Abstract
Can relativism account for the apparently objective success of science? If our science and the technologies to which it gives rise are so successful that anyone from any way of life can appreciate, for instance, the remarkable achievement of an airplane flying across the sky, then mustn’t this universal acknowledgement make appeal to some shared, culturally neutral standard of success? My answer to this question takes several stages. In chapter three, I argue that whether we compare the success of competing practices by their fruits or by the inner workings of their theories, the determination of success does not separate neatly from the social, environmental, and conceptual context in which the practice is enacted. Because of this context dependence, the success of science does not constitute a neutral ground on which to arbitrate conflicting claims across different ways of life. Success is underdetermined without context and leads to dramatically different conclusions when we consider different contexts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See Chap. 1.
- 2.
See Chap. 2.
- 3.
As regards the manifest superiority of our social institutions and mores.
- 4.
For an example of this kind of reasoning, see Ernest Gellner, “Relativism and Universals,” in Rationality and Relativism, eds. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), 181–200. For criticism of relativism as unable to account for the success of science, see, for example, Larry Laudan, “Explaining the Success of Science: Beyond Epistemic Realism and Relativism,” in Science and the Quest for Reality, ed. Alfred I. Tauber (New York: New York University Press, 1997), Christopher Norris, Against Relativism: Philosophy of Science, Deconstruction and Critical Theory (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), and Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- 5.
Throughout this chapter, I am concerned with epistemic relativism, or the epistemic dimension of a broader sort of relativism, like cultural relativism. For simplicity, however, I will hereafter refer to it as “relativism” tout court.
- 6.
It is probably worth pointing out here that the question in what the success of science consists is distinct from, though not entirely unrelated to, the question of how to demarcate science from other practices that also aim to articulate, describe, and manipulate the world. My starting point is what I take to be the unreflective, received Western view: that science can be easily distinguished from other practices that aim to fix and justify belief, such as shamanism. I assume this starting point without any investigation into what the criteria of demarcation might be. However, if it turns out that the success of science is such a criterion, or even a tacit assumption behind at least some of the criteria, then my account of success (as inherently relative to the context of a particular way of life and to standards of assessment to which we can recognize meaningful alternatives) would tend to deflate the demarcation problem as well. At least part of the distinction between science and other practices would hinge on the context of a particular way of life and the adoption of a certain set of standards of assessment. Interestingly, though, a deflationary account of the demarcation problem does not necessarily diminish the idea that we should be able to appeal to the success of science to arbitrate conflicts between our claims and others’. In fact, dissolving the barriers between science and other epistemic practices might even encourage this idea. After all, if we can show that we are all engaged in the same enterprise, playing the same game with the same aims to satisfy the same needs, then why shouldn’t we all be able to agree on the winners? Of course, this is precisely the question addressed in this chapter and the next.
- 7.
I do not mean to suggest that this is the only way to characterize the success of science, or that this first rough characterization is exhaustive. A critic might insist that my argument falls short because I fail to characterize the success of science adequately. I could only respond to such criticisms on a case-by-case basis. Nevertheless, I believe that the features which in my characterization make the success of science relative – context dependence, holism, and internality of standards of assessment – are quite general. So, the burden for a successful criticism would be to show that the success of science under some alternate characterization transcends these relativistic constraints. And, of course, in order to be an interesting criticism, this should be achieved in a way that is not merely stipulative.
- 8.
It is important to distinguish this claim of cultural holism from a claim of cultural essentialism. While both claims are concerned with the interconnectedness of different facets of a given culture, the latter posits the good of a culture as it stands, statically and impermeably. The former, on the other hand, simply holds that the good of any particular aspect of a culture is not measurable in isolation. I hope it is clear that I do not at all endorse a view of cultural essentialism. I will return to this difference again in Chap. 6.
- 9.
Lest the reader jump to the conclusion here that the oar is the clear winner over the outboard motor, let me remind her of the importance of context dependence, as well as of a factor that we will explore further in Chap. 4, standards of assessment. Relative to the context of traditional Chachi life and values, such as harmony with nature and union with the fruit of one’s own labor, the oar may turn out to be a clear winner. However, there are still other contexts and standards of assessment relative to which it does not. Importantly, relative to the wider context of Western-style development and standards of assessment shaped by classical enlightenment values (favoring reason, autonomy, regulation of nature, etc.), the oar is not a clear winner. From this perspective, the impoverishment of Chachi life to which the adoption of the outboard motor is tied turns out to be but a minor, distasteful blip on the longer path to better understanding and improved conditions of life. By re-evaluating the oar versus the outboard motor from a different context and angle of assessment, I do not mean to suggest that we have the winners and losers the wrong way around, but rather that the very judgment of success cannot be separated from such a context and mode of assessment.
- 10.
Although I would like to encourage the reader to design and test counterexamples against this claim, I should also caution that hypothetical examples cannot constitute concrete cases. Such examples typically lack precisely what does the work in my claim – rich context, detail, and the interweaving of parts. It is also not clear that a concrete case can be drawn from a way of life that is newly thrown together, like a utopian colony. The idea that I am developing in this chapter and the next is that a way of life works out a relationship to the world, from a particular context and perspective, with its own set of advantages and limitations that cannot be grasped or weighed against each other in any neutral way. It is not clear that a very new or ad hoc “way of life” has had the opportunity to engage the world to such a degree.
- 11.
See, for instance Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem, La théorie physique: son objet et sa structure (Paris: Chevalier & Rivière, 1906), W.V.O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” reprinted in From a Logical Point of View: 9 Logico-Philosophical Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), and Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition, Enlarged (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1970).
- 12.
There is a whole literature on what (if anything) makes successful predictions important in evaluating scientific theories. I do not pretend to resolve that issue here; I am merely elaborating on the way in which the objector might take the direct test to work.
- 13.
Again, this is a weighted issue in the philosophy of science. I do not mean to recommend or defend the realist intuition here; I am only pointing out that it may add to the attractiveness of the direct test. Of course, we do not need to be realists to endorse the direct test. A pragmatist, for instance, could easily explain the import of the direct test as such: the winner’s claim works, and the loser’s does not; what else matters? For further discussion of the realist intuition, please see Chap. 5.
- 14.
Language, in fact, raises even deeper issues here, but let us ignore them for the time being out of charity to the example.
- 15.
- 16.
This paragraph merely indicates some of the complexity in designing a direct test; it should not be read as a comprehensive list of conditions for carrying out such a test.
- 17.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is a very basic question here about whether other practices would grant the validity of a direct test. Evans-Pritchard, for example, claims that part of why the Azande do not realize the “futility” of their magic is that they “are not experimentally inclined.” Edward Evans Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1937), 475, 477. Some might argue that the degree to which testing (and experimentation in general) inheres in a particular epistemic practice, namely our contemporary science, precludes its being used as a neutral arbiter of conflicting claims across different practices. However, I think we can grant that a certain aspect of human nature is simply inclined to experiment, whether or not in a given way of life this develops into the specific form of scientific experimentation. We see in early childhood and even in other intelligent animals an inclination to experiment. So, let us suppose that the direct test requires only this much of an opening to experimentation, and not a specific commitment to experiment in a strictly scientific manner, with the particular methods and context that it requires.
- 18.
Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 468–469. According to Evans-Pritchard, the action of the stone, “is a simple expression of imitative symbolism: as the stone remains in the tree so may the sun remain on high in the heavens.”
- 19.
After all, what they need to arrive safely at the homestead is not to be able to see the sun, but to be able to see by the light of the sun. At least, this has been my own experience in living in an area without artificial lighting.
- 20.
At least for this test. For the sake of thoroughness, the investigator might wish to confirm his prediction against his companion’s on repeated occasions. However, since the investigator already expected the success of his prediction, and this outcome coheres well with his other beliefs, which are themselves well tested, he may not see much need for further instances of the test.
- 21.
My claim here is not that the Zande representative will never concede the clear win of Western science over his magic. It is rather that he does not have to concede, and will in most cases resist so doing. I hope it is clear that I am saying nothing here about whether the Zande representative should or is right to concede.
- 22.
This argument assumes that all humans have a natural tendency to reason by induction, a point that some might wish to dispute. For example, Evans-Pritchard remarks that, “[the] Azande often observe that a medicine is unsuccessful, but they do not generalize their observations. Therefore the failure of a single medicine does not teach them that all medicines of this type are foolish. Far less does it teach them that all magic is useless.” (Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 475) Also, the validity of induction has been questioned from within our own philosophical tradition, notably by David Hume and his followers. Such factors might lead us to wonder whether the direct test can rely on inductive reasoning while remaining the sort of neutral measure that our objector hopes it will be. In his defense, at least at this point in the argument, I believe we can grant that induction is a thinking pattern that we share even with other intelligent animals. (My dog certainly believes that if one or two times he nods to the cookie jar and whines and I give him a cookie, then every time he repeats this behavior, it will produce the desired result.) The dispute, as I am about to argue, has to do more with which facts are salient and how we should generalize them than whether or not we should reason by induction. Of course, to grant that we all do or, I suppose, must reason by induction is not to insist that it overcomes the limitations that those such as Hume have noted. In fact, these limitations, in light of the dispute about how and when to generalize, suggest why our conflicting claims might not be able to transcend relativistic constraints: if the world cannot be grasped, measured, or analyzed without our conceptual systems, if these systems vary by contingent factors such as culture and historical epoch, and if they necessarily underdetermine the world, then our claims might hold of the world and be responsive to it without there being any neutral, highest, or absolute measure to arbitrate their conflicts across different ways of life. This is a point that I will explore in more depth in Chap. 5.
- 23.
Of course, he could interpret the repeated failure of his predictions as a clear loss. I am merely pointing out that he is under no obligation to do so, and that, as I explain below, the case for conceding a clear loss need not be as compelling to him as we tend to assume. Let me also reiterate: this is only an assessment of how the Zande representative might interpret the results of the tests, not a claim about what they must mean.
- 24.
At a certain point, I do think the investigator may be inclined to make a further inference, leading to the adoption of relativism itself. If on repeated occasions he encounters the success of Zande practices, then he may look for a way to acknowledge that they, too, in their own way, hold of the world. I believe this is often the reasoning of the investigator who, for example, becomes deeply engaged in another way of life (see Chap. 1). Moreover, I believe that this stance is compatible with the acknowledgement of the (relative) success of our own science, which is, of course, the point of the present chapter (and the next two). Let me also concede here that it is possible for the investigator to respond to the repeated success of Zande practices by adopting them himself. In order to reject science, however, he would have to have other sources of dissatisfaction with it, a matter that I discuss below as regards the reverse situation, where the Zande converts to science (and a Western way of life).
- 25.
Kuhn, Structure. Kuhn, of course, would not be happy to be called a relativist. Yet I do not deny what was important to him: that given a particular context and standards, our current science is more successful than our previous science and than other epistemic practices. What I question is the ultimacy and priority of such a context and standards. I develop this argument further in Chap. 4. Moreover, my discussion of the dynamic of resonance and loss (especially of loss) in that chapter develops two related insights that Kuhn seems to share: that competing practices make incommensurable trade-offs in what they know of and how they relate to the world around them, and that they are not easily combined. So, while Kuhn adamantly disavowed being a relativist in the radical, Feyerabendian sense, I am not convinced that being a relativist in my sense – acknowledging, yet qualifying the success of science to allow a space for competing practices on divergent grounds – would be so offensive to him.
- 26.
Kuhn, Structure.
- 27.
For a very clear example of this sort of reading, see Gellner, “Relativism.”
- 28.
Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 475. Interestingly, Evans-Pritchard offered this observation as part of an explanation of why the Azande failed to recognize the erroneousness of their magic. He argued that its apparent efficacy got in the way of understanding its actual falsity. Of course, it is precisely such an attitude toward the superiority of science that I am calling into question.
- 29.
Ibid., 270.
- 30.
Ibid., 34.
- 31.
Ibid., 472–473.
- 32.
Kuhn, Structure.
- 33.
See Sect. 3 above.
- 34.
Cf Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), in particular, Chap. 3, “Collision at Cajamarca.” If the Spanish conquered the Incas in part because Atahualpa expected Pizarro to be a man of greater honor, who knew how to receive a foreign leader, kept his word, and was not up to bloodthirsty deceit, where did the superiority lie? If native peoples did not have resistance to diseases like smallpox because their ancestors never had to survive the filth and poverty of medieval cities, what sort of lack of development was that? If only Westerners were willing to dominate the world by means such as a massive human slave trade, the wholesale extraction of non-renewable resources from the Earth, and unprecedented rates of genocide, again, did their eventual victory owe itself to epistemic superiority, or to what on closer examination, and by Western standards themselves, might look like moral failure? For further discussion related to these points, see the beginning of Chap. 5.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Luboff, A. (2020). Science, Success, and Alternatives. In: Facing Relativism. Synthese Library, vol 425. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43341-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43341-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43339-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-43341-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)