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Science and anti-science
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Holton, Gerald James. 1993. Science and anti-science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
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GERALD H O L T O N
HARVARD U N IV E R S IT Y PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
1993
3
Copyright O 1993 by Gerald Holton
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UUNNIITTEEDD SSTT.ATES OF AM
This book is printed on acid-&ee paper, and its binding materials have
been chosen for strength and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Holton, Gerald James.
Science and anti-science / Gerald Holton,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-79298-X (alk. paper)
1. Science—Philosophy. 2. Science—History. 1. Title.
Q175.H7748 1993
501—dc20 93-272
CIP
A 3
To NlNA

Contents
Preface ix
1. Ernst Mach and the Fortunes of Positivism 1
2. More on Mach and Einstein 56
3. Quanta, Relativity, and Rhetoric 74
4. On the Jeffersonian Research Program 109
5. The Controversy over the End of Science 126
6. The Anti-Science Phenomenon 145
Sources 191
Index 193

Preface
What are the earmarks of good science? What goal—if any—
looms as the proper end of all scientific activity? What legitimating
authority may scientists claim?
These old questions, to which each era attempts its own re­
sponse, are being debated today with renewed vigor. For this book
I have selected answers that have emerged mostly in our century
and primarily from the words and actions of scientists and scien­
tist-philosophers. As readers of my previous books would expect, I
aim to understand these words and actions not in the abstract, but
in the natural setting of specific historic cases.
Thus the first chapter traces how the nineteenth-century empir­
icist view of what good science should be—chiefly the version
represented in Ernst Mach's writings—came to influence, often
in quite indirect and transmuted form, the thoughts of twentieth-
century scientists and philosophers such as Jacques Loeb, B. F.
Skinner, Philipp Frank, P. W. Bridgman, W. V. Quine, and some
of their colleagues. The chapters that follow deal similarly with
controversies and rhetoric that illuminate positions on the proper
use, goals, and legitimacy of science, as expressed by such seminal
figures as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr, but also by
less-known ones such as Joseph Petzoldt and Walter Kaufmann.
Because it has become clear that the two standard models for the
pursuit of research, which generally are traced back to Newton and
Bacon, respectively, are no longer adequate to the needs of our
time, Chapter 4 is devoted to the rise of a third, additional solution,
one that arguably has roots in Thomas Jefferson's approach to sci­
ence.
Increasingly during the last half of this century, voices are heard
from various directions that "good science" is inherently an oxy­
moron, that science as we have known it is ultimately either self­
destructive (Oswald Spengler's position) or disruptive of the social
equilibrium (as, for example, in the passages cited from the
IX
PREFACE
writings of Vaclav Havel). Thus the last two chapters focus on how
to understand two confrontations: one is the conflict between the
view that the sciences are by their nature subject to eventual decay
and the contrary view that the sciences are destined to merge into
one coherent body of understanding for all natural phenomena; the
other is the more public battle between practitioners of science
and opponents who champion "alternative" or anti-science, par­
ticularly the form that is based in a world picture within which anti­
science is an organic part of a politically ambitious movement.
Here, as throughout the book, there is evident interplay between
the interests of scholarship and the turbulent course of public de­
bate; my hope is that advancing the former provides some
clarification for the latter.
I gladly acknowledge support for research on portions of this
book from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and once more
wish to record my gratitude for the expert help of Ms. Joan Laws in
all the tasks needed to convert ideas into printed pages.
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