The Natural Sciences and Public Policy: Insights from the History and the Philosophy of Science

Klinger, Janeen M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-11251-6_2

Janeen M. Klinger²

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Abstract

Because Chap. 1 notes Lucian Pye’s observation that the social sciences were worshipping that “strangely distorted and graven image of science,” this chapter examines the central debates associated with the history and philosophy of science to shed light on that image. The discussion compares the views of various philosophers of science concerning the nature of the scientific enterprise focusing on three interrelated issues. These include the extent to which scientific ideas are cumulative, the extent of their objectivity and the degree they can be divorced from norms and the broader social context. The discussion covers the important ideas of scholars like Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, Thomas Kuhn and Stephen Toulmin.

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Notes

1.
This discussion of issues related to the philosophy of science is necessarily limited to those germane to the image that social scientists tend to hold concerning science. For a comprehensive analysis of issues, see Martin Curd, J.A. Cover and Christopher Pincock, eds., The Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, 2nd ed., (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013).
2.
Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 4.
3.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd enlarged ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 139, 165.
4.
Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, enlarged ed., (New York: The Free Press, 1968), 4, 5.
5.
Merton, 605. Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 175, 282.
6.
J. D. Bernal, Science in History (New York: Hawthorne Books, Inc. 1965), 5, 6.
7.
Karl Popper, “Science: Conjectures and Refutations,” in Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, 2nd ed., eds. Martin Curd, J.A. Cover and Christopher Pincock (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013), 3–10.
8.
Imre Lakatos, “Science and Pseudoscience,” in Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, 2nd ed., eds. Martin Curd, J.A. Cover and Christopher Pincock (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013), 20–26.
9.
Kuhn, 1. Unless noted otherwise, the source for this discussion is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
10.
Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1959), 15, 513.
11.
Kuhn, 180–181.
12.
Toulmin, 112.
13.
Ernan McMullin, “Rationality and Paradigm Change in Science,” in The Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, 2nd ed., eds. Martin Curd, J.A. Cover and Christopher Pincock (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013), 111–130.
14.
Merton, 9.
15.
A.R. Hall, The Scientific Revolution 1500–1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude, 2nd ed., (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), xiv, 68.
16.
Bernal, 310.
17.
John C. Greene, Science, Ideology and World View (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 1981), 5, 36, 38–39.
18.
Greene, 47.
19.
C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 31.
20.
Toulmin, 105–106.
21.
Toulmin, 140–141.
22.
Toulmin, 228.
23.
Helen E. Longino, “Values, and Objectivity,” in Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues 2nd ed., eds. Martin Curd, J.A. Cover and Christopher Pincock (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013), 144–145.
24.
Quoted in McMullin, 124.
25.
Kuhn, 175.
26.
Thomas S. Kuhn, “Objectivity, Value Judgement, and Theory Choice,” in Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues 2nd ed., eds. Martin Curd, J.A. Cover and Christopher Pincock (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2013), 95.
27.
Toulmin, 225.
28.
Lakatos, 25.
29.
Kuhn, “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice,” 95–96.
30.
Kuhn, “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice,” 98.
31.
Longino, 148, 154, 153.
32.
See, for example, Koestler, 115, and Toulmin, 267, Toulmin goes on to say that scientists themselves often cultivate the image of disinterestedness to foster an image of science as a rational enterprise exempt from general principles of political and social action.
33.
Longino, 154–155.
34.
Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, x.
35.
Toulmin, 116.
36.
Koestler, 519–520.
37.
Toulmin, 219, 220.
38.
Hall, xvii, 172.
39.
Toulmin, 213.
40.
Bernal, 276.
41.
Edgar Zilsel, “The Sociological Roots of Science,” Social Studies of Science 30 (December 2000): 937.
42.
Bernal, 258.
43.
Merton, 633, 239.
44.
P.M. Rattansi, “The Social Interpretation of Science in the Seventeenth Century,” in Science and Society, 1600–1900 ed., Peter Mathias (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 13.
45.
Koestler, 525–526.
46.
Toulmin, 13–16.
47.
Greene, 14.
48.
Greene, 49.
49.
Merton, 585.
50.
Koestler, 13.
51.
Greene, 2.
52.
Toulmin, 296–298.
53.
Bernal, 318.
54.
Jan Golinski, “Science in the Enlightenment, Revisited,” History of Science 49 (June 2011), 221–222.
55.
Koestler, 427.
56.
Toulmin, 210.
57.
Kevles, 6.
58.
Merton, 681.
59.
Zilsel, 940.
60.
Bernal, 370–371.
61.
Snow, 33.
62.
Kevles, 9, 263.
63.
Kevles, 37, 59.
64.
Bernal, 508.
65.
Kevles, 53, 63–64.
66.
Kevles, 94; Bernal, 519.
67.
Kevles, 112, 115, 117–138.
68.
Kevles, 194–195, 291.
69.
Kevles, 296, 299, 300.
70.
Price, 44–48.
71.
Kevles, 301.
72.
Kevles, 309.
73.
Price, 126.
74.
Kevles, 312–316, 320.
75.
Kevles, 351–352. James R. Killian, “Science and Foreign Policy,” in The Dimensions of Diplomacy ed., E.A.J. Johnson, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), 74.
76.
Kevles, 390. The AEC was abolished in 1974 and replaced with the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and became a component of the US Department of Energy.
77.
Kevles, 390. Killian, 59–60.
78.
Price, 166.
79.
Kevles, 377–382.
80.
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 15, 18, 20, 162–163.
81.
Greene, 87.

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US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, USA
Janeen M. Klinger

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Klinger, J.M. (2019). The Natural Sciences and Public Policy: Insights from the History and the Philosophy of Science. In: Social Science and National Security Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11251-6_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11251-6_2
Published: 08 February 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11250-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11251-6
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