Is Science Rational?

Abstract

We face a paradox: scientific rationality, which has liberated man from ignorance, from the whims and oppression of a blind nature, and which has subordinated the earth to man, has become the potential instrument of the self-destruction of the human species. War, pollution and economic oppression are seen as the inevitable spin-off of scientific advance by large sections of the public. The spectre of atomic annihilation and the barbarism of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are seen as the products of an unrestrained scientific rationality. The recent wave of anti-scientific, anti-rational moods, especially among the young people, threatens a wholesale rejection not simply of the technological fruits of science, but of scientific rationality as well, in favor of one or another version of mysticism, irrationalism, and primitivism, of blood and soil philosophy. Somehow, the argument goes, if we listen to the blood, get back to our roots, and cast out the evil demons of a blind and inhuman rationality, we will save ourselves. On this account of how things stand, the only reasonable thing to do is to reject reason, at least in its scientific forms. And thus the paradox: a reasonable rejection of reason.