Defending Science within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism 1591021170, 2003012541

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D E F E N D I N

GI

SCIENCE -within

r e as o n

D E F E N D I N

GI

SCIENCE -within

r e as o n

BETWEEN SCIENTISM AND CYNICISM

SUSAN HAACK

@ Prometheus Books

59 John Glenn Drive Amherst, New York 14228--2197

Published 2003 by Prometheus Books Defending Science-within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism. Copyright © 2003 by Susan Haack. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quota­ tions embodied in critical articles and reviews. Inquiries should be addressed to Prometheus Books 59 John Glenn Drive Amherst, New York 14228-2197 VOICE: 716-691-0133, ext. 207 FAX: 716-564-2711 WWW.PROMETHEUSBOOKS.COM 07 06 05 04 03

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haack, Susan. Defending science-within reason: between scientism and cynicism I by Susan Haack. p. cm. ISBN 1-59102-117-0 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Creative ability in science. 2. Science-Methodology. 3. Science-Philosophy. I. Title. Q l 72.5.C74H33 2003 501-dc2I 2003012541 Every attempt has been made to trace accurate ownership of copyrighted material with respect to the illustrations in this book. Errors and omissions will be corrected in subse­ quent editions .. provided that noti fie at ion is sent to the pub) isher. Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of dis­ interested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere founda­ tions; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness-then how besotted and contemptible seems every sentimentalist who comes blowing his smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream! William James, "The Will to Believe"

There are no scientific methods which alone lead to knowl­ edge! We have to tackle things experimentally, now angry with them and now kind, and be successively just, passionate and cold with them. One person addresses things as a policeman, a second as a father confessor, a third as an inquisitive wanderer. Something can be wrung from them now with sympathy, now with force; reverence for their secrets will take one person forward, indiscretion and rogu­ ishness in revealing their secrets will do the same for another.We investigators are, like all conquerors, seafarers, adventurers, of an audacious morality and must reconcile ourselves to being considered on the whole evil. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak

Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.... [E]ven when you have no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.... George Eliot, Adam Bede

CONTENTS

9

Preface Acknowledgments

13

Chapter I: Neither Sacred nor a Confidence Trick: The Critical Common-Sensist Manifesto

17

Chapter 2: Nail Soup: A Brief, Opinionated History of the Old Deferentialism

31

Chapter 3: Clues to the Puzzle of Scientific Evidence: A More-So Story

57

Chapter 4: The Long Arm of Common Sense: Instead of a Theory of Scientific Method

93

Chapter 5: Realistically Speaking: How Science Fumbles, and Sometimes Forges, Ahead

123

Chapter 6: The Same, Only Different: Integrating the Intentional

151

7

8

CONTENTS

Chapter 7: A Modest Proposal: The Sensible Program in Sociology of Science

179

Chapter 8: Stronger Than Fiction: Science, Literature, and the "Literature of Science"

207

Chapter 9: Entangled in the Bramble Bush: Science in the Law

233

Chapter 10: Point of Honor: On Science and Religion

265

Chapter 11: What Man Can Achieve When He Really Puts His Mind to It: 299 The Value, and the Values, of Science Chapter 12: Not Till It's Over: Reflections on the End of Science

329

Bibliography

355

Index

389

PREFACE

y title speaks of "Defending Science"; but, though every now and then you will hear the rumble of a distant skirmish, or smell a whiff of gun­ powder, this book is not intended as another salvo in the so-called "Science Wars." Rather, its purpose is to articulate a new, and hopefully a true, understanding of what science is and does. Discussions of the Old Deferen­ tialism, with its focus on the "logic of science," on structure, rationality, and objectivity, and of the New Cynicism, with its focus on power, politics, and rhet­ oric-and of the deep cultural currents of admiration for and uneasiness about science of which they are manifestations-serve only as background to this con­ structive project. My title speaks of defending science "Within Reason," and the play on the two meanings is intentional. I shall defend the pretensions of science to tell us how the world is, but in only quite a modest, qualified way ("within reason" in its colloquial sense), and from the perspective of a more general understanding of human cognitive capacities and limitations, and our place as inquirers in the world (''within reason" in a more philosophical sense). Science has managed to discover a great deal about the world and how it works, but it is a thoroughly human enterprise, messy, fallible, and fumbling; and rather than using a uniquely rational method unavailable to other inquirers, it is continuous with the most ordinary of empirical inquiry, "nothing more than a refinement of our everyday

9

10

PREFACE

thinking," as Einstein once put it. There is no distinctive, timeless "scientific method," only the modes of inference and procedures common to all serious inquiry, and the multifarious ''helps" the sciences have gradually devised to refine our natural human cognitive capacities: to amplify the senses, stretch the imagination, extend reasoning power, and sustain respect for evidence. For a while I toyed with the idea of beginning: "There's no such thing as sci­ entific method, and this is a book about it." 1 But that would have been too clever by half; or rather, it would have been half-right at best. For, once key ideas about scientific evidence and scientific inquiry had begun to come into focus, and I had learned enough of the history of molecular biology to illustrate those ideas from real-life scientific episodes, I glimpsed new ways of approaching difficult but fascinating questions far beyond my original agenda: about the differences between science and literature, the tensions between science and religion, the interactions of science with the law; and about the place of science in our lives, its value, its dangers, its limits, and even the possibility of its eventual annihila­ tion, culmination, or completion. No doubt that's why this now seems to me the most Pragmatist of my books: influenced here by Peirce, there by James, its approach to the social sciences informed by Mead's work, its concern with sci­ ence and values by Dewey's; and above all, liberated by the example of this rich tradition from the uneasy reluctance of analytic philosophy to stray beyond strictly linguistic, logical, or conceptual questions. I came to see more clearly that science is valuable not only for the "magnif­ icent edifice" of knowledge built over centuries by many generations of scien­ tists, not only for the technological developments that have made our lives longer and more comfortable, but as a manifestation of the human talent for inquiry at its limited, imperfect, but sometimes remarkable best. I came to grasp more firmly that, though writers inquire, and scientists write, the word ·•literature"' does not refer, like the word "science," to a federation of kinds of inquiry, but to a fed­ eration of kinds of writing; and so to understand how pointless and unnecessary it is to worry about whether science or literature is more valuable. How did I get involved in a project as vast, as dernanding, as overwheln1ing as this turned out to be? For the usual reasons; or at least, ,ny usual reasons. I thought-given the ideas I had sketched in Evidence and Inquiry about the place of the sciences within empirical inquiry generally. and the couple of essays in Man(lesto