Late in his life, Thomas Jefferson summed up the basic political necessity of, and a practical method for achieving, democratic science.
I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
The current diary, the first in a series of four, lays the basis for any citizen to understand some of the background that underlies conversations about scientific purpose, scientific decision making, and science policy. Many such discussions become quite heated; in order to participate in those discourses and recognize what is at stake, as well as what the unstated assumptions and protocols are, requires that an onlooker and erstwhile participant be familiar with and capable of recognizing the intellectual underpinnings of scientific work.
INTRODUCTION
This essay, ranging back and forth from background to foreground, introduces the philosophical underpinnings of science. Insodoing, it essentially accomplishes five things, but prospective readers should beware: this complex and difficult topic-intro requires a lengthy narrative--one that despite its wordiness is nevertheless incredibly abbreviated and rudimentary. Therefore, only those both willing to countenance such heft and willing to accept such a broad brush need continue.
Essentially, we are here dealing with two interrelated questions. What are the conflicting perspectives that underlie our present attempts to acquire new knowledge? How can a common citizen, like this author or other regular blokes, come to grips with these ideas? The first section below considers such matters epistemological as a basic proposition. Then, readers may parse both a few sources for and some terminology of the study of this subject, both of which are useful touchstones whenever this topic or any of the many related to it should arise. Section three looks at an ancient transition, which somehow continues to be imminent, from mythological modes of understanding to the components of natural philosophy and pre-science, quite a few of which embody the meaning of prescience. The fourth portion of the current document fast forwards through the Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers' contributions to consider the mid-nineteenth-to-early-twentieth-century ferment that underlies our own brouhaha in relation to science-and-technology policy, process, and progress. Section five then recaps the main ideas of the previous pages so as to show how they lay the basis for upcoming presentations about the development and unfolding of science over the past several hundred years.
Of course, this is only Part 1-A, as it were. Part 1-B more materially develops concepts critical to understanding contemporary science conflicts, while today's prose just sets the stage for the more modern issues. The third diary in this "Call for a Democratic Science" series looks very briefly at a particular case of 'science-off-the-rails' and seeks sources, collaborators, critics, and supporters for a deeper understanding of that situation, what established authorities have called an unfortunate 'accident,' but which community investigators might suggest is more a product of design and lack of democracy than of the peccadilloes of fate. The last presentation in this introductory set deals more thoroughly with that 'accident' itself, at "Three Mile Island" nearly thirty years ago, about which some prognosticators have suggested, "we have no more that is useful to learn," a decidedly unscientific attitude indeed, as we shall see in time. Having laid out this ambitious agenda, with Banquo we might intone, "Lay on MacDuff, and damned be him who first cries, 'Hold! Enough.'"
MATTERS EPISTEMPOLOGICAL GENERALLY
"My name is Jim, the sky is blue, I can add numbers, and I like your shoe." All such common sense commonplaces, at least for most of us, exist prior to any 'epistemological moment,' when we ask ourselves, "How can we prove or accept the truth of something that we deem crucial?" or, "How can we best undertake to understand something thoroughly that seems important to investigate and comprehend?" Many assertions about such matters may seem factual and reasonable, but how can we ascertain the veracity of one, the plausibility of another, and the falsity of a third?
Clearly, for many people still, and for the vast majority of our ancestors about whom we know something, mythic and religious approaches have predominated in dealing with such issues. Teleological thinking of this sort resists elimination; otherwise astrologers' could never make a living, superstition would dry up, and the spiritual realm would appear less vibrant and essential than it arguably does for the vast majority of humankind, even in this age of relentless rationalism and calculation.
Just as obviously, however, different methodologies, more or less rigorously tested and criticized, have yielded explosive expansion of material well-being and have both lengthened life and given the opportunity more universally to examine its basic nature and meaning. While some would hold that science has replaced our mytho-religious consciousness, a more complex view likely contains greater value and accuracy about our present psycho-intellectual pass than does any perspective that dismisses religion altogether.
For our purposes at this juncture, the observer must admit that religious thinking provides at best a paltry basis for understanding science: dismissing 'materialism' is no more analytically acute than rejecting mythic canons as voodoo. On the other hand, science opens up a rich vein for a deeper comprehension of our spiritual geist, as many scholars of comparative and analytical religion attest. This fact suggests what observers have noted is an apparently universal applicability of scientific methods, which flows from the basic approaches of science toward knowledge: critical seeking, experimentation, organizational acuity, theoretical richness, all that we might associate generally with the scientific mind. These common sense aspects of a scientific attitude in turn emanate from, and arguably came into being at, humankind's epistemological turning point, into just a bit of the history of which we will soon be delving.
A FEW SOURCES AND SELECTIVE TERMINOLOGY
First, however, we can lay a bit more groundwork for basic familiarity and at least rough comprehension, which are, after all, primary purposes of this missive. Thus, the present section provides a combination of the terminology of analysis and proof, as well as some sources for readers who might want to pursue a deeper epistemological investigation. The mass of data that even a cursory glance reveals may seem overwhelming; since a key argument that citizen scientists advance, however, is that regular people need to participate in policy debate, some process of digestion must occur that makes this morass of material more than just an avalanche of gibberish--hence this interregnum into reference.
Jostein Gaarder, a professor of comparative religion at the University of Oslo, has demonstrated that substantial interest about such issues exists; his novel, Sophie's World, has sold over ten million copies and been translated into forty-odd languages. A mix of 'story-within-a-story' and exposition of the history of philosophy, the book has innumerable fans on the web, for examplehere The book offers an enjoyable and easily digestible, and yet skillful and intellectually rigorous, sojourn through the matters at hand here.
An accessible and expert tour through the thickets surrounding 'matters epistemological' also occurs in Bertrand Russel's A History of Western Philosophy, which is one of hundreds of available surveys. As well, on the web, readers might turn to such sites as the following: http://www.kli.ac.at/... is the most thorough and useful for science that I've found; http://www.plato.stanford.edu is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, both thorough enough for experts and plain-spoken enough for young learners, offering such an intro as the following--Epistemology
Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification;
http://www.epistemelinks.com/... is a multi-level and interactive site that not only allows queries but also guides folks on whatever quests currently embolden their searches. A google outreach for "philosophy + research + internet" garnered 15,000,000 hits, so these suggestions are the merest pittance, as the saying goes.
Here are a few more primary definitions for this background examination of how we can seek to certify our knowledge. Commentators may suggest and add other key terms, magnifying the available foundation that show up here. Though a capacity to use these words is empowering, readers need do no more than skim the terms and keep them generally in mind. From SEP we find,
Hermeneutics
First published Wed Nov 9, 2005
The term hermeneutics covers both the first order art and the second order theory of understanding and interpretation of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions. As a theory of interpretation, the hermeneutic tradition stretches all the way back to ancient Greek philosophy. In the course of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, hermeneutics emerges as a crucial branch of Biblical studies. Later on, it comes to include the study of ancient and classic cultures.
With the emergence of German romanticism and idealism the status of hermeneutics changes. Hermeneutics turns philosophical. It is no longer conceived as a methodological or didactic aid for other disciplines, but turns to the conditions of possibility for symbolic communication as such. The question "How to read?" is replaced by the question, "How do we communicate at all?" Without such a shift, initiated by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and others, it is impossible to envisage the ontological turn in hermeneutics that, in the mid-1920s, was triggered by Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and carried on by his student Hans-Georg Gadamer. Now hermeneutics is not only about symbolic communication. Its area is even more fundamental: that of human life and existence as such. It is in this form, as an interrogation into the deepest conditions for symbolic interaction and culture in general, that hermeneutics has provided the critical horizon for many of the most intriguing discussions of contemporary philosophy, both within an Anglo-American context (Rorty, McDowell, Davidson) and within a more Continental discourse (Habermas, Apel, Ricoeur, and Derrida).
Again from SEP, we encounter the following summary of an ever-present fight among philosophers of different stripes:
Rationalism vs. Empiricism
First published Thu Aug 19, 2004; substantive revision Wed Aug 6, 2008
The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.
Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they constuct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world. Empiricists present complementary lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the information that rationalists cite, insofar as we have it in the first place. (Empiricists will at times opt for skepticism as an alternative to rationalism: if experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite, then we don't have them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists' accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge.
From Wikipedia, we may ruminate about this, of fundamental import to all realists or other defenders of rationalism:
Ontology in philosophy (from the Greek--of being; to be--science, study, theory) is the study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.
From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosphy, we learn about modern conceptions of ontogeny, of particular weight in scientific searches;
Evolutionary Epistemology (EE) is a naturalistic approach to epistemology and so is part of philosophy of science. Other naturalistic approaches include sociological, historical and anthropological explanations of knowledge. What makes EE specific is that it subscribes to the idea that cognition is to be understood primarily as a product of biological evolution. What does this mean exactly? Biological evolution is regarded as the precondition of the variety of cognitive, cultural, and social behavior that an organism, group or species can portray. In other words, biological evolution precedes (socio-)cultural (co-)evolution. Conversely, (socio-)cultural (co-)evolution originates as a result of biological evolution. Therefore:
1. EE studies the origin, evolution and current mechanisms of all cognitive capacities of all biological organisms from within biological (evolutionary) theory. Here cognition is broadly conceived, ranging from the echolocation of bats, to human-specific symbolic thinking;
2. Besides studying the cognitive capacities themselves, EE investigates the ways in which biological evolutionary models can be used to study the products of these cognitive capacities. The cognitive products studied include, for example, the typical spatiotemporal perception of objects of all mammals, or more human-specific cognitive products such as science, culture and language. These evolutionary models are at minimum applied on a descriptive level, but can also be used as explanations for the behavior under study. In other words, the cognitive mechanisms and their products are understood to be either comparative with, or the result of, biological evolution.
3. Within EE it is sometimes assumed that biological evolution itself is a cognitive process.
From SEP, an aspect of much of the philosophy of science shows up that is the darling of empiricists everywhere, or other defenders of the primacy of the senses:
Phenomenology
First published Sun Nov 16, 2003; substantive revision Mon Jul 28, 2008
Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
Phenomenology as a discipline is distinct from but related to other key disciplines in philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, logic, and ethics. Phenomenology has been practiced in various guises for centuries, but it came into its own in the early 20th century in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and others. Phenomenological issues of intentionality, consciousness, qualia, and first-person perspective have been prominent in recent philosophy of mind.
Another Wiki entry examines a key component of some scientists' work, especially those of a theoretical or more radical bent:
Theoretical principles of Dialectics:
Dialectics is based around three (or four) basic metaphysical concepts:
1. Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time (this idea is not accepted by all dialecticians).
2. Everything is made out of opposing forces/opposing sides (contradictions).
3. Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one force overcomes the other (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).
4. Change moves in spirals not circles. (Sometimes referred to as "negation of the negation")
Within this broad qualification, dialectics have a rich and varied history. It has been stated that the history of dialectic is identical to the extensive history of philosophy.. The basic idea perhaps is already present in Heraclitus of Ephesus, who held that all is in constant change, as a result of inner strife and opposition. Only fragments of his works and commentary remain, however.
The aim of the dialectical method is to try to resolve the disagreement through rational discussion, and ultimately, the search for truth. One way to proceed — the Socratic method — is to show that a given hypothesis (with other admissions) leads to a contradiction; thus, forcing the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth (see also reductio ad absurdum). Another way of trying to resolve a disagreement is by denying some presupposition of both the contending thesis and antithesis; thereby moving to a third (syn)thesis or "sublation". However, the rejection of the participant's presuppositions can be resisted, which might generate a second order controversy.
The following take on polarity, another tool for radicals and theorists, emanates from wiki;
Dialectical monism is an ontological position which holds that reality is ultimately a unified whole, distinguishing itself from monism by asserting that this whole necessarily expresses itself in dualistic terms. For the dialectical monist, the essential unity is that of complementary polarities which, while opposed in the realm of experience and perception, are co-substantial in a transcendent sense.
Finally, also from Wiki, what many would call the essence of life:
A paradox is a true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition; or, inversely, it can be an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth (cf. Koan). Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. The word paradox is often used interchangeably with contradiction. Often, mistakenly, it is used to describe situations that are ironic.
The recognition of ambiguities, equivocations, and unstated assumptions underlying known paradoxes has led to significant advances in science, philosophy and mathematics. But many paradoxes, such as Curry's paradox, do not yet have universally accepted resolutions.
Sometimes the term paradox is used for situations that are merely surprising. The birthday paradox, for instance, is unexpected but perfectly logical. The logician Willard V. O. Quine distinguishes falsidical paradoxes, which are seemingly valid, logical demonstrations of absurdities, from veridical paradoxes, such as the birthday paradox, which are seeming absurdities that are nevertheless true. Paradoxes in economics tend to be the veridical type, typically counterintuitive outcomes of economic theory. In literature a paradox can be any contradictory or obviously untrue statement, which resolves itself upon later inspection.
For many readers, perhaps the overwhelming majority, we will have already descended too deeply into semantical aspects of thinking that have little interest, and too many would say relevance, to ongoing daily communications issues. However, others might feel that this listing slights terms as important as, or even more critical than, the items here. For the former critics, skipping and skimming are always options, and for the latter, the comments welcome additions, modifications, etc.
CLASSICAL GREECE AND THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION
Perhaps readers noted that each of the underlying conceptual ideas above involved or even revolved around significant conflict. Although I have yet to encounter an authority who focuses on this in just the way that I am about to, the notion seems nevertheless persuasive that the very act--whether mythic and 'spiritual' or epistemological and material--of seeking an increased awareness or higher consciousness in and of itself necessitates contrariness and battles of varying intensity, from mild annoyance to mutually suicidal death matches. In any event, this section presents a partial and inherently sketchy presentation of some of the highlights of the millennia or so during which thinkers initiated humankind's adaptive adoption of epistemological ideas.
Gaarder, supportive of the combative estimate of all outbursts of 'theory-of-knowledge ideation, notes that some of the first uses of texts to record myth, by Homer and Hesiod, elicited sharp critiques because "the gods resembled mortals too much and were just as egoistic and treacherous." This led Xenophanes to be the first in a long line of commentators who insisted, according to Gaarder, that "Men have created the gods in their own image." Whether one utilizes a literary and lyrical tutor such as Gaarder, or one turns to Russel's work or a more modern text, such as Samuel E. Stumpf's Socrates to Sartre, what emerges is a constant battling. Heraclitus insisted on the primacy of fire and a dialectical process of transmogrification worthy of Uroburos, the snake consuming itself. Parmenides, enthralled with the realm of speech, concluded that nothing ever changes, or our words about anything from the past would be meaningless unless languages reinvented themselves daily.
Both at a higher level of abstraction, and with a greater emphasis on human interaction and morals, Socrates and Plato stood for immutability of essences and the fallibility of our senses, while Aristotle lobbied for a hierarchical empiricism in which our observations formed the basis of all that is, grounded truths that flowed from Olympus to the State to men, at least when we were clever, and finally and grudgingly, to other creatures such as women and children and animals. Anaxagoras argued for the ever divisible; Democritus--genius with no giant's shoulders on which to perch--foresaw the future, with an early atomic theory of the universe, in which certain fungible units are immutable. From these often now ignored or dismissed beginnings of "the Western mind," we cannot avoid one more important conclusion: that an inherent aspect of the inevitable conflict of any process of seeking to know better is pointed conflicts with others trying to accomplish the same thing in a different conceptual or practical manner.
Moreover, these debates echo, down through the ages, into our contemporary intellectual arena, especially in the sciences and social sciences, but also in the humanities and religion. Whether things 'flow' or remain 'eternal,' in Gaarder's phrasing, whether truth is relative or immutable, these and other dualities continue to manifest themselves in our present epistemological parry-and-thrust. Bertrand Russell reasons persuasively that studying these ancients remains useful, perhaps truly essential.
(A)lmost all the hypotheses that have dominated modern philosophy were first thought of by the Greeks; their imaginative inventiveness in abstract matters can hardly be too highly praised.
Another attribute of any truth theory also seems almost universally irrefutable. In such a view, a paradigm pertains to a particular social setting, a specific material relationship inherently underlying a philosopher's particular take on things. This may be easiest to see, in relation to the Greeks, in regard to how geometry supported architectural and other domestic arts, although early astronomy also markedly supported agricultural advances theretofore unimaginable.
Gaarder, Stumpf, and Russell all note both this powerful tendency toward polarity of personalities, along with this correlation of thought and matter, in relation to politics. Both the opposition and the utility appear with special force in relation to the Sophists, whose promise to take any thesis and force every audience to conclude the antithesis, and vice versa, reminds many of present-day legal training.
H.G. Wells, whose Outline of History remains one of the masterworks of literature, takes this point further, anticipating much contemporary anthropoligical scholarship, especially that developed by feminists such as Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas. Wells, along with growing numbers of those who now echo his insights, insists that the very act of arguing about advancing, or perfecting, truth stemmed from technical and economic conditions that are among the most revolutionary in human experience, the unraveling of stone age technologies and agriculture as metal and slavery became the norm.
While no simple mechanistic development will ever satisfactorily interconnect these material and intellectual elements, this indelible tying of thought and contention and the development of physical culture must appear to the careful observer to be a powerful, if not an unavoidable, aspect of epistemological growth, inviting onlookers to hypothesize and argue about exactly how to characterize and comprehend those connections. In any case, as the Greeks' imperial and theoretical imprimatur receded, Romans and others continued to mirror the cycles and tensions of truth-seeking methods. Similar themes, and variations on their muse, came from every place where 'civilization' reared itself from the stone age. And they keep showing up today, as the subsequent essay will document.
Gems of early natural philosophy flowered in the course of this ongoing dialectic. Lucretius, from 2,100 years ago, in Book V of On the Nature of Things, calls us to witness a mirror of modern science, albeit still arbitrary and only partially formed. He perfected Epicurus' earlier school of thought, when he vowed,
I...teach by my verses, by what law all things are made, what necessity...for them to continue in that law, and how impotent they are to annul the statutes of time:...the nature of the mind has been proved to have been formed by a body that had birth and to be unable to endure unscathed through great time... .I must proceed to show that the world is formed of a mortal body(too)and at the same time had birth, to show too in what way the union of matter founded earth, heaven, sea, stars, sun, and the ball of the moon. ...I shall make clear by what force piloting nature guides the course of the sun and the wanderings of the moon; lest hap(pi)ly...we think they roll on by any forethought of the gods.
Fifteen hundred years ahead of Galileo and Copernicus, nearly two thousand years in advance of Darwin, this poet formulated ways of knowing and theories about life that had neither math nor instrumentation to support them, though, in a positive sense, the imperial upthrust of Rome's dominance and riches combined with the brutal sociopolitical conditions for elite sojourners who sought power, in a negative sense, to liberate this epistemological miracle.
FROM RENAISSANCE TO HISTORY'S 'DEATH,' BATTLES AT EVERY STEP
Perhaps only a few readers will have continued this journey. Inasmuch as such a falling away reflects the weaknesses of this text, that is understandable. However, if such chariness stems from the complaint that such matters as these are boring, unnecessary, or otherwise trivial to our present pass, I would rekindle Jefferson's thinking, which began this process. These intellectual skirmishes predict our current contentiousness, and in ways that are practically demonstrable as well as analogous, they mirror what we need to know now if we are to be citizen participants in the science policy melee.
To begin anew, skipping a millennium and a half in which we would see the patterns continue to play out as they keep doing up to the present day, the genius of Francis Bacon, from the Preface of Novum Organum might serve to launch a four hundred year precis of the harried hacking away at each other of natural philosophers and mathematicians and metaphysicians, all of whom meanwhile are seeking to add to or otherwise enrich the world materially, intellectually, or both.
Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have been effective in quenching and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling and putting an end to other men's efforts than good by their own. Those on the other hand who have taken a contrary course, and asserted that absolutely nothing can be known — whether it were from hatred of the ancient sophists, or from uncertainty and fluctuation of mind, or even from a kind of fullness of learning, that they fell upon this opinion — have certainly advanced reasons for it that are not to be despised; but yet they have neither started from true principles nor rested in the just conclusion, zeal and affectation having carried them much too far. The more ancient of the Greeks (whose writings are lost) took up with better judgment a position between these two extremes — between the presumption of pronouncing on everything, and the despair of comprehending anything; and though frequently and bitterly complaining of the difficulty of inquiry and the obscurity of things, and like impatient horses champing at the bit, they did not the less follow up their object and engage with nature, thinking (it seems) that this very question — viz., whether or not anything can be known — was to be settled not by arguing, but by trying. And yet they too, trusting entirely to the force of their understanding, applied no rule, but made everything turn upon hard thinking and perpetual working and exercise of the mind.
Now my method, though hard to practice, is easy to explain; and it is this. I propose to establish progressive stages of certainty. The evidence of the sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of correction, I retain. But the mental operation which follows the act of sense I for the most part reject; and instead of it I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from the simple sensuous perception. The necessity of this was felt, no doubt, by those who attributed so much importance to logic, showing thereby that they were in search of helps for the understanding, and had no confidence in the native and spontaneous process of the mind. But this remedy comes too late to do any good, when the mind is already, through the daily intercourse and conversation of life, occupied with unsound doctrines and beset on all sides by vain imaginations. And therefore that art of logic, coming (as I said) too late to the rescue, and no way able to set matters right again, has had the effect of fixing errors rather than disclosing truth.
Were we to add more snap to Bacon's idiom, he might be describing the most recent dog fight about 'truth' on DailyKos or elsewhere that humans contend over interpreting reality.
Throughout the period of the Renaissance and during the Baroque decades that followed, various interpretations challenged and then acceded to the still ruling views of the Catholic Church. Galileo's own discoveries and his advancemnt of Copernicus' earlier calculations about the cosmos led to a risk of execution, from which his recantations saved him.
I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church.
His experience might stand in for the intellectual efforts and struggles of many others prior to the huge upsurge of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a launching of what we now know, in reverential but only vaguely understood terminology, as the Enlightenment.
Time and repeated telling have rendered this two hundred years of revolutionary upheaval as an almost automatic trope: reason, liberty, markets, and human rights all advanced apace, and we are the fortunate recipients of this miracle in human affairs. The complicated and messy actuality--Hobbes at odds with Rousseau; Bishop Berkeley simultaneously unable to resist, and psychologically compelled to dispute, much of the work of John Locke; Newton almost psychotically paranoid about Leibniz's stealing his thunder; Voltaire sickened by the pretensions of Leibniz's righteous views about the necessary idyll of actual existence, which the textual-verite of Candide showed to be utter butchery; continental rationalists vs. English empiricists; Diderot's fierce atheism at odds with Kant's critical attitude toward such 'pure' reason; Jeremy Bentham at once eviscerating the brutality of Lord Blackstone and unable to distance himself from Edmund Burke's attack on the oh-so-anti-utilitarian 'natural rights' of the French Revolution; August Comte's discernment of the possibility of studying society 'positively' at odds with Hegels idealism, while they both ended up proponents of mysticism and irrationality; and, amidst all of this wild tumult of certain opinion, uncertain socio-political discovery, and dispute, the ever-growing advance of physical and material understanding, in which an odd tinkerer from Pennsylvania could anticipate some of the ideas of Einstein, and a dour Surrey minister's maudlin views on the paradox of natural increase could elicit Darwin's eureka moment in evolutionary theory--even if, as now, a hodgepodge pastiche of barest bones data, illustrates something more interesting and more difficult to express than in simple terms of miraculous beatitude.
Among the intellectual giants overlooked in the preceding 'greased-lightning' tour of Enlightenment complexity, one might insist that Spinoza, Hume, Montesquieu, Diderot, and Mill deserve mention. And many more Americans merit a glance in addition to the elliptically noted Benjamin Franklin, whose affinity to kites was so far-sighted. Moreover, the Muslim and Hindu contributions to math and science and ethics are not even above our horizon here. The absence of women is also a glaring omission. And one might go on.
To an extent, this is unavoidable, as we have 'many miles to go yet, before we sleep.' To punctuate this hyperdrive intro, however, an observer might state an important corollary to earlier observations about the conflict inherent in epistemological work. The constant dueling, generally over simple duality though occasionally driven by true polar opposition, may on occasion manifest something akin to a necessity to annihilate opponents, since political life and death often seemed to be at stake, and material rewards of one sort or another would accrue to the principles, and their favorites, who could both claim credit for important advances and defend the methodological turf from which those advances had sprung.
And so saying, this note has arrived at the erstwhile modernist moment that immediately precedes our own, often seemingly bizarre and difficult to articulate, age of post-modernism. While Pasteur inaugurated post-voodoo medicine, and Edison may have liberated Tesla's theories to 'liberate' humanity with electrical invention, and the Curies discerned the chemical nature of what Maxwell had predicted lay at the heart of physical laws, and, at every turn, scientific conjecture began to multiply the store of human knowledge as rapidly as we have come to take for granted, four thinkers, from diverse backgrounds and intellectual traditions, laid the basis for our own contemporary theorists of knowledge and philosophers of science, whose ideas and viewpoints we will weave into the more focused examination of science that takes place in the next installment in this series.
Charles Darwin can stand as the first of those four intellectual giants. Most high school graduates and any college graduate should be able to recall the punctilious factual detail that Darwin collected over the course of four decades to support his theory of variation through natural selection. However, very few outside the cognescenti would be aware of what Sir Charles himself viewed as the signature moment in the process.
He writes in his autobiography,
In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work.
Thus, Darwin makes completely clear that inductive reasoning was critical to his ability to put his meticulous research into the multitude of facts about biological existence to use. Theory was at least as important, and in some ways precedent, to evidence.
Karl Marx documented the economic and social results of nineteenth century capitalism as voluminously as Darwin gathered data about the forms of life. For Marx too, a theoretical approach was critical: and "dialectical historical materialism" was the storied progeny of his search for method. One widely read reference source labeled this mental technology
"Social Epistemology," which it called "the study of the social dimensions of knowledge or information. There is little consensus, however, on what the term "knowledge" comprehends, what is the scope of the "social", or what the style or purpose of the study should be. According to some writers, social epistemology should retain the same general mission as classical epistemology, revamped in the recognition that classical epistemology was too individualistic. According to other writers, social epistemology should be a more radical departure from classical epistemology, a successor discipline that would replace epistemology as traditionally conceived.
These 'radicals', of course, were wont to espouse socialism. Such
proponents... .in addressing the social dimensions of knowledge... understand "knowledge" as simply what is believed, or what beliefs are "institutionalized" in this or that community, culture, or context. They seek to identify the social forces and influences responsible for knowledge production so conceived. Social epistemology is theoretically significant because of the central role of society in the knowledge-forming process. It also has practical importance because of its possible role in the redesign of information-related social institutions.
These radical developments, calling for a close explication of socio-economic contradiction, an insistent grounding in everyday interest, and a thorough working-backward through history to discern the sources of present ideas, continues to resonate throughout the social and biological sciences and humanities.
Sigmund Freud, rather than gathering copious data of general application, focused deeply on the facts of the cases that he encountered as a young clinician. While his theoretical approach was more classically deductive, when his decision to extend his hypotheses completely upended accepted views of human psycho-social development, he encountered a shit-storm of criticism in some ways even more furious than that which Marx and Darwin faced. After all, both of them had plenty of allies. Freud's letters--to his future wife, to Jung and other collaborators, in which he wryly acknowledged the general disbelief of what he was certain would be the vindicated position about the workings of the human mind, show an embattled fighter who never wavered about the veracity of his views.
That Freud's work remains epistemologically apt is the point of a recent crop of monographs and journal articles, such as Zvi Lothane's "The Perennial Freud: Method versus Myth and the Mischief of Freud Bashers." He offers us, therein, an object lesson in how to conduct science and policy disputes generally.
Nowadays Freud bashing is not only à la mode, in certain circles it has become de rigueur. Once a name of respect, Freud has become a name of ridicule. ... (L)ike any scientific method, body of knowledge, and therapeutic procedure, psychoanalysis should be subjected to critical scrutiny. The recent crop of hostile Freud critics may have filled a vacuum left for decades by a psychoanalytic establishment which, like the Church of yesteryear, shunned all forms of criticism intramural and extramural. A central guiding idea of this essay is the distinction between the psychoanalytic method and psychoanalytic doctrines, hypotheses, and theories. This distinction has been invariably confused by both Freud's adherents and Freud's attackers. Moreover, arguments ad rem have been conflated with arguments ad hominem. A socially responsible criticism must seek to be constructive and not merely destructive. It is the latter course that was taken by the various hostile critics that came to be labeled as Freud bashers. The time has come to take a stand against the more egregious attacks on Freud and the psychoanalytic method.
Progressive thinkers can offer the same line of reasoning about 'bashers' of all types.
Charles Peirce, the final member of the quartet, necessarily involves William James and John Dewey as well. Paul S. Boyer's essay in the Oxford Companion to United States History, while a bit vague on the philosophical components, clearly shows the continued importance of this approach.
The most important and controversial philosophical tradition to originate in the United States since transcendentalism, pragmatism remained central to American intellectual life at the twentieth century's end. A cluster of ideas first articulated by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., pragmatism generates debate in fields as diverse as philosophy, feminism, and legal theory.
Outside of the scholarly sphere, he might have added various science policy situations in which 'pragmatism' represents one pole of a conflict about methods and goals.
To apprehend at least generally what pragmatism is, readers may turn to a clear and relatively brief dissection available in an essay by Nicola Abbagnano. He writes that Peirce and James are the prime originators, with Peirce's signature strongest in the epistemological development of the idea.
Methodological pragmatism does not undertake to define truth or reality(but)determin(es) the meaning of terms, or better, of propositions. 'It is impossible to have in mind an idea which refers to anything other than the effects of things... .To consider which are the effects, that might conceivably have practical consequences(as a result of what we are studying)is our entire conception of that object.'
Peirce's later work made the point that those effects which were the most positive should guide our choices of investigative subjects, and that our work achieved fruition upon obtaining the maximum benefit from our studies, in the process of which we will ever have need "of finding a scientific or experimental procedure for fixing beliefs (and) understanding by scientific or experimental procedures."
Abagnano identifies a second strain of "metaphysical pragmatism,
(from)William James and F.C. Schiller, and its fundamental theses consist in reducing truth to utility and reality to spirit or mind. The second of these theses is shared by pragmatism with a great part of contemporary philosophy, ...Bergson in particular. The first thesis is characteristic of this form of pragmatism. Its presupposition is the principle that it has in common with methodological pragmatism: the instrumentality of knowledge.
This 'instrumental' approach of course inherently leads to tension with methods that countenance the usefulness of induction, theorizing first or in the process of dealing with facts and objectives. And this tension is ubiquitous in attempts to add to our knowledge and capacity today.
Is the selection of these particular thinkers inherently arbitrary or otherwise limited? To argue otherwise would likely be impossible to defend. At the same time, every development of professional, scientific, or technological method since the unfolding of evolutionary, psychoanalytic, dialectical-historical-materialist, and 'pragmatic' epistemologies has arguably either incorporated or reacted to these seminal approaches.
Moreover, with the exception of the American triumvirate led by Peirce, each of these thinkers met--indeed continues to meet--with massive resistance, despite their universal appeal to scientists and scholars(Even the much-villified and ever-slandered Marx has a gigantic following in the world's universities). Our present cosmological fracases all flow, in one way and another, from this foursome of relatively recent intellectual forefathers. Since more of the current crop of disputants will have an opportunity to make themselves known in the next installment of this series, we might close this section by excerpting a recent speech of Pierre Bourdieu, a giant of French anthropology, who shared conclusions in 2000 that echoed the insights of Francis Bacon over 400 years before. Bacon warned against certitude that blocked knowledge, against fruitless dualities that lead scholars to attack each other uselessly. The reader can see and hear the same themes in the conclusion to Bourdieu's talk, accepting the Huxley prize, one of biology's most prestigious awards.
I know that I run the risk, once again, of appearing both arrogant and abstract, whereas I have in mind a very simple experiment which any researcher can, I think, perform for himself with very great scientific and also personal profits. ...(following mylead when I was able)to look with an anthropological eye that is to say with all the inseparably scientific and ethical respect due to an object of study at my own milieu of origin, peasant and provincial, backward, some would say archaic, and which I had been led (or pushed) to despise, renounce, or, worse, repress, in the phase of anxious (even avid and over-eager) integration into the centre, and the central values(of the present academic pass). It was probably because I was thus led to cast a professional eye, both understanding and objectifying, on the world of my origin that I was able to break away from the violence of an ambivalent relationship, in which there were mingled familiarity and distance, sympathy and horror, even disgust, without falling into the populist indulgence for a kind of imaginary "people" which intellectuals often entertain. And this conversion of the whole person, which goes far beyond all the demands of the most demanding treatises on methodology, was no doubt what lay behind a theoretical conversion, the one which enabled me to re-appropriate the practical relation to the world more completely than through the still too distant analyses of phenomenology.
SYNOPSIS AND ANTICIPATION
Several plausibly important ideas emerged in the course of the unfolding of this essay, scattered throughout the ongoing explication. A brief recap of them will serve as a touchstone for any readers who stay the course through this series and beyond.
#1--Citizen empowerment necessitates addressing these sorts of matters;
#2--Such investigation or discussion is inherently conflictual;
#3--The conflicts will naturally be sharpest with those who pursue a different tack in the same social, political, or economic context;
#4--Both the investigator's adopted course and the level and direction of opposition will have demonstable connections with political-economic background and with the material results of new knowledge and control of nature resulting from our efforts;
#5--As overall political and social tension rise, the tendency will increase for such seemingly routine debates about methodological, or epistemological, choices to become as fierce as the most savage combat, "like a knife fight in the dark," as the Brazilian saying puts it.
#6--The patterns of the conflicts--sensation and empirical reality versus a search for the unchanging basis of the real, combined with attempts at synthesis of both such paradigms--have remained remarkably constant, from the classical Greeks to Post-Modern diatribes against structuralism, scientific realism, and more that will appear in the next essay.
These points, and undoubtedly others that readers could add, lay the basis for a dialog about what we might mean by a phrase such as "progressive science."
Upcoming materials, meanwhile, will further develop this notion of 'progressive science' and the necessary elements of a 'progressive' paradigm in relation to debates about what we know and what we want to do with that knowledge, whenever matters of science or a scientific approach, come into play. We might again turn to Jefferson, who, for all his 'warts,' was a true champion of democracy. He begins,
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
And he notes, as well,
Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand.
And he concludes,
The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.
As citizens, we must learn enough to fight for this capacity for ourselves and this orientation in all of our erstwhile leaders during the administration of Barach-the-Magnificent and beyond.