Abstract
Once upon a time there was a little girl who refused to eat her supper. In her efforts to persuade the child, her mother had recourse to the old ploy: “Think of all the starving children in India!” To which the little girl responded, “Name one!”. Far from being a mere exercise in pseudo-spontaneity this story contains everything that needs to be said about Halfmann’s thesis in nuce. The task of commenting upon Halfmann’s thesis is indeed onerous precisely because it rests upon interpretations of interpretations and, like the little girl’s mother’s argument, suffers from lack of examples. Because this is the case, the task of the commentator becomes one of questioning the validity of the interpretations upon which Halfmann’s interpretations rest. In short, the rarefied level at which his paper is written invites broadside cannon fire rather than dainty parry with a foil. Halfmann’s original sub-title was ‘Capitalism and the Philosophy of Science’, which was accurate and useful in discussion. Thus, it is necessary to begin to ask Halfmann to clarify his thesis by explaining precisely what he means when he asserts that capitalism has so altered the function of metascience that government and industry have supplanted philosophy of science. Is this a thesis about the factors which must be given primary consideration in writing a history of a sociology of science (i.e., a research proposal) or is it also an explanation of current developments in philosophy of science, which assumes that there is a crisis of rationality in contemporary science — and not merely among those who claim to be K. R. Popper’s legitimate successors — or is it both of these? Briefly, is Halfmann presenting an heuristic or a manifesto. There are as many reasons for welcoming the former as there are for being repelled by the latter.
Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit A social science.
W. H. Auden ‘Under Which Lyre’ (1946)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ian Mitroff and Ralph Kilman, ‘Systemic Knowledge: Toward an Integrated Theory of Science’, Theory and Society 4 (1977), 103-129. Note that I am not claiming that we know nothing whatsoever about the ways in which research is financed but that we do not have a general theory or ‘bold conjecture’ that would allow us to make reasonably sound assertions about the finance of science as it relates to the development of scientific ideas.
Conversations with Professor Michael Di Angelis of the Department of Accounting, La Salle College, Philadelphia, 1971–1973. Briefly, the subject matter, the role of the accountant and the teaching of the subject have changed radically. Whereas accounting was once a set of glorified bookkeeping techniques, today it is a matter of employing alternative systems of accounting. This requires that the accountant be a manager rather than merely another white-collar woiker. Both factors together require that an accountant receive a different education from the one he would have received 20 or 25 years ago.
L. Pearce Williams, ‘Normal Science, Scientific Revolutions and the History of Science’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds.) ( Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1970 ), pp. 49–50.
Owen Flanagan of Wellesley College suggests that the only way to do justice to developments in psychology which coexist within the broader context of disputes about the fundamental nature of the science is to construe psychology somewhat in the manner of economics, where we are reasonably certain that we have made progress at the micro-level despite its lack at the macro-level. Personal communication.
Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany ( Garden City: Doubleday, 1967 ), pp. 31–45.
Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1968 ), pp. 158–159.
This in fact occurred in my philosophy of science class at Wellesley College in spring 1978.
These stories are grippingly recounted in Loren Eiseley, Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Man Who Discovered It ( Garden City: Doubleday, 1961 ).
See Stephen Toulmin, ‘From Logical Analysis to Conceptual History’, in: The Legacy of Logical Positivism, Peter Achinstein and Stephen Barker (eds.) ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1969 ).
This concept of logic was first sketched in Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1958 ). A fuller account of this viewof logic is found in Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rieke and Allan Janik, An Introduction to Reasoning ( New York: Macmillan, 1979 ).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1984 D. Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Janik, A. (1984). Comments on Jost Halfmann’s ‘Dethroning the Philosophy of Science: Ideological and Technical Functions of the Metasciences’. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Methodology, Metaphysics and the History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 84. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6331-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6331-3_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-009-6333-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-6331-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive