The Rationality of Science

Chapter 1 The Rationality of Science

For many philosophers, science is the paradigm of rationality – of socially or- ganised rationality – and its rules of procedure or method the fundamental rules of rational inquiry. Just as Quine was wont to ask: ‘If sheer logic is not conclusive, what is?’,1 so the majority of philosophers of science might echo: if pure science is not rational, what is? Moreover, given the apparently stunning success of science in providing us with a continuously more detailed knowledge of nature and her workings, how can anyone seriously doubt the existence, and effectiveness, of rational scientific methods for obtaining such knowledge? – for if such methods did not exist, or were not effective, then science’s continuing success in providing such knowledge would have to be thought of as a rationally inexplicable miracle. And in this day and age few philosophers are willing to countenance the existence of miracles, especially when they seem to repeat themselves with almost gruelling regularity.

1.1 The ‘Initial’ and ‘Transcendental’ Strategies

Yet despite all this, all is not necessarily plain sailing – for many philosophers of science would acknowledge that the various philosophical attempts to char- acterise science’s rational methods, the various philosophical theories of scientific method, all run into difficulties of one sort or another (viz. the notori- ous problem of induction). But the overwhelming majority resolutely resist the conclusion that the failure of these attempts might constitute evidence that science is not, after all, rational – or that effective rational methods for obtaining scientific knowledge do not, after all, exist. For just as one can distinguish between arithmetic and Frege’s theory of arithmetic – so that Russell’s discovery of paradoxes in Frege’s theory did not necessarily set arithmetic itself

1 Quine raises this question in the context of his discussion of deviant logics – see his The Philosophy of Logic (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), Chapter 6, pp. 80–94 (the quotation is from p. 81). For criticism of Quine’s views on this issue, see Susan Haack, Deviant Logic: Some Philosophical Issues (Cambridge: c.u.p., 1974); for extended criticism of Haack’s book see my ‘From Logic to Logics (and Back Again)’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Sci- ence, 33 (March, 1982), pp. 77–94.

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‘spinning’2 – so too can one distinguish between science’s rational methods and the philosopher of science’s theory of those methods. But then, by parity of reasoning, the discovery of difficulties in the various philosophical theories of scientific rationality does not necessarily upset the rationality of science itself. So the former, it might be argued, certainly come and go; but the latter remains nevertheless a hardy perennial.3 This apparent philosophical commitment to the rationality of science itself, or to the existence of effective rational methods for obtaining a knowledge of nature, is not without its attendant dangers, as we shall see. In the first place, however, it needs to be remarked that it does seem true enough that one cannot validly conclude to the irrationality of science itself, or to the non-existence of effective rational scientific methods, directly from the failures of any particular philosophical theories of science. For any such inference will, presum- ably, always depend upon the additional assumption that we have already ar- ticulated all the possible theories of rational method, and clearly we will always be free to attempt to refute this additional assumption by developing new theories of method. Thus, the failure of any particular set of theories of rational, scientific, method can never by itself logically force us into concluding that science itself is irrational – for we are always free to try again. Thus at any point in time the theory of scientific method may appear to be as dead as a duck, but the logical space will apparently continue to exist for the quacks to see if they cannot get some more mileage out of the old girl before she runs out of steam.

2 In his lectures Popper used to tell the anecdote that Frege, upon hearing of Russell’s discovery of paradoxes in his own and Russell’s theories, exclaimed ‘Die Arithmetik ist ins Schwank- en geraten!’ (roughly, ‘Arithmetic has been set spinning!). Popper has christened this remark ‘Frege’s’ mistake’: according to him, it was Frege’s theory of arithmetic which was set spinning, not arithmetic itself. W.W. Bartley iii tells this story in his ‘Rationality Versus the Theory of Rationality’ in Mario Bunge (ed.), The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy (Glen- coe, N.Y.: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 3–31; see p. 9. [The story is told in Popper’s Postscript; see, now, Karl Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science, ed. W.W. Bartley iii, London: Hutchinson, 1983, p. 89; Popper in turn cites P.A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, i.e., Bertrand Russell, ‘My Mental Development’, Evanston, IL: The Library of Living Philosophers, 1946, p. 13. JS]. 3 For example, Bartley, op.cit., appears to take this kind of tack when he writes: ‘The blame for continued failure by rationalists to answer skeptical and fideistic arguments should, in fact, be placed on the inadequacy and primitive character of our theories of rationality … rather than on our rationality or reasoning capacity itself’ (p. 9). In fairness, however, Bartley does not simply rest content with this manoeuvre, but rather tries to develop a new theory of rationality – one in line with Popper’s falsificationist philosophy of science. See also in this connection Bartley’s The Retreat to Commitment (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. 1962 [sec- ond edition, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1984]), as well as Section 1.4.