I certainly believe that it is the responsibility of the state to see that its citizens are given an education enabling them to participate in the life of the community, and to make use of any opportunity to develop their special interests and gifts; and the state should certainly also see (as Grossman rightly stresses) that the lack of ‘the individual’s capacity to pay’ should not debar him from higher studies. This, I believe, belongs to the state’s protective functions. To say, however, that ‘the future of the state depends on the younger generation, and that it is therefore madness to allow the minds of children to be moulded by individual taste’, appears to me to open wide the door to totalitarianism. State interest must not be lightly invoked to defend measures which may endanger the most precious of all forms of freedom, namely, intellectual freedom. And although I do not advocate ‘laissez faire with regard to teachers and schoolmasters’, I believe that this policy is infinitely superior to an authoritative policy that gives officers of the state full powers to mould minds, and to control the teaching of science, thereby backing the dubious authority of the expert by that of the state, ruining science by the customary practice of teaching it as an authoritative doctrine, and destroying the scientific spirit of inquiry—the spirit of the search for truth, as opposed to the belief in its possession. [ch. 7, 143]
Tag: science
The objectivity of a critical tradition
Elfte These: Es ist gänzlich verfehlt anzunehmen, daß die Objektivität der Wissenschaft von der Objektivität des Wissenschaftlers abhängt. Und es ist gänzlich verfehlt zu glauben, dass der Naturwissenschaftler objektiver ist als der Sozialwissenschaftler. Der Naturwissenschaftler ist ebenso parteiisch wie alle anderen Menschen, und er ist leider – wenn er nicht zu den wenigen gehört, die dauernd neue Ideen produzieren – gewöhnlich äußerst einseitig und parteiisch für seine eigenen Ideen eingenommen. Einige der hervorragendsten zeitgenössischen Physiker haben sogar Schulen gegründet, die neuen Ideen einen mächtigen Widerstand entgegensetzen.
Meine These hat aber auch eine positive Seite, und diese ist wichtiger. Sie ist der Inhalt meiner zwölften These.
Zwölfte These: Was man als wissenschaftliche Objektivität bezeichnen kann, liegt einzig und allein in der kritischen Tradition; in jener Tradition, die es trotz aller Widerstände so oft ermöglicht, ein herrschendes Dogma zu kritisieren. Anders ausgedrückt, die Objektivität der Wissenschaft ist nicht eine individuelle Angelegenheit der verschiedenen Wissenschaftler, sondern eine soziale Angelegenheit ihrer gegenseitigen Kritik, der freundlich-feindlichen Arbeitsteilung der Wissenschaftler, ihres Zusammenarbeitens und auch ihres Gegeneinanderarbeitens. Sie hängt daher zum Teil von einer ganzen Reihe von gesellschaftlichen und politischen Verhältnissen ab, die diese Kritik ermöglichen. [88]
The naive “anthropologist from Mars”
Zehnte These: Der Sieg der Anthropologie ist der Sieg einer angeblich beobachtenden, angeblich beschreibenden und angeblich induktiv-generalisierenden Methodologie, und vor allem anderen einer angeblich objektiveren und daher dem Anschein nach naturwissenschaftlichen Methode. Es ist ein Pyrrhussieg; noch ein solcher Sieg, und wir sind verloren – das heißt nämlich die Anthropologie und die Soziologie.
Meine zehnte These ist, wie ich gerne zugebe, ein wenig zu scharf gefasst. Vor allem muß ich zugeben, daß viel Interessantes und Wichtiges von der sozialen Anthropologie entdeckt wurde und daß sie eine der erfolgreichsten Sozialwissenschaften ist. Und ich will auch gerne zugeben, daß es für uns Europäer von großem Reiz und von großem Interesse sein kann, uns einmal selbst durch die Brille des sozialen Anthropologen zu betrachten. Aber obwohl diese Brille vielleicht farbiger ist als andere Brillen, so ist sie eben deshalb wohl kaum objektiver. Der Anthropologe ist nicht der Beobachter vom Mars, der er oft zu sein glaubt, und dessen soziale Rolle er nicht selten und nicht ungern zu spielen versucht; und es gibt auch keinen Grund, anzunehmen, daß ein Bewohner vom Mars uns „objektiver“ sehen würde, als wir uns zum Beispiel selbst sehen. [85]
No such thing as a scientific “discipline”
Neunte These: Ein sogenanntes wissenschaftliches Fach ist nur ein abgegrenztes und konstruiertes Konglomerat von Problemen und Lösungsversuchen. Was es aber wirklich gibt, das sind die Probleme und die wissenschaftlichen Traditionen. [84]
Induction, philosophy’s toughest zombie
Science is an exercise in inductive reasoning: we are making observations and trying to infer general rules from them. Induction can never be certain. In contrast, deductive reasoning is easier: you deduce what you would expect to observe if some general rule were true and then compare it with what you actually see. The problem is that, for a scientist, deductive arguments don’t directly answer the question that you want to ask.
Scientism: slavishly aping a myth
But I should go even further and accuse at least some professional historians of ‘scientism’: of trying to copy the method of natural science, not as it actually is, but as it is wrongly alleged to be. This alleged but non-existent method is that of collecting observations and then ‘drawing conclusions’ from them. It is slavishly aped by some historians who believe that they can collect documentary evidence which, corresponding to the observations of natural science, forms the ’empirical basis’ for their conclusions. …
Worse even than the attempt to apply an inapplicable method is the worship of the idol of certain or infallible or authoritative knowledge which these historians mistake for the ideal of science. Admittedly, we all try hard to avoid error; and we ought to be sad if we have made a mistake. Yet to avoid error is a poor ideal: if we do not dare to tackle problems which are so difficult that error is almost unavoidable, then there will be no growth of knowledge. In fact, it is from our boldest theories, including those which are erroneous, that we learn most. Nobody is exempt from making mistakes; the great thing is to learn from them. [186]
A travesty of the nature of scientific thought
The scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the nature of scientific thought. [42]
The scientific paper is a fraud in the sense that it does give a totally misleading narrative of the processes of thought that go into the making of scientific discoveries. The inductive format of the scientific paper should be discarded. The discussion which in the traditional scientific paper goes last should surely come at the beginning. The scientific facts and scientific acts should follow the discussion, and scientists should not be ashamed to admit, as many of them apparently are ashamed to admit, that hypotheses appear in their minds along uncharted by-ways of thought; that they are imaginative and inspirational in character; that they are indeed adventures of the mind. [43]
Scientism, backatcha!
Thus I oppose the attempt to proclaim the method of understanding as the characterisitic of the humanities, the mark by which we may distinguish them from the natural sciences. And when its supporters denounce a view like mine as ‘positivistic’ or ‘scientistic’,* then I may perhaps answer that they themselves seem to accept, implicitly and uncritically, that positivism or scientism is the only philosophy appropriate to the natural sciences. [185]
* The term ‘scientism’ meant originally ‘the slavish imitation of the method and language of [natural] science’, especially by social scientists; it was introduced in this sense by Hayek in his ‘Scientism in the Study of Society’, now in his The Counter-Revolution of Science, 1962. In The Poverty of Historicism, p. 105, I suggested its use as a name for the aping of what is widely mistaken for the method of science; and Hayek now agrees (in his Preface to his Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, which contains a very generous acknowledgement) that the methods actually practised by natural scientists are different from ‘what most of them told us … and urged the representatives of other disciplines to imitate’.
Explanatory reductionism
This reductionist idea is interesting and important; and whenever we can explain entities and events on a higher level by those of a lower level, we can speak of a great scientific success, and can say that we have added much to our understanding of the higher level. As a research programme, reductionism is not only important, but it is part of the programme of science whose aim is to explain and to understand.
However, do we really have good reasons to hope that a reduction the the lowest level will be achieved? [18]
“Data” aren’t simply “given”
There are no sensory “data”. Rather, there is an incoming challenge from the sensed world, which then puts the brain, or ourselves, to work on it, to try to interpret it. Thus, at first, there are no data: there is, rather, a challenge to do something; namely to interpret. Then we try to match the so-called sense data. I say “so-called” because I don’t think there are sense “data”. What most people hold to be simple sense “datum” is in fact the outcome of a most elaborate process. Nothing is directly “given“ to us: perception is arrived at only as a result of many steps involving interaction between the stimuli which reach the senses, the interpreting apparatus of the senses, and the structure of the brain. So, while the term “sense datum” suggests primacy in the first step, I would suggest that, before I can realize what is a sense datum for me (before it is ever “given” to me), there are a hundred steps of give and take which result from the challenge presented to our senses and our brain. [430]
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