1. On Pragmatism and Scientific Freedom
Antonio L. Severien
October 21, 2012
1 Introduction
Science has come a long way since its formalization and detachment from
philosophy, sprouting into branches of natural sciences and social sciences.
This natural process of specialization came from the necessity of a narrow
focus on each of the scientific realms, which try to give a fine-grained ex-
planation and interpretation of nature. With this variety of approaches to
science came questions about the validity and truthfulness of the presented
theories and practices. Throughout history many theories that believed to
explain everything have fallen and were substituted by more adequate ones.
Theories being overthrown does not mean they were wrong. In the moment
they were accepted they worked fine due to cultural, social and epistemologi-
cal beliefs. This view shows that they were thought to be right until a better
explanation came along. Kuhn points out this shift in beliefs as paradigm
shifts, where new ways of thinking about nature and its phenomena fits bet-
ter. These new theories have broader appliances and the explanation covers
a wider area of nature, thus closer to a universal theory.
According to Michael Ruse ”Science is a phenomenon that has developed
through the ages - dragging itself apart from religion, philosophy, supersti-
tion, and other bodies of human opinion and belief. (...) It is an empirical
enterprise about the real world of sensation”. As science gradually becomes
a more successful endeavor in demystifying nature than others practices, like
theology and mysticism, there comes a natural need for providing reliable
arguments to prove its methods. No one should believe anything just be-
cause someone said so. That is why science became so successful, due to
its methods; where every aspect of a phenomenon would be discussed and
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2. unveiled in the light of experiments and mathematical proofs which can pre-
dict and explain a natural phenomenon behaviour. This approach has high
persuasive appeal and even got some scientists into trouble for challenging
the status quo. In modern times scientist wont be hanged for new ideas but
there still is a great resistance in accepting new scientific views. The greatest
resistance in the old times was religion, but as science evolved this resistance
became present inside the scientific community. Questioning the scientific
approach of scientists became an issue. The discussion about what is science
and knowledge could not be answered by the scientific method and became
philosophical, thus leading to a philosophy of science.
2 Paradigms and Scientific Society
In order to explain science and group it in a reliable asset, some frameworks
were proposed by philosophers of science to keep science respectable and
trustworthy. Karl Popper, as one of the first philosophers of science came up
with a demarcation criterion, which tried to tackle the problem categorizing
science by drawing the line between science and pseudo-science using objec-
tivity as the guideline. Later other philosophers of science criticized Popper
by saying that there is no universal objective way of explaining nature and its
phenomena. Nature is intrinsically subjective because it is always interpreted
and cannot be isolated into one objective view. Thomas Kuhn criticized pop-
pers demarcation criterion and suggested another view of how science works.
He grouped scientists with same beliefs and that agree to certain theories
into paradigms. Revolutionary theories would shift this paradigm changing
the belief system. In this way each paradigm has its own subjective view of
the natural world.
Throughout science history science has been thought and practiced in
many ways. Initially subject to each individual scientist intuition, senses and
methodology, thus not following a general accepted way of performing sci-
ence. In later analysis philosophers of science have grouped scientific theories
into paradigms, argued about the objective or subjective approach in which
science should be looked at have indicated inadequate use of self-confident
logic in scientific explanation. As Sara Harding exposes in her Strong Objec-
tivity paper; observations are theory-laden; our beliefs form a network such
that none are in principle immune to revision; theories are underdetermined
by any possible set of evidence for them. This view exposes science as a
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3. constantly changing body where there is no de facto standard of working,
but different ways, captured in time and space, where each has contributed
its deal with the growth of scientific knowledge. This heterogeneity of ap-
proaches has culminated into a more flexible behaviour. Just like modern
society has sprung out of orthodox social and intellectual constructs, science
has undergone an adaptiveness to diverse approaches and objectives. It is
okay to say that more than one theory can fit a set of observation, and that
more than one interpretation of any theory is reasonable (van Fraassen and
Sigman 1993), without suffering fierce attacks from different philosophical
schools. This flexibility and relative freedom has turned out to poison the
scientific body itself by leaving an open ground for monopoly of research
by those who control the resources. Military and corporate research restrict
the free access to scientific information. Therefore most of the science has
become a private enterprise instead of a free organic knowledge builder.
3 Scientific Method and Positivism
Looking back at Poppers demarcation criterion and the debate about sci-
ence and pseudo-science; its is now clear that there is no way to objectively
determine the boundaries for this distinction. Knowledge is built inside a
community which agrees upon it, therefore science will slways be carried in-
side an acceptance group. The distinction and accepted ways of claiming
anything to be scientific is to frame the process into the scientific method.
The scientific method is the manifestation of a positivistic conception of in-
quiry. The setup for positivist science which has led to great progress and
accepted understanding of nature is based on a value-free science, a belief in
empiricism, a search for Humean causal relations and that logic and mathe-
matics is the foundation of science.
Further explaining the parts that compose a positivist science we can say
that the unity of scientific method means that the accepted approach for
knowledge acquisition is valid for all forms of inquiry. It does not matter to
wich realm the phenomena belongs. The search for Humean causal relation-
ships is done by the process of reductionism where the whole is dissected and
reduced into its constituent parts. The belief in empiricism states that the
only valid data is the ones aquired by our senses and that other kinds like
extrasensorial experience is not valid. The value-free concept is that science
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4. has no relationship to political, ideological or moral beliefs. The idea that
math and logic are the foundation of science is that it provides for a uiniver-
sal language and a formal basis for quantitative analysis which is important
for finding causal relations. (Goles and Hischheim, 2000)
Positivism also has a onthological view based on realism where the uni-
verse is composed of immutable objects and structures. This idea contrasts
with the one of relativism and instrumentalism which says that reality is a
subjective construction of the mind. Following a positive perspective it is
easier to analyse and study the universe because a scientist does not have
to worry about his subjective interpretation of the objects of study. For
positivists a table will be a table in any possible condition of space and time.
4 Kidnapping Science
The domination of science by institutions has tied up the production of
knowledge into a frame where every research is guided by money and ap-
plied to anything that can generate more money. Besides the money gen-
erating engine, science is totally biased, or one could even say corrupted.
Researches and scientist do not have an epistemological goal, but a personal
goal to produce as much published papers with positive results. To achieve
this goal it is quite easy; a scientist just needs to know some people, follow
some pre-determined research areas and with some time success is ahead.
Therefore research is not biased simply by the data collected, which might
be not trusted, but biased by the scientific production engine. Some of these
biases can be seen in the peer review process where the reviewers usually
know, or are connected to the researcher, thus making things a bit easier.
Lest say that this kind of networking does not exist; there is still a resis-
tance in approving or legitimizing researches that reveal negative results. It is
quite uncommon to see negative conclusions about some medicine prescribed
by doctors. On the other hand it is known that there are many researches
that reveal potential dangers in some medicine, but what the public sees is
always how ”good” the medicine is on curing any sickness. Nothing is told
about the side effects or even the failed experiments. This kind of bias is de-
noted by Longino as the gatekeeper for the production of knowledge, whereas
her understanding of peer review is not only to check the correctness of the
data and conclusions but to bring another point of view of the phenomena
which might lead the authors to revise the way they think about the present
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5. observations and conclusions. Reminding this original concept of peer review
can bring science back to its senses and actually move forward in progress
by setting the bar for relevant knowledge production.
Such mechanisms that modify and limit the original concept of peer re-
view has its influence from established power structures. Politicized science
is a rather biased science;, which produces knowledge to only a few who re-
tain the resources to finance research, and uses the acquired knowledge for its
own benefit. Science should be free of any kind of privatization; even if it is
produced with private resources. The retention of knowledge brings society
to a period of darkness where those who have access to information have a
better understanding of the world and will use it for domination purposes
in any form it may have. This kind of knowledge hijacking leads to knowl-
edge polarization where guerrilla or knowledge freedom fighters groups will
emerge socializing and creating alternate ways of acquiring knowledge. In
this sense a marginalized scientific community might emerge where, judging
by the stand point theory, they will have an epistemological advantage.
5 Anarchy
Feyerabend a radical philosopher of science has a very revolutionary and
anarchic view of science. He promotes that there should be no rules or meth-
ods to be followed, where a scientist should use what is available to produce
scientific knowledge. He also suggested that science is no better than any
other belief system and should be susceptible to popular critique and judge-
ment. Science should not be related to the state, or politicized at all. This
approach, as defended by the standpoint theory, which admits science being
politically related; advocates to a supra objectivism to release science from
the claws of bureaucracy and the privatization of scientific knowledge.
Another view of knowledge freedom is Quines account that each man is
given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory stimulation;
and the considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to
fit his continuing sensory promptings are, where rational, pragmatic. This
idea is the fulfilment of ones thirst for knowledge and will be accomplished
by any methods to achieve the desired answers to the sensorial questioning
of the universe around him.
Given this freedom of methodological choice a scientist can use a multi-
paradigm approach and paradigms interplay to achieve a more general model
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6. or theory. By using what is relevant in different paradigms and ignoring the
conflicting parts a bridging mechanism can be created to further open the
window for possible insights in the matter that is being studied.
6 A Note On Communication
Science has been practiced under many different paradigms and epistemolog-
ical views. Some tend to turn science rigid, others try to be more flexible and
allow diverse interpretation. Nonetheless science has made progress. This de-
bate has also extended to the language of science, where different paradigms
cannot understand each other unless there is a common language. Language
barriers are discussed in analyticity and synthetic language discourse where
facts and sensorial experience cannot be translated to words. Mathematics
and logic has become the closest to a universal scientific language, but still
has its flaws in trying to explain every phenomenon, like in social sciences
or the sensorial experience. The lack of common universal medium of trans-
mitting knowledge is a barrier to the epistemological program.
7 Pragmatism and Scientific Freedom
In scientific world with heterogeneous views of reality and a variety of ap-
proaches on how to interpret the natural world the best is to gather the
most relevant assumptions and boil them together were possible to achieve
a greater understading and use of the acquired knowledge. A pragmatic ap-
proach to science stands between the positivists view and the anti-positivist
where there is no clear distinction between an objective and subjective real-
ity. Thus pragmatism advocates that researchers should use what is best for
a particular research.
Pragmatism reinforces the idea that what works is the ideal goal, ab-
staining from metaphysical concepts such as reality and truth; it is in sum-
mary a more practical approach. In this practical style of conducting science
the questions of philosophical, methodological or informational aspects are
treated by its usefulness. This concept of useful is in the sense that the
subjects of interest are instrumental in producing eligible foreseen results.
Pragmatists hold the idea of an objective reality existing externally to an
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7. individual. Unlike the positivists view, the pragmatic view assume that the
reality is affected by the environment and experience of each individual and
cannot be understood in totality. Objects in this reality would be defined
for what use they have to him. This use is not defined by how it is used but
rather how it can be used to help the pragmatist achieve its purpose (Goles
and Hirschheim, 2000).
The neutral positioning of pragmatists give them a flexibility of using, or
not, personal values that are appropriate to the study. This flexibility can
also be applied in theory choice where a theory might be tested and used if
it proves to serve well for the desired research in question.
On an extended analysis of the adoption of pragmatism as an epistemo-
logical doctrine free of the influence from power structures and pitfalls of
orthodox practices; it is a resourceful asset to fight against mainstream rigid
scientific structures, which can pave the way for an independent and free
science.
References
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[3] Thomas S. Kuhn: Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?, Crit-
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[5] Harding, Sandra (1995). Strong objectivity: A response to the new ob-
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