Science and Its Critics 0813508525

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Science and Its

Critics

Science and Its

Critics

Joho Passmore

Mason Welch Gross Lectureship Series

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS New Brunswick, New Jersey

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Passn1ore, John Arthur. Science and its critics. (Mason \Velch Gross lectureship series) l. Science-Philosophy. I. Title. II. QI 75.P3424 501 77-12049 ISBN 0-8135-0852-5

Series.

Copyright ©1978 by Rutgers, The State lJniversity of New Jersey Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledg1I1ents

Chapter 1 Antiscience and Scientific Explanations

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VII

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Chapter 2 Antiscience and Antitechnology

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Chapter 3 Antiscience and the Scientific Spirit

45

Chapter 4 Uniqueness, Imagination, and Objectivity

69

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Acknow ledgrnen ts

This book is associated in my mind with an exceptionally large number of pleasant memories. It grew out of the Oscar Mendel­ sohn Lecture delivered at Monash University under the title "The Revolt against Science" and in the presence of the donor. This was published in Search 3( 1972): 415-22; paragraphs from it are incor­ porated in the present text with the permission of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science. From that point on it gradually expanded. An earlier version of the first lecture was delivered at the University of Kyoto as the Tanabe Memorial Lecture and at the University of Heidelberg. The series as a whole was first tried out in the Programme on Science, Tech­ nology and Society at Cornell lTniversity, under the hospi­ table, but by no means uncritical, eye of Professor Max Black, and then, in summary, with a group of students and staff on a lawn one tropic night in Honolulu. Revised, it was delivered in the John Curtin Medical School of the Australian National University un­ der the auspices of its Committee on Science and Technology Policy Research. And then, finally, as the Mason Gross Lectures at Rutgers University. In each case I learned much from the discus­ sion which followed the lecture and greatly enjoyed the hospitality which reached its peak, from an already extraordinarily high level, at Rutgers University at the hands of Dr. Gross hirnself and Profes­ sor Richard Schlatter. It will be apparent _from their history that the lectures were not at all designed for audiences consisting wholly of professional philosophers. I am very conscious of the fact that I have sometimes skirted around, or skated over, deep philo�ophical problems. But I ..

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SCIENCE AND ITS CRITICS

hope, all the same, that I have written a philosophical book, even if one which is accessible to a wider audience than the closer techni­ cal studies which naturally provide philosophy with its center. I should add that the printed version of the lectures differs consider­ ably from what was anywhere delivered. My thanks are due to Miss Isabel Sheaffe for her patience with the multiple retypings which the composition of this book has called for; to Mr. David Dumaresq for assistance in coping with the wide-ranging literature and with the checking of detail; to my wife for a great deal of careful reading and criticizing of the text at various stages in its composition. And once more, to my old teacher, John Anderson, who would have disagreed with much which I have here written but whose influence, nevertheless, is everywhere present.

John Passmore

The scope of the practical control of nature newly put into our hand by scientific ways of thinking vastly exceeds the scope of the old control grounded in common-sense. Its rate of increase accelerates so that no one can trace the limit; one may even fear that the being of man may be crushed by hi-s own powers .... He may drown in his wealth, like a child in his bath tub, who has turned on the water and cannot turn it off.

William James

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Chapter 1

Antiscience and Scienti£ic Explanations

On the face of it, science has been one of the more successful forms of human enterprise. Consider the ambitions of science as Bacon and Descartes proclaimed them at the beginning of the modern scientific era. The scientists of Bacon's New Atlantis set out to acquire "knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Descartes was no less hopeful. By conjoining the artisan's skills with the philosopher's intellect science ,vould even­ tually generate, so Descartes anticipated, an "infinity of arts and crafts, enabling us to enjoy without any trouble the fruits of the earth and the good things that are found there.'' 1 Surely, one might well feel inclined to assume, these ambitions have come to fruition. An ordinary household refrigerator is suffi­ cient evidence of that fact. Making use of the physicist's theory of heat, his understanding of the "causes and secret motions of things," engineers and designers have produced a n1achine, a method of storage, which enables us, quite literally, to "enjoy the fruits of the earth and of the good things that are found there.'' And this with, anyhow, a diminishing minimum of trouble. If there is still much to be learned, much to be done, the path, on this vie,v, lies clear before us-more science, more technology so that we shall have total understanding of everything that exists, total control 1. Francis Bacon . .\'n_,, ,.Jtlantis in 11'orln. ed. J. Spnlding. R. L. Elli-.,, dtHI D. D. I k�1th. I I n>ls. (London: Longman. 1857-74). :l:156: Rene Descartes. IJn