In chapter 5 I discuss the two great utopianist social engineering movements of nationalism and totalitarianism. One problem they pose is that they were espoused by intellectuals, including scientists. To turn them aside Popper has to develop his view of social science and of the social organisation of science. From this effort we can extrapolate his view that science is a model for society: science is the knowledge-gaining institution par excellence. Because all institutional initiatives embody conjectures, the society of institutions embodies our aggregate conjectural attempts to realise our aims. Knowledge is a social institution, and social institutions are our attempts to apply our knowledge. [143]
Tag: society
Social engineering
According to Popper we cannot construct foolproof institutions … . The problems of quality of personnel and the need to cope with changing circumstances ensure that constant maintenance is required. It is for this reason that Popper allows himself the admittedly objectionable term “social engineering”. He emphasises that our fallibility imposes on us a responsibility to proceed with care and caution.
Critics concerned about the conservatism of his conclusion have also argued that it is hard to implement: how to differentiate where piecemeal tinkering ends and wholesale alteration begins? Popper admits this difficulty. One obvious difference between the piecemeal and the wholesale is that the piecemeal engineer considers possible unintended consequences of any change carefully and in advance of the change, trying to devise criteria whereby the success or failure of the change can be estimated. [109]
Russell’s attacks on religion
Russell’s attack on religious belief took a variety of forms and was expressed in a variety of ways, often in the form of ridiculing the contradictions, absurdities and anthropocentric parochialisms of religions and their sacred texts, practices and ethics, and sometimes in the form of direct argumentation against the claims either of natural theology or revelation. He also argued from more general historical and sociological considerations about the effects of religion – and more generally ’faith’ understood as including not just religion but Soviet Communism and the like – on society and human lives. He saw that religions and political tyrannies share in common a monolithic structure which demands subservience and loyalty on pain of punishment, proscribes independence of thought and action, hands down the dogma to be believed and lived by, and issues a one-size-fits-all morality or way of life to which conformity must be absolute. Russell objected both intellectually and morally, and both on principle and in defence of human nature and possibility, to the harm done by this. The tenor of his attacks on religion is explainable accordingly. [59]
What is an open society, Mr Soros?
The concept of open society is based on the recognition that our understanding of the world is inherently imperfect. Those who claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth are making a false claim, and they can enforce it only by imposing their views on those who differ. The result of such intimidation is a closed society, in which freedom of thought and expression is suppressed. By contrast, if we recognize our fallibility, we can gain a better understanding of reality without ever attaining perfect knowledge. Acting on that understanding, we can create a society that is open to never-ending improvement. Open society falls short of perfection, but it has the great merit of assuring freedom of thought and speech and giving ample scope to experimentation and creativity. [3]
An intellectual’s duty
Jeder Intellektuelle hat eine ganz spezielle Verantwortung. Er hat das Privileg und die Gelegenheit, zu studieren. Dafür schuldet er es seinen Mitmenschen (oder „der Gesellschaft“), die Ergebnisse seines Studiums in der einfachsten und klarsten und bescheidensten Form darzustellen. Das schlimmste – die Sünde gegen den heiligen Geist – ist, wenn die Intellektuellen es versuchen, sich ihren Mitmenschen gegenüber als große Propheten aufzuspielen und sie mit orakelnden Philosophien zu beeindrucken. Wer’s nicht einfach und klar sagen kann, der soll schweigen und weiterarbeiten, bis er’s klar sagen kann. [100]
The spirit of science
Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different; the need to explore remains the same. This is why, at bottom, the society of scientists is more important than their discoveries. What science has to teach us here is not its techniques but its spirit: the irresistible need to explore. Perhaps the techniques of science may be practised for a time without its spirit, in secret establishments, as the Egyptians practised their priestcraft. But the inspiration of science for four hundred years has been opposite to this. It has created the values of our intellectual life and, with the arts, has taught them to our civilization. Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human and imaginative values which science has evolved. The shame is ours if we do not make science part of our world, intellectually as much as physically, so that we may at last hold these halves of the world together by the same values. For it is the lesson of science that the concept is more profound than its laws, and the act of judging more critical than the judgment. [82-3]
The stable society of science
As a set of discoveries and devices, science has mastered nature; but it has been able to do so only because its values, which derive from its method, have formed those who practice it into a living, stable and incorruptible society. Here is a community where everyone has been free to enter, to speak his mind, to be heard and contradicted; and it has outlasted the empires of Louis XIV and the Kaiser. Napoleon was angry when the Institute he had founded awarded his first scientific prize to Humphry Davy, for this was in 1807, when France was at war with England. Science survived then and since because it is less brittle than the rage of tyrants.
This is a stability which no dogmatic society can have. There is today almost no scientific theory which was held when, say, the Industrial Revolution began about 1760. Most often today’s theories flatly contradict those of 1760; many contradict those of 1900. In cosmology, in quantum mechanics, in genetics, in the social sciences, who now holds the beliefs that seemed firm sixty years ago? Yet the society of scientists has survived these changes without a revolution, and honors the men whose beliefs it no longer shares. No one has recanted abjectly at a trial before his colleagues. The whole structure of science has been changed, and no one has been either disgraced or deposed. Through all the changes of science, the society of scientists is flexible and single-minded together, and evolves and rights itself. [77]
The scientist’s morality
Theory and experiment alike become meaningless unless the scientist brings to them, and his fellows can assume in him, the respect of a lucid honesty with himself. The mathematician and philosopher W. K. Clifford said this forcibly at the end of his short life, nearly a hundred years ago.
If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may even prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be a society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby.
This is the scientist’s moral: that there is no distinction between ends and means. Clifford goes on to put this in terms of the scientist’s practice:
In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous.
And the passion in Clifford’s tone shows that to him the word credulous had the same emotional force as ‘a den of thieves’.
The fulcrum of Clifford’s ethic here, and mine, is the phrase ‘it may be true after all’. Others may allow this to justify their conduct; the practice of science wholly rejects it. It does not admit the word “true” can have this meaning. The test of truth is the known factual evidence, and no glib expediency nor reason of state can justify the smallest self-deception in that. Our work is of a piece, in the large and in the detail; so that if we silence one scruple about our means, we infect ourselves and our ends together. [74-5]
The company of scholars
This is the light by which the working of society is to be examined. And in order to keep the study in a manageable field I will continue to choose a society in which the principle of truth rules. Therefore the society which I will examine is that formed by scientists themselves: it is the body of scientists.
It may seem strange to call this a society, and yet it is an obvious choice; for having said so much about the workings of science, I should be shirking all our unspoken questions if I did not ask how scientists work together. The dizzy progress of science, theoretical and practical, has depended on the existence of a fellowship of scientists which is free, uninhibited and communicative. It is not an upstart society; for it derives its traditions, both of scholarship and of service, from roots which reach through the Renaissance into the monastic communities and the first universities. The men and women who practice the sciences make a company of scholars which has been more lasting than any modern state, yet which has changed and evolved as no Church has. [67]
The social axiom at the heart of scientific societies
We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so. [66]
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