"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

Albert Einstein

I read Foppe’s recent article, and I found it interesting but frustrating to follow. Lest we enter into a polemic that diffuses into meaninglessness, I think it important to be clear about what I was trying to do/trying to say, what my concerns are, and why, despite the erudition of the piece, I find it at cross purposes. The totality of our passing by each other reduces to the following question: is it possible to do philosophy of science without doing the sociology of science? I affirm yes: it is possible because the two are not attacking the same problems and do not share the same concerns. The totality, at least for me, of Foppe’s criticism of my work I believe can be summed up by the following: you cannot treat one set of propositions without considering the other at the same time.

In my essay and letter, I was above all concerned with three things: 1) to show that Geese share a form of idealism I dubbed “pragmatic idealism,” which means the world is a product of human practical activity and that scientific knowledge is about this human-produced world, 2) to show that this “pragmatic idealism” opens up the possibility that since truth of scientific knowledge is a function of the community or class which produces it, that denial of scientific knowledge is a partisan act, and 3) to demonstrate that the argument educed to to show that a basic form of materialism is in fact idealism is invalid. I think 2) may be the weakest part, with the connection between idealism and “irrationalism” writ large being a more subtle conceptual linkage than the arguments central to 1) and 3).

I then listed, in a dogmatic fashion paralleling Althusser’s own method, some of my beliefs about science divided in analytical/philosophical and. historical/sociological pieces. There is a partition in my thought between philosophy of science and the history/sociology of science. This partition has nothing to do with a dualism in which I deny the historicity of scientific activity/production, but the distinction heavily rests on a belief that truths discovered by natural science are mind-independent, universal, and eternal, and that the specificity of scientific activity is dealing in such truth-tracking. Call me naive, call me out-dated. Of course scientific labor has a history, scientists are “in” history. What is the historicity of scientific activity? How does scientific activity change? Foppe primarily focuses in the piece on an external source: “Organizational form governs which questions get asked and whose knowledge counts. The world’s resistance governs which answers survive.”.

First off, a bit of humor. If the world’s resistance were what killed off answers, and the answerers, then string theorists would be on the dole. But string theorists have won Fields Medals (Witten). The world has resisted, at least insofar as no response has been heard, but the unanswered “answers” survive. To be more serious now. Such external sources do influence the trajectory of science, but, and this is key: in the actual history of science there are moments where questions get posed because of science itself, i.e., there is an irreducible internal dialectic to science. There is to use a term Foppe likes very much, a relative autonomy, but truly an autonomy. You cannot explain the dynamic solely by reference to an external history or make the motor of change hinge on institutional forms, for if you do so you lose what is special and valuable in this process, and you will also fall prey to a relativism in which the trajectory of science is the more or less random, from the point of rational criteria, replacement of knowledge by knowledge. It is on the basis of that empirical and contingent fact of the specificity of human scientific activity that the study of the specifically philosophical problems of that dialectic is irreducible to a sociology of knowledge. No amount of studying the organizational forms or institutions treats those philosophical problems in their own terms.

As a scientist and a philosopher of science it is not that I find the problem of sociology and history uninteresting; I think any philosophizing which is not informed and does not take the historicity of reason seriously is severely impoverished. Not only does scientific practice have rules- a dialectic of argumentation, theorizing, experimentation, picturing, intervening, etc.- but the very internal practice itself is historical - forms of evidential and formal reasoning evolve (though more often than not, not to the extreme suggested by Kuhnian discourse about incommensurability). The motor of that change in epistemic mode is once again spurred on , in part by external causes, by a dynamic internal to science where to use a picture by Neurath: “we are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.” Philosophy of science is tasked in part with this broad conceptualization of the internal-external dynamic, of the epistemological questions of the historicity of scientific practice itself, of the epistemological analysis of evolution of scientific reasoning, and also the ontological problems of what science tells us about the world itself. Philosophy is autonomous, but related to the sociology of science. The two should keep talking but never collapse into one another.

To drive home the point, imagine, when someone asks me, “are electrons spin-½ particles?” I give you a history of its discovery complete with analysis of the concrete political situation. The person asking the question will be befuddled; certain rules and expectations of discourse will seem to have been violated. Finally, to their relief , I answer “yes, they are indeed spin-½ particles”. I mixed what was crucial to the question with irrelevancies. They then ask, “how do we know they are spin-½ ?”, and this question will demand not only a history, not only scientific discourse, but a meta-analysis on how different forms of reasoning, themselves to be "grounded" or assessed, allow us to know as much. The questioner has asked two different sorts of questions 1) a more ontological question about the thing itself and 2) a more philosophical and epistemological question about how we came to discover such facts. The history of human beings has no bearing on whether the electron is itself a fermion with spin-½. Can one truly say with a straight face that class struggle enters into whether or not electrons exist and that they have such-and-such qualities?

It is important also to note that whenever leftists discuss science, there is a deeply emotive and unconscious context to the discussions. Often, on the one hand you have those who wish to keep it holy. On the other, you have those who wish to expose it, to make it profane. It is very easy to make an idol ,or taboo, of an abstraction as awe-inspiring as “Science” (with a big S). But what should our approach be towards the actually existing institutions of scientific research? Worship or profanation? Finally, how would these institutions be treated should socialists ever win power?

Capitalism is a kind of society for which the imperative of capital accumulation shapes all facets of social life. Science, as a form of human creative activity directed towards truth-tracking, is not immune. Science is done within real institutions- firms, universities, labs, etc. - and, in fact, given its central importance in shaping the productive forces themselves and the technology of state and military power, those institutions down to the questions posed are profoundly shaped by capital and state. They do, however, based on the needs of capital and state, have to do more than produce lies and ideology, and therefore they naturally develop a degree of independence in fulfilling their ideological self-image. Yet, despite these realities, sometimes unfortunately because of it, some science still truth-tracks. Even in the most evil of institutions, wondrous things are discovered and built. Sometimes profanation loses sight of this uncomfortable fact. It often, though this is not Foppe, slides from “well science is compromised” to “science is bunk”. The consequences are not good.

Naturally, it is part of my ideological self-image to slide a bit into worship. After all, I need to justify my activity to myself , to others, to my employers. Yet, I constantly navigate the scientific temple disgusted at its desecration by the false gods of capital and state. I am in part a socialist because I want to liberate human creative activity - sport, art, science, etc.- from the fetters of capital accumulation, from the shackles of imperialist competition. I want to see a world where the fruits of science can be directed to human welfare and where pursuit of truth is in and for itself a human good. I want to extract science from the profane shell of capital to see it once more treated as holy and precious.