Abstract
It is impossible to analyze here all the consequences of the processes we have just described; I will limit my discussion only to their most important effects on science as a social institution, which also contributed to the crisis of its modern ideal. The second source of this crisis—a purely cognitive one—will be treated in the following sections of this chapter.
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Chapter V. The Sources of the Crisis of the Modern Ideal of Science
E. Ashby, Technology and the Academics (London: Macmillan, 1958), 94.
See J. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 44.
The famous British mathematician, G.H. Hardy, wrote: “If useful knowledge is, as we agreed provisionally to say, knowledge which is likely now or in the comparatively near future to contribute to the material comfort of mankind, so that mere intellectual satisfaction is irrelevant, then the great bulk of higher mathematics is useless. […] If this be the test, then Abel, Riemann and Poincaré wasted their lives. […] I have never done anything ‘useful.’ […] Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematics is nil. […] I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating” (G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, 135–136 and 150).
C.P. Snow, Science and Government (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961).
Descartes, Discourse on the Method, in Philosophical Works of Descartes, vol. 1, trans. E. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 130.
Gerald Holton, “From the Endless Frontier to the Ideology of Limits,” in his The Advancement of Science and Its Burdens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 209.
Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 12.
Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, in Mélanges (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 112.
S. Amsterdamski, “Previsione e possibilità,” Enciclopedia Einaudi, vol. 10 (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), 1108–1130.
Helena Eilstein, “Demon Laplace’owski i gatunek ludzki,” Studia Filozoficzne, 4 (1966), 125.
See S. Amsterdamski, “Naturale/Artificiale,” Enciclopedia Einaudi, vol. 9 (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), 792–822.
Cited after K. Pomian, “Działanie i sumienie,” Studia Filozoficzne, 1967 (3), 22–23.
Ibid., 22-23.
Ibid., 22-23.
Leszek Kołakowski The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought (New York: Doubleday, 1968).
Barbara Skarga, Claude Bernard (Warsaw, 1970), 104.
F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952); H. Schoeck (ed.), Scientism and Values (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).
Popper, Objective Knowledge, 185.
A. Roy, La Philosophie contemporaine (Paris: 1898), 5.
K. Pomian, “Działanie i sumienie,” 25.
So, while certain authors in Poland in 1968, for example, J. Szewczyk and S. Dziamski, condemned the “scientistic deviation from Marxism” of people who defended these values, other authors elsewhere, such as, for example, A. Hobbs, characterized the scientistic position in the McCarthy Era as having “only a remote relationship with science […]. Fertilized in the minds of intellectuals and incubated in professional journals, the germs of scientism infect textbooks, and acquire great virulence as they are transmitted to the public […]. The creed of scientism leads to the belief that our economic system is characterized by maldistribution of income, unemployment, and class conflict. […] Our adherence to traditional beliefs about child training, education, sex, marriage, economics, religion, patriotism and other matters constitutes culture lag and disorganizes society […]. The techniques, language, and the creed of scientism, however, are quite similar to those of socialism and communism” (A. Hobbs, Social Problems and Scientism, Harrisburg, PA: The Stackpole Co., 1953, 17–19, 37 and passim). If one disregards the positions under attack it is difficult not to notice the similarity of the values underlying this type of critique.
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Amsterdamski, S. (1992). The Sources of the Crisis of the Modern Ideal of Science. In: Between History and Method. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 145. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2706-6_6
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