Critical Rationalism, the Social Sciences and the Humanities: Essays for Joseph Agassi. Volume II

297 Pages·1995·20.143 MB·English

by  Ernest Gellner (auth.), I. C. Jarvie, Nathaniel Laor (eds.)

CRITICAL RATIONALISM, THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
AND THE HUMANITIES
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Editor
ROBERTS. COHEN, Boston University
Editorial Advisory Board
THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University
VOLUME 162
(Courtesy of Nili Kook)
JOSEPH AGASSI
CRITICAL RATIONALISM,
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
AND THE HUMANITIES
Essays for Joseph Agassi
VOLUME II
Edited by
I. C. JARVIE
York University, Toronto
and
NATHANIEL LAOR
Tel-Aviv University
and
Child Study Center, Yale University
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Critica! rationalism : essays for Joseph Agassi 1 edited by I.C.
Jarv1e and Nathaniel Laor.
p. cm. -- <Boston studies in the philosophy of sc1ence ; v.
V. 161-162)
Includes indexes.
Contents: v. 1. Metaphysics and science -- v. 2. The social
sciences and the humanities.
ISBN 978-90-481-4430-3 ISBN 978-94-017-0441-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0441-0
1. Phiiosophy. 2. Metaphysics. 3. Science--Philosophy.
4. Soc1al sciences--Philosophy. 5. Humanitles--Philosophy.
I. Agassi, Joseph. II. Jarvie, I. C. <lan Charles>, 1937-
III. Laor, Nathaniel. IV. Series.
B73.C76 1994
100--dc20 94-19889
ISBN 978-90-481-4430-3
Printed on acid-free paper
Ali Rights Reserved
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1995
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any forrn or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. C. JARVIE and NATHANIEL LAOR I Introduction to Volume II 1x
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE HUMANITIES
ERNEST GELLNER I Prometheus Perplexed 3
JEREMY SHEARMUR I Philosophical Method, Modified
Essentialism and the Open Society 19
GERSHON WEILER I Reason and Myth in Politics 41
JAGDISH HATTIANGADI I The First World War and 1991 59
RAPHAEL SASS OWER I Pedagogy as Psychology: A View
From Within 79
MICHAEL BANTON I All Forms of Racial Discrimination 101
LAWRENCE A. BOLAND I Style vs. Substance in Economic
Methodology 115
JOHN WETTERSTEN I Preliminary Report on Efforts of
Psychologism to Gain Influences in Proper Epistemological,
Methodological and Psychological Societies 129
JUDITH BUBER AGASSI I Epistemological and Methodo-
logical Concerns of Feminist Social Scientists 153
MENACHEM FISCH I Ecclesiastes (Qohelet) in Context-
A Study of Wisdom as Constructive Scepticism 167
ALASTAIR HANNAY I Commitment and Paradox 189
I. C. JARVIE I The Place of the Sciences and of the Fine Arts
in the Intellectual Scheme of Things 203
WILLIAM BERKSON I Two Commandments for the Humanities 221
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH AGASSI TO 1993 235
NOTES ON CONTRffiUTORS 263
NAME INDEX I SUBJECT INDEX 267
Vll
CRITICAL RATIONALISM, METAPHYSICS AND SCIENCES
Essays for Joseph Agassi, VOLUME I
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL PREFACE I Robert S. Cohen
I. C. JARVIE and NATHANIEL LAOR I The Philosopher as
All-Rounder- Introduction to Volume I
METAPHYSICS
PAULK. FEYERABEND I Universals as Tyrants and Mediators
BEN-AMI SCHARFSTEIN I Our Difficulties in Finding the
Right Words
ABNER SHIMONY I The Confrontation and Monadology
JOHN WATKINS I Epiphenomenalism and Human Freedom
HANS ALBERT I Religion, Science, and the Myth of the
Framework
TOM SETILE I You Can't Have Science as Your Religion!
NATHANIEL LAOR I Religion and Rational Philosophy:
Coming of Age
LOGIC, REASONING, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
MICHAEL SEGRE I Peano, Logicism, and Formalism
DAVID MILLER I How Little Uniformity Need an Inductive
Inference Presuppose?
MARIO BUNGE I The Poverty of Rational Choice Theory
MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO I Criticism, Reasoning and
Judgment in Science
NO RETIA KOERTGE I Towards a Popperian Philosophy of
Science: The Problem of Credit
I. J. GOOD I The Mathematics of Philosophy: A Brief Review
ofMyWork
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
NAME INDEX I SUBJECT INDEX
Vlll
I. C. JARVIE AND N. LAOR
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME II
A general background Introduction (I) to Agassi and his work on the
history and philosophy of science will be found in Critical Rational
ism, Metaphysics and Science. This present Introduction to the second
volume of Essays for Joseph Agassi supplements Introduction (I) with
special attention to the social sciences, psychiatry and education, as well
as offering a summary guide to the papers. At the end of this volume
we provide the most complete bibliography of Agassi's writings ever
compiled. Date-letter references refer to it.
In Introduction (I) Jarvie's first impressions of Agassi were described.
Laor's first encounter with Agassi took place at Tel Aviv University in
1974. This was in Agassi's seminar in the philosophy of science. He
would not teach unless questions were raised. Any question. The reac
tion was violent. Some students felt teased, some were speechless. A
few were curious but somewhat frustrated. An attack on the presump
tuous pedagogue ensued. There was a somewhat distant Chaplinesque
stance to him. His response, however, ultimately evoked a brutally hon
est dialogue.
This took place at a time when Agassi was publishing a great deal,
and his essays started to appear in collected volumes. He was then con
sidered in Israel, as elsewhere, an outsider to the establishment. Yet he
was never coy to voice his opinion, particularly on ethical issues lying
at the heart of the Israeli public agenda. And his impact grew cumu
latively, reaching beyond the Department of Philosophy - to students,
professional colleagues, university officials, politicians and the Israeli
public at large.
Agassi was collaborating in this period with the late Yehuda Fried, a
renowned Israeli psychiatrist, student of Jean Piaget and Henri Ey. Both
Agassi and Fried were challenged by the radical ideas and recommen
dations of the antipsychiatrists, Thomas S. Szasz and Ronald D. Laing.
Sensitive to the plight of the mentally ill, they could not accept Szasz's
explaining away of psychiatric illness and Laing's total commitment to
madness. In Paranoia: A Study in Diagnosis (1976p ), they offered a new
framework for psychiatric diagnosis, within which the paranoiac was
IX
I. C. Jarvie and N. Laor (eds.), Critical Rationalism, the Social Sciences and the Humanities.
Essays for Joseph Agassi, Vol. II, ix-xvii.
© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
X I. C. JARVIE AND N. LAOR
described as caught in a tightly integrated cognitive system (resembling
Popper's reinforced dogmatism); it is expressed in an idiolect, which the
paranoiac assumes to be trivially understood. This view of the madman
opened the way for a liberal psychiatric commitment to the mentally ill
which is neither cognitively engulfing nor dismissive of them in their
sorrow.
Then came the 1978 International Conference on Psychiatric Diagno
sis held in Bielefeld University, organised and presided over by Agassi
(1981h). (He was then a senior fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt
Stiftung.) This was an interschool and interdisciplinary meeting with
the aim to search for a responsible and practical consensus on theoreti
cal diagnostic matters. (It may be of interest to note that the American
Psychiatric Association was concerned then, as it is now, with the ques
tion, how to make psychiatric diagnosis atheoretical. This concern was
reflected in its 1980 publication of the third edition of the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.)
Psychiatry as Medicine (1983b) was yet another joint effort of Agas
si and Fried, presenting the implications of their view of the mentally
ill as searching in pain for diagnosis and treatment. They offered a
generalist framework for psychotherapy, within which mechanist sci
ence and holist medicine could integrate and advance both research and
sensitivity to human suffering.
Agassi has been interested in the fate of (deviant) innovative ideas
in the history of science (197la) as well as in the possibility of democ
ratization of the scientific community (Science and Society (198la)).
To complement this research program, Agassi's interest has led him to
examine the demarcation between various kinds of deviant modes of
reasoning, of the genius and of those others discussed by anthropol
ogists (e.g. magic), psychiatrists (e.g. paranoia), and political analysts
(e.g. faith and nationality).
The monograph that explores deviance, his Towards a Rational Philo
sophical Anthropology of 1977 (1977a), was a major work that suffered
a quite unjust neglect. Like his dissertation it was an unruly intellectual
cornucopia bursting with ideas. The unruliness was not the result of
lack of discipline, but an unintended consequence of the text being a
set of lectures reluctantly annotated at the request of an editor. Agassi
seems to have decided on a belligerent response to the effect that if he
was being asked to display his scholarly credentials then he was going
to do so with a vengeance (including a disclaimer in the preface that