Popper and After - 4 Modern Irrationalists

123 Pages·1982·2.371 MB·English

by  David C. Stove

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PoppaenrAd f ter
FouMro delrrnr ationalists
By
D. SCT.O VE
University of Sydney, Australia
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who might have enjoyed at least Part One of this book
TABLEO FC ONTENTS
Preface
Vlll
PART ONE Philosophy and the English Language -
How Irrationalism About Science is Made Credible
Chapter 1 Neutralising Success-Words 3
Chapter 2 Sabotaging Logical Expressions 21
PART TWO How Irrationalism About Science Began
Chapter 3 The Historical Source Located 45
Chapter 4 The Key Premise of Irrationalism Identified 56
Chapter 5 Further Evidence for this Identification 85
Notes 105
Bibliography 110
Index 115
Vll
PREFACE
This book is about a recent tendency in the philosophy of science: that
tendency of which the leading representatives are Professor Sir Karl Popper, the late
Professor Imre Lakatos, and Professors T. S. Kuhn and P. K. Feyerabend.
These authors' philosophy of science is in substance irrationalist. They doubt,
or deny outright, that there can be any reason to believe any scientific theory; and
a fortiori they doubt or deny, for example, that there has been any accumulation of
knowledge in recent centuries.
Yet, with a partial exception in the case of Feyerabend, these writers are not at
all widely recognised by their readers as being irrationalists. Indeed, this is so far
from being generally recognised, that Popper, for example, is actually believed by
most of his readers to be an opponent of irrationalism about science.
It is from these two facts that the question arises to which Part One of this
book is addressed: namely, how have these writers succeeded in making irrationalism
about science acceptable to readers, most of whom would reject it out of hand if it
were presented to them without disguise?
My answer to this question is: by means of two literary devices which are
characteristic of their writings. These two devices are respectively the subjects of
Chapters I and II, which together make up Part One.
Part Two of the book is addressed to the question: what intellectual influence
led these writers themselves to embrace irrationalism about science?
It should therefore be evident that both of the questions to which this book
is addressed, although they are about a certain kind of philosophy, are not philo­
sophical questions, but purely historical ones.
This fact seemed to me to need to be emphasised in a preface, because I have
heard a sensible person object to Chapter I by saying that it is "merely verbal
criticism" of the philosophers in question. This objection might have been well­
founded, and at least would have been a relevant one, if cn'ticism of these authors'
philosophy had been my principal object, or even an essential part of my principal
object, in Chapter I. But that is not so. In all of Part One, as in Part Two, my
principal object is simply to answer a certain historical question.
D. C. S.
Vlll
PARTO NE
PHILOSOAPNHDTY H EE NGLILSAHN GUAGE:
HOWI RRTAI ONALAIBSOMU TS CIENICSME A DEC REDIBLE
CHAPTER 1
NEUTRALISING SUCCESS-WORDS
1
Much more is known now than was known fifty years ago, and much more was
known then than in 1580. So there has been a great accumulation or growth of
knowledge in the last four hundred years.
This is an extremely well-known fact, which I will refer to as (A). A philos­
opher, in particular, who did not know it, would be uncommonly ignorant. So a
writer whose position inclined him to deny (A), or even made him at all reluctant to
admit it, would almost inevitably seem, to the philosophers who read him, to be
maintaining something extremely implausible. Such a writer must make that
impression, in fact, unless the way he writes effectively disguises the implausibility
of his suggestion that (A) is false.
Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend, are all writers whose position inclines
them to deny (Ao)r ,at least makes them more or less reluctant to admit it. (That
the history of science is not "cumulative", is a point they all agree on.) Yet with a
partial exception in the case of Feyerabend, none of these writers is at all widely
regarded by philosophers as maintaining an extremely implausible position. On the
contrary, these are the very writers who are now regarded by most philosophers as
giving an account of science more plausible than any other. So if what I have said
is true, they must write in a way which effectively disguises the implausibility of
their position. My object in Part One of this book is to show how they do it.
Of course I do not suppose that these authors, or even any two of them, agree
on every point. Feyerabend argues persuasively, indeed, that in the end Lakatos's
philosophy of science differed only in words, not in substance, from his own more
1
openly irrationalist one. And Kuhn had no difficulty in showing the very great
amount of agreement that exists between himself and Popper.2 Lakatos and Popper,
on the other hand, are at pains to magnify any distance separating them from Kuhn3
,
and would be still less willing to acknowledge affinities with Feyerabend; and Popper
is almost equally anxious to distinguish Lakatos's position from his own.4 To an
outside philosopher, indeed, the differences of opinion among the four must appear
3