Cite:Against Method

2nd ed. Verso, London, 1988. 3rd ed. Verso, London, 1993.

Introduction
Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.

Ordnung ist heutzutage meistens dort, wo nichts ist. Es ist einer Mangelerscheinung. BRECHT

The following essay is written in the conviction that anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology. and for the philosophy of science.

The reason is not difficult to find. 'History generally, and the history of revolution in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and subtle than even' the best historian and the best methodologist can imagine.1 History is full of 'accidents and conjunctures and curious juxtapositions of events'2 and it demonstrates to us the 'complexity of human change and the unpredictable character of the ultimate consequences of any given act of decision of men'.3 Are we really to believe that the naive and simple-minded rules which methodologists take as their guide are capable of accounting for such a 'maze of interaction'?4 And is it not clear that successful participation in a process of this kind is possible only for a ruthless opportunist who is not tied to any particular philosophy and who adopts whatever procedure seems to fit the occasion?

This is indeed the conclusion that has been drawn by intelligent and thoughtful observers. 'Two very important practical conclusions follow from this [character of the historical process],' writes Lenin,5 continuing the passage from which I have just quoted. 'First, that in order to fulfil its task, the revolutionary class [i.e. the class of those who what to change either a part of society such as science, or society as a whole] must be able to understand, and to apply, not only one particular methodology, but any methodology, and any variation thereof it can imagine]...; second [it] must be ready to pass from one to another in the quickest and most unexpected manner.' 'The external conditions', writes Einstein,6 'which are set for [the scientist] by the facts of experience do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted, in the construction of his conceptual world, by the adherence to an epistemological system. He, therefore, must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist....' A complex medium containing surprising and unforeseen developments demands complex procedures and defies analysis on the basis of rules which have been set up in advance and without regard to the ever-changing conditions of history.

Now it is, of course, possible to simplify the medium in which a scientist works by simplifying its main actors. The history of science, after all, does not just consist of facts and conclusions drawn from facts. It also contains ideas, interpretations of facts, problems created by conflicting interpretations, mistakes, and so on. On closer analysis we even find that science knows no 'bare facts' at all but that the 'facts' that enter our knowledge are already viewed in a certain way and are, therefore, essentially ideational. This being the case, the history of science will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining as the ideas it contains, and these ideas in turn will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining as are the minds of those who invented them. Conversely, a little brainwashing will go a long way in making history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchangeable rules.

Scientific education as we know it today has precisely this aim. It simplifies 'science' by simplifying its participants: first, a domain of research is defined. The domain is separated from the rest of history (physics, for example, is separated from metaphysics and from theology) and given a 'logic' of its own. A thorough training in such a 'logic' then conditions those working in the domain; it makes their actions more uniform and it freezes large parts of the historical process as well. Stable 'facts' arise and persevere despite the vicissitudes of history. An essential part of the training that makes such facts appear consists in the attempt to inhibit intuitions that might lead to a blurring of boundaries. A person's religion, for example, or his metaphysics, or his sense of humour (his natural sense of humour and not the inbred and always rather nasty kind of jocularity one finds in specialized professions) must not have the slightest connection with his scientific activity. His imagination is restrained, and even his language ceases to be his own. This is again reflected in the nature of scientific 'facts' which are experienced as being independent of opinion, belief, and cultural background.

It is thus possible to create a tradition that is held together by strict rules, and that is also successful to some extent. But is it desirable to support such a tradition to the exclusion of everything else? Should we transfer to it the sole rights for dealing in knowledge, so that any result that has been obtained by other methods is at once ruled out of court? And did scientists ever remain within the boundaries of the traditions they defined in this narrow way? These are the questions I intend to ask in the present essay. And to these questions my answer will be a firm and resounding NO. (pp. 9-11)


 * Footnotes

1. 'History as a whole, and the history of revolution in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes' (V.I. Lenin, 'Left-Wing Communism -- An Infantile Disorder', Selected Works, Vol. 3, London, 1967, p. 401) Lenin is addressing parties and revolutionary vanguards rather than scientists and methodologists; the lesson, however, is the same. Cf. footnote 5.

2. Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, New York, 1965, p. 66.

3. ibid., p. 21.

4. ibid., p. 25, cf. Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke, 9, ed. Edward Gans, Berlin, 1837, p. 9: 'But what experience and history teach us in this, that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted according to rules that might have derived from it. Every period has such peculiar circumstances, is in such an individual state, that decisions will have to be made, and decisions can only be made, in it and out of it.' -- 'Very clever'; 'shrewd and very clever'; 'NB' writes Lenin in his marginal notes to this passage. (Collected Werks, Vol. 38, London, 1961, p. 307.)

5. ibid. We see here very clearly how a few substitutions can turn a political lesson into a lesson for methodology. This is not at all surprising. Methodology and politics are both means for moving from one historical stage to another. We also see how an individual, such as Lenin, who is not intimidated by traditional boundaries and whose thought is not tied to the ideology of a particular profession, can give useful advice to everyone, philosophers of science included. In the 19th century the idea of an elastic and historically informed methodology was a matter of course. Thus Ernst Mach wrote in his Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Neudruck, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt,1980, p. 200: 'It is often said that research cannot be taught. That is quite correct, in a certain sense. The schemata of formal logic and of inductive logic are of little use for the intellectual situations are never exactly the same. But the examples of great scientists are very suggestive.' They are not suggestive because we can abstract rules from them and subject future research to their jurisdiction; they are suggestive because they make the mind nimble and capable of inventing entirely new research traditions. For a more detailed account of Mach's philosophy see my essay Farewell to Reason, London, 1987, Chapter 7, as well as Vol. 2, Chapters 5 and 6 of my Philosophical Papers, Cambridge, 1981.

6. Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist, ed. P.A. Schilpp, New York, 1951, pp. 683f.

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