Abstract
An ideal view is sketched of the relationship between the facts established in science and the values of ethics and politics, and of the distinction between them. Some necessary qualifications are drawn, which do not essentially undermine the ideal. Then two cases of scientific work are considered in which considerations of value may in different ways be playing a more intimate role in the science than the ideal would suggest. These are Darwin’s theory of evolution and the current consensus on climate change. Are any general lessons to be drawn from these cases?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In The Element of Fire: Science, Art and the Human World, London: Routledge, 1988.
See T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: Chicago Universtiy Press, 1962. For Lakatos, Kuhn (again) and Feyerabend, see their articles in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, London: John Murray, 1859. Quoted here in the version of the first edition edited by J.W. Burrow, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982, p. 116. On Darwin’s debt to Malthus and some other points, I am indebted to A.N.Wilson’s Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker, London: John Murray, 2017, esp pp. 293–294.
Ibid, p. 119.
Ibid, p. 458.
Ibid, p. 445.
Ibid, pp. 459–460.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: John Murray, 1871; quoted here in the second edition, London: John Murray, 1898, Vol II, p. 440.
Ibid, Vol I, p. 197.
Ibid, Vol II, p. 218.
Ibid, Vol II, pp. 438–440.
Ibid, Vol I, pp. 205–206.
See K.R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, third edition, 1969, esp. Ch. 1 and Ch. 2.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report, published in various section, 2013–2014, and finalised November 2014. Available on line at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/While raising some problems in the area, what I say in this section is based on the Report’s statistics. Neither am I questioning that that we have been in a period of global warming, the pause notwithstanding, for the decades since 1975, nor that this trend might not continue. My argument is about future uncertainty, especially because of as yet unforeseeable technological innovation, about the measures that might be required by the type of warming predicted by the Report and about the blurring of lines between the science and the policies which are adopted to deal with the facts. On the point about future technological development, see K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, second edition, 1961, esp. pp. v–vii.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
O’Hear, A. Science and Political Imperatives: Orders of Precedence. Axiomathes 28, 639–651 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-018-9409-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-018-9409-z