Science as a particular mode of thinking and the "taming of the state"

Gérard Radnitzky

pp. 163-181

in: Fred D'agostino, I. C. Jarvie (eds), Freedom and rationality, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

John W.N. Watkins in an early seminal paper "Epistemology and Polities' (1987, originally published in 1957) explored the relationship between epistemological doctrines and political ideas; he defended the thesis that philosophical ideas about the genesis of factual knowledge do have political implications. In various writings he has investigated the problem of the rational preference between competing scientific theories. In a recent paper he contrasts the optimism of many philosophers "in the "glad confident morning" of modern science, in the early seventeenth century, when it had made only rather small beginnings, … [with today's] widespread philosophical disillusion and scepticism concerning the cognitive status of science, despite the enormous strides it has taken since those early days."¹