Science and advocacy
To round-out this discussion, I would like to make another observation about scientists and scientific progress. There is a common assertion, in various formulations, to the effect that faith is belief despite the facts, science is belief because of the facts. Like many such sayings, it sounds wise and insightful but does not withstand scrutiny. One need only look at the emotional attacks by scientists on faith to see that more than objective rationality is involved. In addition, if one looks at scientists’ efforts to defend and protect their own theories from conflicting evidence and criticism, it is often apparent that the scientists are not behaving as strictly objective, rational truth-seekers. Is that a problem? I think not, as long as one sees what is transpiring and is not misled by claims of special expertise and superior knowledge or experience.
In fact, we have models in the modern Western tradition that suggest that biased advocacy, in contrast to neutral investigation, can be a powerful tool for the discovery of truth. The more general case suggests that the process will work only if there is a relative balance of biases across interested groups and that there is some open-mindedness to criticism among at least some parties to the debate. See, e.g., John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Chapter 2. That is the model that Popper and Lipton and many others seem to have had in mind for the proper scientific process. And, that model has been criticized by various others as naïve and misleading when applied to real life experiences.
However, the Anglo-American legal tradition is based in part on the belief that interested parties aggressively advancing their individual interests in an adversarial process before a passive finder of fact can dispel the false and distill the truth on average more effectively than a magisterial process in which the investigation is initiated and directed by an investigative official seeking to discover the truth. The assumption is that the best and most creative arguments, the most probing and effective investigations and the most damaging and incisive challenges are more likely to be inspired by self-interest than by good intentions. Thus, there are potential benefits from having self-interested scientists, motivated by the promotion of their own ideas and own personal success. The corrective forces arise from the competing self-interests of other scientists. The vigorous competition among ideas (and theories) implemented and fueled by the personal competition among the individual participants may be expected to bring about more rapid scientific progress. At the same time, it is highly beneficial for the process to have some reference to the goals of objectivity, peer-group review, empirical testing, etc.
Of course, the parallels to the arguments of free market advocates in economic policy are obvious. So also is the relevance of the question of whether some external regulation (for example, against fraud or misrepresentation) is needed to promote the proper functioning of the marketplace for ideas as well as the marketplace for goods and services.
But, the underlying point is the benefit of competition. As only one of many possible examples, in a famous dissenting opinion addressing the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of a conviction during the First World War of a political radical for publishing a leaflet opposing U.S. involvement in revolutionary Russia, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that the “ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Abrams v. United States, November 10, 1919. The market analogy was clearly already powerful in the early twentieth century.
The “evolution” of science
Thus, I conclude on an ironic note. Throughout, I will regularly return to criticize the scientific status of the Darwinian theory of natural selection. However, it is an admittedly stubborn and pervasive paradigm of explanation in our “modern” thinking. Thus, one can picture the development or the “evolution” of science as a struggle for survival among opposing scientific models or theories in which, over time, the most “fit” or satisfying of which emerges. (As I explain elsewhere, the paradigms of natural selection and of competition have some important differences; although, many commentators treat them as if they were only different wordings for the identical idea.) It is not correct to say that the most “true” survives, since survival in the competition of ideas is not necessarily dependent upon truth or conformity to the real world. Instead, survival depends upon satisfying the needs and demands of the scientific community that is engaged in the competition. Presumably, the criteria of being most “fit” or satisfying should have some content beyond the mere fact of survival in the struggle. Here, the historian of science and the philosopher of science have something to contribute. They can look at how science has in fact “evolved” or developed over time and say things about why and how certain theories came to supplant other theories.
We may say that “fitness” of a scientific theory certainly means at least that the theory offers the promise and then is capable of achieving, possibly with manipulations and additional work, a consistency with observed phenomena and, hopefully, an ability to predict phenomena to be observed. Often, it will prove to have significant practical applications in the form of technology. We might also say that our world has advanced because of the power and success of the new theory. In part, however, the success is also due to the sense or experience of insight and understanding that the theory brings to us. We “feel” that we see more clearly. That scientific relevance of that feeling, unfortunately, is not subject (at least at this time) to empirical testing.
The Kuhnian observation that such an attribute of a new theory depends upon contemporaneous developments in other areas of science and, perhaps, in other areas of learning and culture is relevant. But, the element of potential interconnectedness itself does not tell us whether the experience of improved understanding reflects the identification or discovery of universal truths or simply the consequences of either innate or societally-derived biases of the human who achieves the feeling of understanding. Even if it is only one of the latter two, through a study of the methodological issues, there is at least the prospect of recognition of the biases and their sources and of resulting change and progress in the search for truth.
I am going to leave this subject at this point. These issues will come up repeatedly as we look at discrete areas of human knowledge. I am afraid that I will not have satisfactory answers in the end either; but, there will be more to say, and I think that some insights can be gained, with the perspective of the investigation of the foundations of various natural and social sciences.
Explanation Revisited
These arguments lead me to add a comment on the second of the two characteristics I noted above as generally true of a useful theory—that it causes one to feel that understanding or insight has been achieved by virtue of the theory. The feeling may be quite powerful and exciting, as a sense of illumination or revelation: a “Eureka” moment. New connections are revealed. A feeling of comprehension is achieved. At least a partial glimpse of some underlying truth has been obtained.
Obviously, such experiences are inherently and necessarily “subjective.” (“Whatever we mean by illumination, it is intimately connected to the mind, and therefore to intelligence.” William Byers, The Blind Spot, p.41. Indeed, “‘understanding’ … means developing a subjective feeling for the subject.” Id., p.103.) This undeniable fact poses a problem for the classical view of science as “objective,” that is, as independent of the observer.33 But, again, we shall leave that issue aside for the moment.
While I doubt that many would deny that the experience of revelation does occur, what is the source of the feeling of insight and what does the feeling indicate with respect to the question of whether the theory is true, that is, the issue of whether it conforms with or at least partially depicts reality?
Two rather different possibilities jump to mind. Perhaps the feeling occurs because, in fact, we have achieved at least some glimpse of reality, which seems to be what Polanyi considers scientific “vision” to be. The other possibility is that