SneerClub

My graduate degree was in philosophy of science, and I wouldn’t suggest Kuhn or, indeed, much philosophy of science as a salve for this particular problem. For much of the 20th century, the philosophy of science primarily theorised about two main sets of data: (1) idealised physics, which is to say the “final” theories of physics; (2) historical case studies, which is to say the experimental and theoretical debates which produced those theories. These are two distinct strands of research (of which Kuhn belongs to, and plays an important role in introducing, the second), but perspicuous observers will note that neither of them deal with people who get science wrong, rather they deal with either what is “scientific knowledge”, or how it is that scientific “knowledge” is produced.

Now understanding a little better how scientific knowledge is produced, or even that it is produced (and not intuited, Yudkowsky-style, as if given by a beam of pink energy from the future), could be a preliminary inoculation against behaving as if it is intuited, Yudkowsky-style, as if given by a beam of pink energy from the future. Or, in a twist of which many Kuhn readers have fallen afoul, it can be the radicalisation of a would-be “paradigmatic” thinker, who therefore learns that “normal” scientific knowledge is always local, partial, and primarily intended for the NPC types who populate laboratories. If I wanted to turn somebody with the quintessential rationalist personality into a monstrous basilisk-wraith I would give them Kuhn.

I’m not one for delivering the usual bromides against Kuhn’s supposed sloppiness (I think his treatment has been selective and unkind), but there are also better, more recent works in the same vein (and, naturally, Feyerabend did Kuhn better anyway). If I wanted to give somebody “the good shit” from philosophy of science, I would give them Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking, and Bas van Frassen. But the problem remains - how do I explain to these people that they aren’t participating in scientific discourse at all? - after all, as we get more and more recent even the very moderate non-objectivisms of Cartwright, Hacking, van Frassen et al. become diluted as, in practical terms, much of philosophy of science converges on the project of once again reifying a now complicated picture of scientific knowledge in the teeth of perceived worries about its objectivity.

Why is this a problem? Well the pragmatic image of science with which your rationalist is liable to come away from these texts is one in which the body of the whole thing is incredibly complex and everything has its role, including that of the rationalist. With Kuhn we will have deepened their appreciation of their own importance, and with the non-objectivists we will have challenged their STEMacism only to supply their project with an undeserved aura of validity!

(I here leave out the really technical stuff, naturally. Much of philosophy of science is of course concerned with resolving particular puzzles in particular areas. This is of course a lot more difficult and worth doing than any grand project we might have in mind, but it can’t help the people we’re discussing).

Only the hardcore realists remain, but what do they have to offer? Idealised physical models! This simply cannot help us at all.

Hell, if they’re anything like a gamut of arseholes I’ve run into over the years, at least a few of them proudly trumpet that back at the turn of the century Bruno Latour was expressing regret about the critical project in STS, and that it’s the only thing of his they’ve ever read.

The great demarcatory projects are, mostly, a thing of the past, but really this is what we need. Problematically, for the last 50 years it has been widely agreed that they were wrong, and there was no real standard of demarcation between “science” and other modes of thought. Nonetheless, and ignoring that there is one good Popperian still alive to do, we can’t use Popper - that’s absurdly dangerous territory - but we do have Lakatos.

Now that’s an idea I could have put at the top. We have to ignore that, as before, people don’t really believe in “degenerating research programmes” anymore (although perhaps philosophy of science is just a little too close to science to say so). But you know what? Fuck it. Make them read Lakatos.

But it won’t help, because their research programme is almost tailor made to outrun scientific testing.