Defending Science-Within Reason: Between Scientism And Cynicism - Softcover

Haack, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591024587 ISBN 13: 9781591024583

Verlag: G38-Prometheus, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Sweeping in scope, penetrating in analysis, and generously illustrated with examples from the history of science, this new and original approach to familiar questions about scientific evidence and method tackles vital questions about science and its place in society. Avoiding the twin pitfalls of scientism and cynicism, noted philosopher Susan Haack argues that, fallible and flawed as they are, the natural sciences have been among the most successful of human enterprises-valuable not only for the vast, interlocking body of knowledge they have discovered, and not only for the technological advances that have improved our lives, but as a manifestation of the human talent for inquiry at its imperfect but sometimes remarkable best.
This wide-ranging, trenchant, and illuminating book explores the complexities of scientific evidence, and the multifarious ways in which the sciences have refined and amplified the methods of everyday empirical inquiry; articulates the ways in which the social sciences are like the natural sciences, and the ways in which they are different; disentangles the confusions of radical rhetoricians and cynical sociologists of science; exposes the evasions of apologists for religious resistance to scientific advances; weighs the benefits and the dangers of technology; tracks the efforts of the legal system to make the best use of scientific testimony; and tackles predictions of the eventual culmination, or annihilation, of the scientific enterprise.
Writing with verve and wry humor, in a witty, direct, and accessible style, Haack takes readers beyond the "Science Wars" to a balanced understanding of the value, and the limitations, of the scientific enterprise.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Haack (Coral Gables, FL) is Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami. She is the author of numerous highly acclaimed books including Philosophy of Logics, Evidence and Inquiry, Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism, and Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays.

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DEFENDING SCIENCE-within reason

BETWEEN SCIENTISM AND CYNICISMBy SUSAN HAACK

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2007 Susan Haack
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59102-458-3

Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition...............................................................................................iPreface to the Original Edition................................................................................................9Acknowledgments................................................................................................................13Chapter 1: Neither Sacred nor a Confidence Trick: The Critical Common-Sensist Manifesto........................................17Chapter 2: Nail Soup: A Brief, Opinionated History of the Old Deferentialism...................................................31Chapter 3: Clues to the Puzzle of Scientific Evidence: A More-So Story.........................................................57Chapter 4: The Long Arm of Common Sense: Instead of a Theory of Scientific Method..............................................93Chapter 5: Realistically Speaking: How Science Fumbles, and Sometimes Forges, Ahead............................................123Chapter 6: The Same, Only Different: Integrating the Intentional...............................................................151Chapter 7: A Modest Proposal: The Sensible Program in Sociology of Science.....................................................179Chapter 8: Stronger Than Fiction: Science, Literature, and the "Literature of Science".........................................207Chapter 9: Entangled in the Bramble-Bush: Science in the Law...................................................................233Chapter 10: Point of Honor: On Science and Religion............................................................................265Chapter 11: What Man Can Achieve When He Really Puts His Mind to It: The Value, and the Values, of Science.....................299Chapter 12: Not Till It's Over: Reflections on the End of Science..............................................................329Bibliography...................................................................................................................355Index..........................................................................................................................389

Chapter One

NEITHER SACRED NOR A CONFIDENCE TRICK

The Critical Common-Sensist Manifesto

That men should rush with violence from one extreme, without going more or less into the contrary extreme, is not to be expected from the weakness of human nature. -Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers

Attitudes to science range all the way from uncritical admiration at one extreme, through distrust, resentment, and envy, to denigration and outright hostility at the other. We are confused about what science can and what it can't do, and about how it does what it does; about how science differs from literature or art; about whether science is really a threat to religion; about the role of science in society and the role of society in science. And we are ambivalent about the value of science. We admire its theoretical achievements, and welcome technological developments that improve our lives; but we are disappointed when hoped-for results are not speedily forthcoming, dismayed when scientific discoveries threaten cherished beliefs about ourselves and our place in the universe, distrustful of what we perceive as scientists' arrogance or elitism, disturbed by the enormous cost of scientific research, and disillusioned when we read of scientific fraud, misconduct, or incompetence.

Complicated as they are, the confusions can be classified into two broad kinds, the scientistic and the anti-scientific. Scientism is an exaggerated kind of deference towards science, an excessive readiness to accept as authoritative any claim made by the sciences, and to dismiss every kind of criticism of science or its practitioners as anti-scientific prejudice. Anti-science is an exaggerated kind of suspicion of science, an excessive readiness to see the interests of the powerful at work in every scientific claim, and to accept every kind of criticism of science or its practitioners as undermining its pretensions to tell us how the world is. The problem, of course, is to say when the deference, or the suspicion, is "excessive."

Disentangling the confusions is made harder by an awkward duality of usage. Sometimes the word "science" is used simply as a way of referring to certain disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, and so forth, usually also anthropology and psychology, sometimes also sociology, economics, and so on. But often-perhaps more often than not-"science" and its cognates are used honorifically: advertisers urge us get our clothes cleaner with new, scientific, Wizzo; teachers of critical thinking urge us to reason scientifically, to use the scientific method; juries are more willing to believe a witness when told that what he offers is scientific evidence; astrology, water-divining, homeopathy or chiropractic or acupuncture are dismissed as pseudo-sciences; skeptical of this or that claim, people complain that it lacks a scientific explanation, or demand scientific proof. And so on. "Scientific" has become an all-purpose term of epistemic praise, meaning "strong, reliable, good." No wonder, then, that psychologists and sociologists and economists are sometimes so zealous in insisting on their right to the title. No wonder, either, that practitioners in other areas-"Management Science," "Library Science," "Military Science," even "Mortuary Science"-are so keen to claim it.

In view of the impressive successes of the natural sciences, this honorific usage is understandable enough. But it is thoroughly unfortunate. It obscures the otherwise obvious fact that not all and not only practitioners of disciplines classified as sciences are honest, thorough, successful inquirers; when plenty of scientists are lazy, incompetent, unimaginative, unlucky, or dishonest, while plenty of historians, journalists, detectives, etc., are good inquirers. It tempts us into a fruitless preoccupation with the problem of demarcating real science from pretenders. It encourages too thoughtlessly uncritical an attitude to the disciplines classified as sciences, which in turn provokes envy of those disciplines, and encourages a kind of scientism-inappropriate mimicry, by practitioners of other disciplines, of the manner, the technical terminology, the mathematics, etc., of the natural sciences. And it provokes resentment of the disciplines so classified, which encourages anti-scientific attitudes. Sometimes you can even see the envy and the resentment working together: for example, with those self-styled ethnomethodologists who undertake "laboratory studies" of science, observing, as they would say, part of the industrial complex in the business of the production of inscriptions; or-however grudgingly, you have to admit the rhetorical brilliance of this self-description-with "creation science." And, most to the present purpose, this honorific usage stands in the way of a straightforward acknowledgment that science-science, that is, in the descriptive sense-is neither sacred nor a confidence trick.

Science is not sacred: like all human enterprises, it is thoroughly fallible, imperfect, uneven in its achievements, often fumbling, sometimes corrupt, and of course incomplete. Neither, however, is it a confidence trick: the natural...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G38-Prometheus
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1591024587
• ISBN 13: 9781591024583
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 432
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar