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Greater severity towards science
TIBS - September
N 217
1979
Greater severity Science in a Free Society by Paul Feyerabend, New Lefi Books, London, 1978. f 7.50/$15.50 (221 pages) ZSBN 86091 008 3
‘Today science prevails not because of its comparative merits, but because the show has been rigged in its favour.’ (p. 102). ‘ . . . I guess that having no fixed philosophy I preferred stumbling around in the world of ideas at my own speed to being guided by the ritual of a “rational debate .” ’ (p. 116). ‘. . . we have to remember how Copernicus started. In the beginning his view was as unreasonable as the idea of the unmoved earth must have been in 1700. But it led to developments we now want to accept. Hence, it was reasonable to introduce it and try to keep it alive. Hence, it is always reasonable to introduce and try to keep alive unreasonable views.” (p. 65). ‘There is not a single important scientific idea that was not stolen from elsewhere. The Copernican Revolution is an excellent example.’ (p. 105). ‘As far as I am concerned, a world in which a louse can live happily is a better world, a more instructive world, a more mature world than a world in which a louse must be wiped out.’ (p. 133). These sentences, selected not entirely at random, will perhaps indicate the variety that the reader of this amusing, exasperating, moving book will encounter. One of the reasons why I liked the book is its complete lack of any sort of professionalism. It is written in a commendably unscholarly style: ‘I find such a style’ speaking of the way scholars write - ‘with its neat innuendos and its civilized strangulation of the opponent too desiccated and also too dishonest (strange word for me to use - eh?) for my taste.’ (p. 13 1). The lively invective brings back older and franker times: Schopenhauer on Hegel or on the Verhunzer of the German language, Lichtenberg on Lavater, Lessing on Pastor Goeze or Magister Klotz. (See, for instance, footnotes 98 on p. 59 or 16 on p. 15 1. The numerous footnotes are altogether a delight, offering in their truly Gibbonian sweep discussions of many things, certainly of much more than moves the ordinary philosopher of science.) At first I found the title baffling, for it reminded me of one of those predictable and banal New York Times editorials that appear to be written by one of the less gifted computers who got in because he had an uncle. Only there it would have
lowards science read Free Science in a Free Society than which nothing could be farther from the purpose of the author. He is certainly not an admirer of our excessively monochrome society whose members are permitted to have opinions of any colour as long as they are scientific. His idea of a free society is stated repeatedly: ‘A free society is a society in which all traditions are given equal rights, equal access to education and other positions of power.’ (p. 30). ‘A free society insists on the separation of science and society.’ (p. 31). Science which has arrogated .to itself, at least in the West, the position of a state religion, must be regarded as one of many possible traditions or myths, and perhaps not even as the most adequate one; although I do not know how adequacy or, for that matter, progress or advance are to be judged. That so outspoken a disestablishmentarian, so eloquent an advocate of the blossoming of a hundred flowers will not be applauded by the beneficiaries of the autocracy of the scientific method requires no emphasis. How interests become vested-as has in the past hundred years been the case of science - has always been a riddle to me; but once established, they derive their right to be fed in the future from the fact that they have been fed in the past. If I understand the book correctly, this would end, and it would be up to the taxpayers to decide which and how much science they wished to support. Being less sanguine than the author about ‘the natural shrewdness of the human race’ (p. 98) I fear that these decisions would, though different, be hardly wiser. If at the wish of the taxpayers of California their univerfolk sities were ‘to teach Voodoo, medicine, astrology, rain dance ceremonies’ (p. 134), there still march before
my eyes the same drum majorettes, even if under different colours. Science in a Free Society is, as I said, in my opinion a very interesting book, but it is not much of a book. It is a tripartite olla podrida. The first section carries the title ‘Reason and Practice’ and it consists of postscripts and excursuses to a previous treatise Against Method (London, 1975). The second part ‘Science in a Free Society’, about one-third of the whole, makes excellent reading. Much of what it has to say about science and scientists, intellectuals and experts, is so good that I wish that I had said it (and some I did say). The last chapter of this section, ‘Origin of the Ideas of this Essay,’ is autobiographical and depicts the Lehrjahre of a rare young man. The third part ‘Conversations with Illiterates’ inflicts, sometimes very amusingly, multiple critical mayhem on various colleagues and friends who had published reviews ofAgainst Method. The instructive glance through the keyhole reveals, however, only one-half of the room, as the reviews themselves are not supplied. One passage on Good and Evil, too long to be quoted here (pp. 139, 140) is recommended to readers who have not sworn the Hypocritic Oath. It could lend itself to much meditation, and that is what books are for, though rarely books on the philosophy of science. With those the present book has only one thing in common: it deals mostly with astronomy and physics, except where it strays far from the natural sciences altogether; it does not consider, unfortunately, the sciences that in number of practitioners probably outweigh all the others, namely, what is vulgarly called the life sciences. But then, the philosophy of life is not necessarily a philosophy of science. ERWIN 350 Central Park U.S.A.
West, New York,
CHARGAFF NY
10025,
Progressing towards the end of progress? Paradoxes of Progress by G. S. Scent, W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1978. $7.20 (p.b.) (xii + 231 pages) ISBN 0 7167 0086 7
It is not often that an actual improvement in the quality of a book can be perceived from its first pages to the last. Being irritating and frustrating in its first chapters, Stent’s ‘Paradoxes of Progress’ improves from chapter 8 to the last (11 th) chapter where a real effort has been made by the
author to cope with recent views of Man on himself. Perhaps this reflects an actual learning on the part of the author since the first articles collected in the book were written in 1969 and the last in 1977. The main approach of the first chapters seems to reflect a fear of the future -we are supposed to be living at the end of progress. Signs of this fact are: the beat generation, the decadence of art, the acceleration of (technological) progress and, for the biological scientist, the achievements of
N 217
1979
Greater severity Science in a Free Society by Paul Feyerabend, New Lefi Books, London, 1978. f 7.50/$15.50 (221 pages) ZSBN 86091 008 3
‘Today science prevails not because of its comparative merits, but because the show has been rigged in its favour.’ (p. 102). ‘ . . . I guess that having no fixed philosophy I preferred stumbling around in the world of ideas at my own speed to being guided by the ritual of a “rational debate .” ’ (p. 116). ‘. . . we have to remember how Copernicus started. In the beginning his view was as unreasonable as the idea of the unmoved earth must have been in 1700. But it led to developments we now want to accept. Hence, it was reasonable to introduce it and try to keep it alive. Hence, it is always reasonable to introduce and try to keep alive unreasonable views.” (p. 65). ‘There is not a single important scientific idea that was not stolen from elsewhere. The Copernican Revolution is an excellent example.’ (p. 105). ‘As far as I am concerned, a world in which a louse can live happily is a better world, a more instructive world, a more mature world than a world in which a louse must be wiped out.’ (p. 133). These sentences, selected not entirely at random, will perhaps indicate the variety that the reader of this amusing, exasperating, moving book will encounter. One of the reasons why I liked the book is its complete lack of any sort of professionalism. It is written in a commendably unscholarly style: ‘I find such a style’ speaking of the way scholars write - ‘with its neat innuendos and its civilized strangulation of the opponent too desiccated and also too dishonest (strange word for me to use - eh?) for my taste.’ (p. 13 1). The lively invective brings back older and franker times: Schopenhauer on Hegel or on the Verhunzer of the German language, Lichtenberg on Lavater, Lessing on Pastor Goeze or Magister Klotz. (See, for instance, footnotes 98 on p. 59 or 16 on p. 15 1. The numerous footnotes are altogether a delight, offering in their truly Gibbonian sweep discussions of many things, certainly of much more than moves the ordinary philosopher of science.) At first I found the title baffling, for it reminded me of one of those predictable and banal New York Times editorials that appear to be written by one of the less gifted computers who got in because he had an uncle. Only there it would have
lowards science read Free Science in a Free Society than which nothing could be farther from the purpose of the author. He is certainly not an admirer of our excessively monochrome society whose members are permitted to have opinions of any colour as long as they are scientific. His idea of a free society is stated repeatedly: ‘A free society is a society in which all traditions are given equal rights, equal access to education and other positions of power.’ (p. 30). ‘A free society insists on the separation of science and society.’ (p. 31). Science which has arrogated .to itself, at least in the West, the position of a state religion, must be regarded as one of many possible traditions or myths, and perhaps not even as the most adequate one; although I do not know how adequacy or, for that matter, progress or advance are to be judged. That so outspoken a disestablishmentarian, so eloquent an advocate of the blossoming of a hundred flowers will not be applauded by the beneficiaries of the autocracy of the scientific method requires no emphasis. How interests become vested-as has in the past hundred years been the case of science - has always been a riddle to me; but once established, they derive their right to be fed in the future from the fact that they have been fed in the past. If I understand the book correctly, this would end, and it would be up to the taxpayers to decide which and how much science they wished to support. Being less sanguine than the author about ‘the natural shrewdness of the human race’ (p. 98) I fear that these decisions would, though different, be hardly wiser. If at the wish of the taxpayers of California their univerfolk sities were ‘to teach Voodoo, medicine, astrology, rain dance ceremonies’ (p. 134), there still march before
my eyes the same drum majorettes, even if under different colours. Science in a Free Society is, as I said, in my opinion a very interesting book, but it is not much of a book. It is a tripartite olla podrida. The first section carries the title ‘Reason and Practice’ and it consists of postscripts and excursuses to a previous treatise Against Method (London, 1975). The second part ‘Science in a Free Society’, about one-third of the whole, makes excellent reading. Much of what it has to say about science and scientists, intellectuals and experts, is so good that I wish that I had said it (and some I did say). The last chapter of this section, ‘Origin of the Ideas of this Essay,’ is autobiographical and depicts the Lehrjahre of a rare young man. The third part ‘Conversations with Illiterates’ inflicts, sometimes very amusingly, multiple critical mayhem on various colleagues and friends who had published reviews ofAgainst Method. The instructive glance through the keyhole reveals, however, only one-half of the room, as the reviews themselves are not supplied. One passage on Good and Evil, too long to be quoted here (pp. 139, 140) is recommended to readers who have not sworn the Hypocritic Oath. It could lend itself to much meditation, and that is what books are for, though rarely books on the philosophy of science. With those the present book has only one thing in common: it deals mostly with astronomy and physics, except where it strays far from the natural sciences altogether; it does not consider, unfortunately, the sciences that in number of practitioners probably outweigh all the others, namely, what is vulgarly called the life sciences. But then, the philosophy of life is not necessarily a philosophy of science. ERWIN 350 Central Park U.S.A.
West, New York,
CHARGAFF NY
10025,
Progressing towards the end of progress? Paradoxes of Progress by G. S. Scent, W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1978. $7.20 (p.b.) (xii + 231 pages) ISBN 0 7167 0086 7
It is not often that an actual improvement in the quality of a book can be perceived from its first pages to the last. Being irritating and frustrating in its first chapters, Stent’s ‘Paradoxes of Progress’ improves from chapter 8 to the last (11 th) chapter where a real effort has been made by the
author to cope with recent views of Man on himself. Perhaps this reflects an actual learning on the part of the author since the first articles collected in the book were written in 1969 and the last in 1977. The main approach of the first chapters seems to reflect a fear of the future -we are supposed to be living at the end of progress. Signs of this fact are: the beat generation, the decadence of art, the acceleration of (technological) progress and, for the biological scientist, the achievements of