To my eyes, the bitter struggle over "science" demonstrates that, for
those who have advanced beyond religious irrationality, there is still a
need for a hegemonic intellectual framework. Much of the appeal of
classical Marxism, of course, was based on its supposed "scientific"
character. Everyone else was just poking around; Marxists understood
the "laws of motion" of capitalism, if not human history in general. A
popular argument for capitalism, on the other hand, is that the
combination of the market economy and the "marketplace of ideas" has
given rise to a never-ending increase in productivity and living
standards. The case for a division of knowledge, according to which no
one can know enough to govern the system as a whole, but intellectual
specialists can prosper amid general competition, mirrors the case for a
division of labor. Of course, just as the hierarchies of the modern
corporation contradict the contractual utopia of competitive capitalism,
the hierarchies of science belie the individualist conception of
knowledge.
The pomos would play the role of atheists, denouncing science as a false
god. Unfortunately, few of them know much real science (this is now
beyond dispute), and they deny the obvious fact that modern science, for
all its defects, is a uniquely successful human enterprise: it really
does advance over time, in a sense in which no other form of human
knowledge does.
There are two levels to this problem. The easiest (but still difficult)
is the critique of the application of science in the modern world, its
subordination to profit and power. I think we have the tools we need to
do this, and there is a steady stream of literature, in the
environmental sciences, science and technology studies, and elsewhere,
that shows how it can be done. (Think for instance of the last 25 years
of research on the application of technology to the labor process.)
The more difficult problem is dislodging science from its ideological
role while continuing to recognize its distinctive character. Very
generally, I think this requires a close look at the institutions
through which science is organized, such as educational systems,
journals, and the grant economy. Just as the explanation for science's
progressivism is found not in an ideal methodology ("the scientific
method") which is largely fiction, but in the distinctive social
organization of science (as Kuhn and others since have shown), so its
embeddedness in structures of wealth and power can be traced
institutionally, and not in the critique of an abstract conception of
"knowledge/power".
Unfortunately, institutionalism, which might provide intellectual
moorings for this project, is itself contaminated with false scientism.
(Dewey's use of science in particular is atrocious, even though his
insight concerning the potential relationship between scientific
investigation and democratic discourse is still central. Veblen is also
problematic here.) Traditional institutionalist analysis uses an
idealized "scientific" model of knowledge and action as the
counterfactual against which to measure actual social institutions.
Institutional analysis of science seems to me to be the right way to go,
but we will have to be much less doctrinaire about counterfactuals.
The doctrinaire frame of mind, in religion, science, and social theory,
is the problem.
Peter Dorman
