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Two Cultures of Science: The Limits of Positivism Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Irving Louis Horowitz
Irving Louis Horowitz
Affiliation:
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
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Extract

Were it not linguistically awkward, I would be inclined to entitle these remarks a discourse on what went wrong with the love affair of policy-makers, academic pundits, and hard-core positivists with the world of science. In the nineteenth century, science was as identified with progress as bacon is with eggs. This optimism has given way to a pandemic mistrust of science by all sorts of elites. Popular displeasure became transparently evident in the waning decades of the twentieth century. Mistrust of science has only deepened in the first years of the new millennium. The ease with which scientific products are converted into destructive weaponry only partially accounts for the new skepticism about conventional claims. Unanticipated negative human consequences of actual discoveries in areas ranging from genetic engineering to wireless communication are at least as important an element in popular concerns. Nonetheless, professional assertions about the benefits of science continue unabated. Peter Watson in his fine recent survey, The Modern Mind, in which he asserts science as such “provides a new kind of humanity and a canon for life as it is now lived,” typifies these claims. The limitation in this by no means unusual formulation is that few people are actually involved in the life of science, while many are affected by applications of scientific work that often have indeterminate or, even worse, destructive consequences.

Type
Critical Perspectives
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2004 , pp. 332 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2004

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References

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