Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:04:35.415Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Science, Values, and the Value of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Noretta Koertge*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
*
Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, 130 Goodbody Hall, Bloomington, IN 47405.

Abstract

Protagonists in the so-called Science Wars differ most markedly in their views about the role of values in science and what makes science valuable. Scientists and philosophers of science have traditionally considered the principal aims of science to be explanation and application. Only cognitive values should influence what is taken to be explanatory. Social and political values affect the priority assigned to various scientific problems and the ways in which scientific results are applied. Ethical considerations may be brought to bear on the treatment of human and animal subjects, and the manner in which scientific results are communicated.

Recent critiques of science allege that the content of scientific explanations reflects the dominant ideology and interests of scientists and their patrons. Instead of calling for more value neutrality, some now urge that science take as a principal aim the emancipation of oppressed subcultures. Not only should progressive political values be allowed to set the problems attempted, they also should be used to constrain the types of answers which are pursued. Since scientific knowledge is constructed by us, we should take responsibility for its content.

This paper argues that the project of Emancipationist science is impractical and self-defeating. There is good reason to believe that there would be unresolvable political disputes concerning which kinds of scientific theories are truly emancipiatory. Furthermore, just as placebos cease to work when recognized as such, so would a science known to be constrained by political considerations lose its special epistemic authority.

Type
Metaphilosophy and the History of the Philosophy of Science
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Elizabeth (1995), “Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense”, Hypatia 5084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baigrie, Brian S. (1995), “Fuller's Civic Republicanism and the Question of Scientific Expertise”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 25, 502511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, Barry, Bloor, D., and Henry, J. (1996), Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Alan P. and Weinberg, M. S. (1978), Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Beller, Mara (1998), “The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?”, Physics Today September: 2934.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Donald E. (1991), Human Universals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Philip G. (1998), Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality. Dallas: Spence Publishing.Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul (1998), “Afterword: Universality of Emotional Expression? A Personal History of the Dispute”, in C. Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, annotated by Ekman, P., 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 363393.Google Scholar
Fausto-Sterling, Anne (1993), “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough”, The Sciences March/April, 2025.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Steve (1993), Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge: The Coming of Science and Technology Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Gross, Paul R. and Levitt, N. (1994), Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Harrington, Anne (1998), “The Placebo Effect”, New York Times, 13 October.Google Scholar
Hull, David L. (1988), Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1993), The Advancement of Science. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. (1997), “An Argument about Free Inquiry”, Noûs 31: 279306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. (1998), ”A Plea for Science Studies”, in Koertge 1998, 3256.Google Scholar
Koertge, Noretta (ed.) (1982), Nature and Causes of Homosexuality: A Philosophic and Scientific Inquiry. New York: The Haworth Press.Google Scholar
Koertge, Noretta (ed.). (1993), “Ideology, Heuristics and Rationality in the Context of Discovery”, in French, S. and Kamminga, H. (eds.), Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 125136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koertge, Noretta (ed.). (1998), A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1977), The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longino, Helen E. (1990), Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert K. (1979), Sociology of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. (1996), “Afrocentric Pseudoscience: The Miseducation of African Americans”, in P. Gross, N. Levitt, and M. Lewis, The Flight from Science and Reason. New York: New York Academy of Science, 561572.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl R. (1994), The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Robbins, Bruce (1998), “Love, Sex, and Disciplinary Imperialism”, Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 September.Google Scholar
Rolin, KristinaWhat Should a Normative Theory of Values in Science Accomplish?”, paper read at the 1998 Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, posted at: http://scistud.umkc.edu/psa98/papers/Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew (1995), “Science Backlash on Technoskeptics”, Cultural Studies Times 1(3), 1.Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew. (ed.) (1996), Science Wars. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ruse, Michael (1988), Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sargent, Rose-Mary (1995), The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Satel, Sally L. (1995), “Science By Quota”, The New Republic, 27 February, 1415.Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, S. (1985), Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sokal, Alan (1996), “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, Social Text 46–47: 217252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokal, Alan and Bricmont, J. (1998), Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science. New York: Picador.Google Scholar