau, David (1)
- .Pies, Ingo (1)
- .Pinker, Steven (1)
- .Popper, Karl (162)
- “Replies to my Critics” (2)
- After The Open Society (2)
- All Life is Problem Solving (3)
- Auf der Suche nach einer besseren Welt (8)
- Conjectures and Refutations (23)
- “Back to the Presocratics” (1)
- “Humanism and Reason” (1)
- “Public Opinion and Liberal Principles” (1)
- “Science: Conjectures and Refutations” (5)
- “Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance” (4)
- “The Nature of Philosophical Problems and Their Roots in Science” (1)
- “Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge” (4)
- “Utopia and Violence” (3)
- “What is Dialectic?” (1)
- Logik der Forschung (1)
- Objective Knowledge (19)
- Realism and the Aim of Science (4)
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery (36)
- The Myth of the Framework (19)
- The Open Society and Its Enemies (37)
- The Poverty of Historicism (2)
- Unended Quest (6)
- .Popper, Karl and John C. Eccles (11)
- .Porter, Roy (2)
- .Russell, Bertrand (2)
- .Sagan, Carl (11)
- .Schank, Roger (1)
- .Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.) (1)
- .Shearmur, Jeremy (2)
- .Shirky, Clay (1)
- .Singer, Peter (1)
- .Sloman/Fernbach (1)
- .Smolin, Lee (1)
- .Soros, George (1)
- Open Society (1)
- .Stelter, Brian (1)
- .The Julian Assange Show (1)
- .Trotsky, Leon (1)
- .Vollmer, Gerhard (1)
- .Waschkuhn, Arno (2)
- .Weil, Simone (3)
- .Wilson, Edward O. (1)
- Consilience (1)
- .Zimmer, Mirjam (1)
1 comment
Author
Disruptive to what? Certainly not society as a whole. Disruptive to misplaced, and possibly pernicious, loyalty to individuals, regardless of their goals etc.? Well, sign me up!