In
the past weeks, we have been covering the debate between Positivism and
Pragmatism about the nature of truth and whether it’s pursuit is based
in certainty or in practice. We are now well positioned to cover
philosophy of science, as well as the debates between Thomas Kuhn, Karl
Popper and Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend was very aware that few science
majors take a history of science class, offered by history departments,
or a philosophy of science class, offered by philosophy departments,
which results in universities producing scientists who have little
understanding of the evolution of science, of its history and
philosophy. A friend of my family who is a professor in the
Paleontology department at UC Berkeley told me that he was taught by a
professor who had been taught by John Dewey, whom we covered last time,
and that science is essentially Pragmatism, but the public and many of
his fellow scientists do not understand this. Clearly, our entire
culture, including scientists, need to better understand science.
Science
plays a large role in the modern world, guiding many if not all aspects
of life. It seems impossible to imagine life without science, and many
consider progress to be almost entirely identical to the investigations
of science and the development of technology. Recall Schopenhauer, who
saw society as quite incapable of social progress, and said that the
history of a village is the same as the history of an empire.
Schopenhauer would, of course, have to concede that technology has
evolved even if humanity hasn’t. We still do much of the same good and
bad things we have done for hundreds of thousands of years, but now
instead of roving nomadically in small tribes we have constructed
continental nations and global empires. Are we better off today than we
were in tribes? Some, like the Positivists and Pragmatists, point to
the incredible achievements of medicine, engineering and media and
wonder how such a question could even be considered, while others, like
the Existentialists, point to the horrors of modern warfare, propaganda
and oppression and wonder how we can refrain from asking the question.
In
the beginning weeks of this class, we discussed Rationalism and
Empiricism, which split over the issue of deductive certainty and
inductive assumption. While many would argue, such as Plato, that
reason and passion are two separate things and thus objectivity is
possible, Hume, Nietzsche and others argue that reason is always
directed by passion, and that it is foolish to think otherwise.
Nietzsche argued that science was replacing religion, and that this was
merely one more case of seduction, another period of history where the
sublimely angelic, the pure, steady and symmetrical, would seduce
humanity into believing in objectivity. Popularly, science is
understood to be objective, but Nietzsche would have us remember that
this was the guise and mask of religion, the home of scholarship and
inquiry for thousands of years. Today, philosophers of science are in
disagreement over the objectivity of science.
In
popular culture, while science is equated with the production of
functional and enabling technology, we find many heroes but also many
villains who are scientists, using science for both noble and selfish
purposes, famous in comic books and action movies. Last time, we
discussed the Utilitarian paradox of the bad as good example and the
Tuskegee study. It is not merely the fictional mad scientist, who wants
to rule the planet as a dictator, who uses science selfishly,
disregarding the harm done to others. Like the Tuskegee study, it has
become clearer to historians of science in the last few decades that, up
until the 1970s, there were terrible experiments conducted in America
that were driven by interest in eugenics and maintaining a racist
society. Just as Fichte and Heidegger would argue, our selves are also
social selves, and one can be selfish in the name of a group with which
one identifies, some call this “group-selfishness”, in the same way that
I can be selfish in the interest of my left hand.
That
which is called “objective” can sometimes later be seen as not so much
in the interests of everyone as in the interests of the dominant, the
wealthy, and the powerful. Feminist critics have said that science has
been largely a white male upper/middle class phallus, an “ivory tower”
if you will, that is used to satisfy its own needs. If one is not on
the right end of those needs, one’s needs are hardly satisfied. Social
critics point out that science is increasingly turning to corporations
and private funding as public funding dwindles, and that an individual
who believes science to be simply objective and working in the interest
of everyone likely lives in the first and not the third world. science
is funded by the wealthy and the powerful, such as corporations and
militaries.
The
public questioning and funding of science is important, as this makes
science democratic. Consider that in the Netherlands, there has been
experimentation with university “science shops”, where scientists and
students work on problems brought to them by members of the public.
This not only solves particular problems of the public, but brings new
problems unrecognized into the view of those who can best solve them.
All of this, of course, works by funding for public welfare, not
privatized investments.
Critics
have noted that NASA funding in America is drying up, as there is not
much profitable out in space, but neither is it profitable to solve
poverty, cure hunger and end war. Problems are profitable, and so the
endurance of problems is more profitable. This is the reason why
science, if it is to improve life, cannot be merely profit driven for
the same reasons that an economy cannot be merely about profits and
neglect quality of life. Just as a traffic jam stimulates the economy,
it is much more profitable to create cancer drugs than to cure cancer.
In the same way, curing cancer gets priority over preventing cancer, as
preventing a problem is not as profitable as solving a problem. Also,
marketable attractive problems get more funding, and the rest gets
neglected. Consider that far more money is gathered for breast cancer
research than lung, stomach or prostate cancer, all of these equally
lethal.
As
private corporations increasingly fund science, and government public
funding decreases, there has been a shift from the majority of funding
going to physics to the majority of funding going to biology. It seems
that biology is more profitable than physics. If you are pro-market and
privatization, you would argue that this is good, as the market shows
what people actually need and is more efficient than government
direction in determining the public good. If you are skeptical of
market forces and privatization, you would argue that this is bad, as
the public good is being equated with profitability.
The
poor and the third world become neglected, and the expensive products
for upper and middle class first world people become the area for
investment opportunity. The overpopulation of the third world, when
considered, is seen in terms of contraception, not in terms of poverty.
If the third world was less impoverished, there would be less, not
more, third world children, and thus less overpopulation, but this is
not discussed as an option. Cheap impoverished labor for the first
world is being prioritized over global quality of life. The third world
is very much the results of empire and colonialism. Consider the motto
of London’s Imperial College: “Science is the pride and shield of
empire”.
At
the same time, first world corporations go to shamans in Central and
South America, ask them about cures for their diseases, analyze the
plants they use, and then synthesize new pharmaceuticals which they
patent, showing the surprising effectiveness of ancient medicine and the
indebtedness of modern medicine to the most primitive of methods.
Similarly, bacteria evolve at a much faster rate than higher order
animals, so scientists will put bacteria in dishes, watch them fight
each other with ‘germ warfare’, and then take the results to determine
if anything of this is useful. This is beyond the simple idea of
hypothesis-test-result, instead letting the world do the testing and
trials, strip-mining the useful, and then defending patents in court
against any counter-claims, including those of the shamans, and I would
presume, those of the bacteria if they acquired legal representation.
Before
we get lost in praising and criticizing the successes and costs of
science, we must ask: What is science? The physicist Rutherford
famously said, “Science is what scientists do”. Strangely, this seems
to be the only thing upon which philosophers and historians of science
are in complete agreement. Science is clearly associated with
investigation and inquiry, but it must be more than this or trying a new
sandwich place would be a scientific undertaking. Science is “figuring
things out”, but is it merely figuring things out in ways that require
massive investment and complex forms of technology? Recall that last
time, Dewey argued that before science, things were not understood
systematically, each thing merely containing its own autonomous power.
Clearly, science can not claim to be the only systematic culture of
thought, but is there a coherent system of science that produces good
results compared to other cultures?
Scientists
are often misled by their professors to believe that there is a single
scientific method which results in objective, universal results that
serve humanity as a whole when pursued for its own sake. If the public
is mistrustful of science, these professors say, it could only be that
the public is ignorant, and if they were better informed they would
embrace science and each of its many advances. Unfortunately, it may be
that the scientists are also ignorant, and might be more mistrustful
themselves if they were better informed.
Many
scientists have, increasingly since the 1960s, become critical of
science and the idea of simple objectivity. American President Dwight
Eisenhower famously warned all future hippies as he left office that “we
must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. Along with the
Neopragmatists, in the sixties there were scientists who became
historians and philosophers of science to counteract what they perceived
as the military and corporate domination of the sciences in America.
Student activists uncovered plans in locked drawers on their campuses,
sometimes while searching for draft cards to burn, for the use of
university sponsored research for purposes other than those made public.
I myself had an Art History professor in graduate school who switched
from being a physicist, telling the class that he was “tired of building
bomb hatch doors for Boeing”. Also in the sixties, the environmental
movement began questioning the use of chemicals and plastics that had
exploded in the forties and fifties, bringing America the swell of
consumerism that the Frankfurt School denounced as the new form of
fascism.
Many
of these critical historians and philosophers of science began studying
the ways in which science and technology affect culture. Pragmatism
says that science is a tool. Heidegger argues that what is not at issue
remains unarticulated in the background of our experience, such that
tools which are used often are often left unthought, used without
critical examination. While the growth of American consumerism in the
fifties left many with the view that science and America are pure
sources of prosperity, the sixties brought the tools of science into
view and brought up unsettling issues, pointing out that what was simple
prosperity for some was far more problematic for others.
As
history and philosophy of science became official university
disciplines after the sixties, this predictably turned into a Hegelian
struggle between the conservative and the progressive, between those who
wanted the new field to become accepted, professional and established,
which required cozying up to the science departments as established in
the universities, and those who wanted to carry on the revolution and
continue to radically question science and its relationship to
prosperity. There were many scientists and science professors who were
deeply averse to the critical relativizing of science of the more
radical and progressive, and like Russell they argued that the
objectivity of science must be defended from outside influences.
Much
like in politics, various critical voices were not perceived by these
“defenders of science” as part of the whole but rather “special
interests” who are biased and put their own perspective before that of
the common objective good. Some thus perceived it as an unwelcome
encroachment of philosophy, history and other humanities departments on
the science departments. Today there is still a culture clash in
universities between Positivism and Postmodernism, which we will study
in a few weeks. Postmodernism, which follows Nietzsche very much in
saying truth is relative and can always be variously interpreted, is a
hated enemy of Positivists and those who defend the objectivity of
science. We will see this in examining the feud between Searle and
Derrida, captured in Derrida’s book, Limited Inc.
Critics
of scientific objectivity, of course, perceived the resistance to their
ideas as bias and ignorance, a charge that any intellectual, but
particularly a scientist, would find deeply insulting. I mentioned in
the first lecture that the Analytic tradition tends to be ahistorical,
seeking truth not in the dynamics and situation of history but in the
static and universal, much as Russell had tried to do via mathematics,
Wittgenstein with his early logic work and later Positivists in “common
sense”. Critics of science, within the sciences and outside them, argue
that scientists often lack an understanding of the history and social
behavior of science, externalizing everything but the particular data
they are examining and theory they are testing. These critics hope to
make cultures of science more aware of the social effects of their
practice as well as make science more democratic such that it is working
in the interest of people and not profits.
The
traditional story of science, which many know I enjoy bashing, is that
science is a Western thing, as European culture has traditionally valued
freedom and individuality, and thus the ancient Greeks were free to
begin reasoning scientifically, the first being Thales of Miletus, on
the West coast of what is today Turkey. Then reason slept for awhile,
until the Renaissance, when reason awoke again in Florence, Italy. This
led to the European Enlightenment, when genuine scientific
understandings began to rapidly replace the pre-scientific
understandings of the world much as Dewey argued, and Rationalism and
Empiricism fell into disagreement over what this meant about science and
the human mind. In spite of this traditional story being called into
question after WWI, WWII and Vietnam in debates that still rage to this
day, this remains the way scientists and the public are taught to think
about science, though I have already taught you differently by beginning
this class with the Tang and Song Dynasties of China and the Golden Age
of Islam. I disagree with those who say these periods are
“pre-scientific”.
In the early sixties, Thomas Kuhn
(1922 - 1996) came up with his idea of paradigm shift to explain why
great scientists made great discoveries while also being terribly wrong
about other things, which he explained in his 1962 book The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn’s work was a major blow to the Logical
Positivism of Russell and the Vienna Circle. Kuhn argued that
scientists solve particular problems within the frame of their
worldview. He was thinking particularly about Aristotle, and how he
believed that objects in motion naturally slow down, which conflicts
with Newton’s idea that objects in motion naturally stay in motion and
that objects in motion slow due to resistance. Kuhn argued that
Aristotle and Newton were working with different paradigms or models,
and that great discoveries caused models to change. Aristotle was
thinking in terms of ancient Egyptian, Persian and Greek cosmology, and
Newton was thinking in terms of algebraic science as practiced by
muslims and Renaissance Florentines, which is the reason Newton was
mostly concerned with what today is dismissed as alchemy. Newton spent
much time seeking the philosopher’s stone, so that he could turn lead
into gold. Consider that the Incas of Peru had no iron, and used gold
as a common metal for everyday objects, such as spoons, tweezers and
combs, and would not have sought this stone.
In
what Kuhn called “normal science”, the model works well, but sometimes
the model encounters a crisis, problems that cannot be solved that
become important, and it is then time for “revolutionary science”, which
makes necessary changes to the paradigm. Recall that Heidegger argued
only that which is at issue for us becomes articulated and the matter of
our attention. Very much like Hegel, Kuhn saw this as a process by
which what was revolutionary becomes the new orthodoxy, which then must
be challenged and changed again. Each and every groundbreaking
scientist who made major discoveries was also quite wrong about other
related matters, Kuhn discovered, and scientists are not quick to talk
about that which does not fit with their theory or which they do not
understand. Unfortunately, Kuhn argues, textbooks simply summarize what
is still considered true, disregard the aspects of old theories that
are no longer true, and make the revolutionary leaps in science appear
to be ‘normal’ science, normalizing the revolutionary process very
similar to what is seen in politics. By the time scientists get to
working on unsolved problems, they have only been exposed to updated
standardized textbooks, and this makes them reluctant to question
dominant paradigms.
Also in the early sixties, technically 1959, Karl Popper
(1902 - 1994) rewrote his work The Logic of Scientific Discovery in
English, making changes to the earlier 1934 work in German. Popper had
connections to the Vienna Circle in earlier days, but his work on
falsifiability, like the paradigm shift of Kuhn, was a blow to Logical
Positivism and the Vienna Circle. Popper however, like the Positivists,
saw the work of Kuhn as a threat to science, and his work on
falsifiability was an attempt to cut Kuhn’s relativism off at the pass.
Popper called a philosophy of science conference in 1965 to debate and
debunk Kuhn, but Kuhn’s work continued and he remains a problem for
Positivists and realists today. Kuhn centrally questioned the
Positivist principles of verificationism, that there is an objective
reality against which theories can be verified, and coherence, the
unification of the sciences into a common system.
Popper’s
idea of falsification has become an important part of the debates about
science and how it should be questioned. Popper is concerned with
distinguishing when a theory can be called scientific, interested like
the Vienna Circle in drawing the boundaries of science. Popper wants to
distinguish science from pseudoscience, knowing that a pseudoscientific
theory might stumble onto the truth without being scientific. This
means ‘science’ is not about whether or not a theory is true or accepted
by the community. A scientific theory may turn out to be false, or may
be true but not accepted by the community. Science, unlike
metaphysics, is inductive and empirical, but is this all a theory must
be to be scientific? Astrology and alchemy rely on empirical evidence.
Does this make them scientific?
Popper
wants to distinguish “pseudoempirical” theories like Hegelian
metaphysics, Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis from “genuinely
empirical” theories like Einstein’s relativity. Like Dewey, Popper
argues that there is a distinction between prescientific mythology and
nonscientific theories that pose as sciences and genuine sciences.
Logical Positivism had upheld verificationism as the criterion for
science, but Popper argues that Hegelians, Marxists and Freudians, like
genuine scientists, see verifications of their theories everywhere, the
Hegelian in the process of history, the Marxist in the daily newspaper,
the Freudian in the protests of the patient, and so constant
verification cannot be separated from consistent interpretation of the
evidence in accord with a theory. To this extent, Nietzsche and
Heidegger would agree.
If
a theory cannot be proven wrong, Popper argues, if it cannot be
falsifiable, if it cannot help but be verified by its interpretation, a
theory is unscientific. A genuinely scientific theory is one that can
be proven wrong, but continues to not be, like Einstein’s relativity.
Popper would have argued today that Einstein’s theory being modified by
Quantum theory is not proof that it was unscientific, but that it was
scientific and is partly wrong. Confirmation must involve risk. A
theory must forbid certain events, which are imaginably possible. The
greater the theory, the greater the risk, the greater the precise
predictions. Astrology is vague enough that anything can be interpreted
as supporting it, while Astronomy is precise enough that various
sub-theories can be proved wrong and others left standing, though not
proven right. Astrology, Hegelianism, Marxism and psychoanalysis are
not entirely wrong, but they are not precise enough to be testable.
This
move flips verificationism completely on its head. While scientific
theories should be verified, they cannot be completely verified, or they
would cease to be scientific. Scientific theories must be both
verified, somewhat, and falsifiable, possibly wrong and testable. Also,
this does not leave science as the exclusive domain of truth, because
pseudoscientific theories like Hegelianism, Marxism and psychoanalysis
can be very true and quite verified within a given interpretive scheme
even if they are not testable. Popper might even argue that Einstein’s
determinism was itself a pseudoscientific aspect of his theory, as no
event can prove determinism wrong, but neither can it prove chaotic flux
wrong, for that matter, as all events can be called determined just as
all events can be called chaotic. Similarly, if Popper is right about
falsifiability, then the principles of noncontradiction, sufficient
reason and the coherence of science are all pseudoscientific
metaphysics.
I
will let Feyerabend make his attack on Popper’s verificationism before I
criticize it. Before we turn to Feyerabend, however, we should mention
Popper’s political theory of open societies, his hatred for
Hegelianism, and his argument with the later Wittgenstein.
Popper
has been criticised for his hatred of Plato, Hegel and Marx in the
interest of the “open society”. In his political philosophy work, The
Open Society and its Enemies, Popper argues that theories of history
that see progress towards an end, namely Hegelianism and Marxism, are
the source of most forms of totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
Historicism is a pseudoscience, as the future, just like the total
verification of a scientific theory, cannot be known. Popper argues
that this is the fault of the ancient Athenian Plato who gave us the
generality of metaphysics, which does not limit itself to the
particular predictions essential to genuine science.
Popper
was, as a youth, a Marxist, but after several of his friends were shot
by police at a rally and the Marxists told him that the sacrifice was
necessary for the cause, Popper saw that this could be said of any
setback or any triumph, and so the political theory could not be
questioned. Popper famously argued that intolerance cannot be
tolerated, and so Marxism and other intolerant elements must be
eliminated in the interests of an open society. Needless to say,
critics respond that Popper is blind to the domination, empire and
intolerance that exists on both sides of the capitalist and communist
divide, and that dogmatic belief in science or anything else can easily
lead to intolerance as much as speculative metaphysics. Ironically,
Popper’s student George Soros, the billionaire investor famous in
America for funding left wing causes, founded his Open Society Institute
in honor of Popper’s political work, and yet he is repeatedly accused
of being a Marxist by American rightwing media.
In
the pop-philosophy book Wittgenstein’s Poker, there is an interesting
presentation of Popper’s famous argument with Wittgenstein. In 1946 at
Cambridge, Popper gave a visiting lecture about the nature of
philosophical problems to the Moral Science Club, of which Wittgenstein
was the president. There are various accounts of what happened, and
many agree that Popper gave a somewhat falsified account to make it
appear that he had triumphed over Wittgenstein. Popper, Russell and
Wittgenstein began heatedly arguing about the nature of truth, and
Wittgenstein, pacing the aisles in frustration, grabbed a poker from the
fireplace and began to gesture with it wildly as he spoke. Russell
asked Wittgenstein to put the poker down, but he refused. Wittgenstein
demanded that Popper give him one example of a universal moral
principle, to which Popper replied, “Not to threaten visiting lecturers
with pokers”. Wittgenstein, furious that Popper had made a joke rather
than offer a serious example, dropped the poker and left the room in
disgust. Clearly, Popper thought he had bested Wittgenstein, though
Popper did not in fact answer the question or provide a single example.
Paul Feyerabend
(1924 - 1994) was Popper’s student and supporter early on, but by the
time of the anti-Kuhn conference he had come to agree with Kuhn and took
Kuhn’s ideas to more radical extremes. I gave you some of his central
work, Against Method (1975), in which he argues for “epistemological
anarchism”. Like the Existentialists and Pragmatists, Feyerabend argues
that there are no principles upon which science is founded, nor is
there a single specific unified scientific method or structure. Like
Wittgenstein, Feyerabend tried to show science as a family resemblance
and form of life, a set of cultures that has never needed an underlying
consistency to grow and develop. Thus, he argues, the scientific method
is “anything goes”, remarkably similar to the actual practice of most
if not all human cultures. Feyerabend calls for the full
democratization of science, with full participation and criticism of the
public.
Much
as Pragmatists argue, Feyerabend says that science is not about
universal objective truth, but about localized practices, and this
should be recognized. This is similar to Popper, who argues that
science is more useful when it is specific. Notice here that Feyerabend
is not only saying, like a Pragmatist, that there is no static
universal truth, but also that there is no unified pragmatic method.
Just as the Pragmatists argued that there is no necessary unification
of the sciences against the Positivists, Feyerabend, taking it a step
further, argues that pragmatically there is no unified scientific
method, so Pragmatism itself should be recognized as a disunified,
localized practice.
Feyerabend,
like a good relativist, argues that he cannot prove without a doubt
that there is no common exclusive scientific method, but that he can
provide historical examples of human thought that are and are not
considered science to show that it is implausible. Scientific success
cannot be explained as adherence to a set procedure or coherence with
any accepted theory. New investigations need not use present procedures
or cohere with present theory. Science is more than mere
quantification, requiring leaps of interpretation that defy
standardization. Note the coherence with Existentialism. Feyerabend
quotes Kierkegaard, saying that the leap to inferring rules and new
hypotheses always involves particular passions.
Like
Popper, Feyerabend argues that science cannot be distinguished by
success, truth or acceptance, but unlike Popper he argues that science
is merely more detailed than earlier human thought. Science should not
limit itself by confining itself to a single method, theory nor
insulated identity which cannot identify with “nonscientific” or
“prescientific” cultures of thought. Feyerabend compares this to
ancient Chinese foot-binding, binding the feet of young women to deform
them in a way that is considered to be beautiful by a culture. Note the
similarity with Nietzsche saying truth is seduction by what one finds
beautiful.
Feyerabend
argues that there is no need to fear chaos, lack of reasoning or
opposition to reasoning, as these are a part of all cultures, including
the various cultures of science. Not only is violating rules good for
the positive development of truth, but great thinkers such as Galileo
and Newton bound themselves to rules out of superstition, unknowingly
violated those rules, and had great success in spite of not
understanding this. Great thinkers should contradict accepted theories,
sometimes even speculating about alternatives for which there has been
no verification whatsoever, searching where no one has bothered yet to
look.
Unlike
Dewey, Feyerabend argues that there never was a “pre-scientific” period
of human reasoning that was followed by a clarified objective period.
Much as James argued that religions evolve to function in a particular
situation, Feyerabend argued that science is merely doing the same, and
that philosophers and scientists who believe in objective truth are
merely superstitious in the newest fashion, like modern day shamans or
orthodox theologians. Galileo and the Catholic Church theologians
opposed each other with reasoning and evidence, which did not guarantee
that either side would win. All cultures of truth require funding and
propaganda, and unfortunately these impede the questioning and growth of
truth.
In
one of my favorite examples of the book, Feyerabend says that Voodoo is
often used as a symbol for the illogical and unscientific, but its
material benefits are not understood and studying it can teach us more
about humanity and culture, even the culture of science and the humanity
of scientists. Traditional Chinese medicine, like that of the shamans
previously mentioned, is found to have health benefits imperfectly
understood long after they have been dismissed by modern medicine.
Popper argued that science alone is falsifiable, avoiding the
over-general. Feyerabend counters that counter-examples do not simply
destroy great theories, as they have been modified again and again in
the history of science to preserve them, “renormalized”, sometimes being
confirmed by new discoveries, other times falling out of fashion.
Also, many systems that Popper would call unscientific are quite
detailed, and can be disproved or fall out of favor in a culture given
particular experiences.
Feyerabend
says that questioning the modern mythology surrounding science “evokes
taboo reactions which are no weaker than are the taboo reactions in
so-called primitive societies”, and that, “The similarities between
science and myth are indeed astonishing”. I agree with Feyerabend that
we should reapproach cultures of thought with this new perspective,
particularly considering the West’s domination of other cultures.
Feyerabend goes so far as to argue that there should be a separation
between science and state in America just as with religion, and that no
one should be forced in school to learn particular forms of science,
religion or politics. I myself would prefer our schools to teach all
forms of thought, including all religions, as cultures of thought that
prefigure science. I do agree with Feyerabend that the way science is
taught in schools, as discussed earlier with the limited vision of
textbooks, is not conducive to the growth of science or knowledge as
would be a rich and critical history of science. Feyerabend is right
that science today is not democratic and not taught as something that
can be questioned, a form of propaganda that serves political
nationalist interests. We should teach children about the genius and
folly of all cultures, the voyages of the Polynesians, the building of
the Egyptian pyramids, and the rocket science that led to the moon
landing.
Bruno Latour
(1947 - still alive) is a French sociologist of science who has been a
critic like Feyerabend of the separation of scientific truth from the
rest of human culture. He has also argued against the distinction of
subjective and objective. Latour is known for his radical critique of
modernity and science. In his first major work, We Have Never Been
Modern, he argues that Western society is only different from other
cultures by minor differences, and that the distinguished period of
modernity never happened. Because of this, he argues that he is not a
Postmodernist, but an Antimodernist, against the idea of a specific
period of time that can be labeled “modernity”. Postmodernists, who we
will study soon, typically believe that modernity was a period following
the European Enlightenment that was different from previous periods but
failed to achieve its goals and must be rejected in the interests of
plurality and diversity.
In
his second book, Laboratory Life, Latour studied scientists in
laboratories the way anthropologists study tribespeople in primitive
conditions. He argues that simple conceptions of the scientific method
have little resemblance to laboratory practices. Being trained as a
scientist means learning what data to throw out or keep, which is always
a subjective interpretation. Much of the time, data that contradicts
orthodox reigning theory is thrown out, as it is disregarded as
anomalous. Occasionally, the scientist makes the rarer choice to keep
the heretical data and investigate further. Methods, beliefs, and oral
history form the social construct of laboratory life, an evolving
culture rather than a stable method. Needless to say, Latour has been
criticized and mocked by Positivists for doing this, such as John
Searle, who argues Latour’s “extreme social constructivist” views have
“comical results”.
I
was very pleased to find a book of Latour’s recently translated into
English, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods. He argues that we
interpret primitive people as small children, who play make believe but
are foolish enough to fear the reality of their creations. However,
just as Nietzsche said the philosopher has been the creature so far
fooled best on Earth, Latour argues that it is we so-called modern
people who invent the most convincing mythologies. This is very much
the position of Roland Barthes, who we will study next time. Latour
says that we make believe that our minds have made a choice of “icy
reasons” over “fiery illusions”, but we, like the most primitive of
cultures, passionately fashion our beliefs and then pretend that we
found them just as they are. While we had to believe in reason to see
through all previous foolish human idols, this prevented us from
questioning our foolish and all-too-human idol of reason, and how this
latest idol did not set us apart from all previous fools.
Latour
sets out to show that facts are the new fetishes. Like Wittgenstein,
he argues that beliefs, whether facts or fetishes, are not merely states
of mind but cultural situations. Just as Christians said that all gods
are false save their own, Moderns say that all beliefs are mere
beliefs, unlike facts. Latour has us imagine the Portuguese landing in
West Africa, where they inform the Africans that their gods must be
false, as the Africans clearly made idols with their own hands. The
Africans, stunned, could have asked the Portuguese about their statue of
the Virgin Mary and whether it had fallen fully formed from the sky,
but the Portuguese would have considered this an unforgivable act of
heresy.
The
Portuguese invented the word ‘feitico’ from the Latin ‘facticius’,
artificial, and is from this that the French ‘fetiche’ became the
English ‘fetish’. Of course, Latour’s point is that our word ‘fact’
also derives from this same Latin root, and facts are fashioned, as are
fetishes. Just as the Portuguese asked the Africans to choose between
factual god and fictitious fetish, while refusing to make this choice
themselves, we Moderns fashion our sciences and then claim they are
found fully formed in nature. That, or as Rorty argued, we claim that
our sciences and facts are mere mirrors, with little distortion.
Something similar occurs when the skeptic tells the dogmatist, “We are
all biased”, to which the dogmatist replies, “So you admit you are
biased”. Latour might say that something similar also occurs when
Popper attempts to separate science from pseudoscience.
The
Moderns smash the primitive idol, replacing it with their own, thus
asserting their relative freedom. “We are free”, they say, “to fashion
our idols by choice, based on our desires, but the primitives, slave to
their desires, fashioned their idols impulsively”. Who is the puppet,
and who is the puppeteer? Do we fashion our beliefs, or do our beliefs
fashion us? Recall that Nietzsche said that thought comes when it
wants, not when I want it to. How freely does thought fashion itself,
in ancient or modern times? Latour mentions that good novelists are
often carried away by their characters. Does the book write the
novelist? Today we fashion crude idols of paper, staples, tape, and
pixels, and we believe that they are true within and beyond themselves.
Two hundred years earlier, Claude Adrien Helvetius
(1715 - 1771), French philosopher and writer, argued as a follower of
Locke in his Essays of the Mind that all people are born with an equal
capacity for understanding and it is education that makes the difference
in intelligence. Voltaire, his friend, read the book and wrote to him,
“Your book is dictated by the soundest reason. You had better get out
of France as quickly as you can”. Helvetius’ work was an influence on
Bentham and Mill, both quite progressive in their understandings of our
common humanity. Hopefully we will have a shift in the old paradigm,
the old idol of the European Enlightenment, and discover that we are
human.
