by Nam Son
This is a commentary on an article written by the editor, Caroline Ward ’25, and published in Volume CXL, Issue XV of the Voice. Readers unfamiliar with this reference may find it beneficial to seek out Ward’s opinion piece and read it in its entirety.
In a nutshell, Ward asserts that science is non-objective; that it is ideological; that it is historical; that science can be used to legitimize harm from which it benefits; and finally, that science is insular.
These are all highly controversial claims which were not given the proper defense they deserved. It may be said, nonetheless, that no defense need be given to the idea that circles are square, for none is conceivable. Indeed, by the asking of a simple question, most of Ward’s assertions above prove erroneous in an analogous fashion to those which posit square circles — they are analytically false. The concept of science does not contain the concept of non-objectivity, ideology, instrumentality or insularity.
It is thus imperative that one should ask: What is science? In itself, the science of a thing is knowledge of its four causes. The science of frogs consists in knowledge of their material composition, the structure of their being, their original cause and their purpose in nature. Scientific knowledge is explanatory of the natural world, supervenient upon proposed conceptual schemata.
Furthermore, science alleges universality, yet is always derived from empirical particulars. This is only possible if said derivation consists in a self-critical process which rids observation-experiences of cognitive biases, unique events, randomness, inter alia. The necessity of a scientific method thus belongs to the very concept of science. Knowledge derived without being subjected to this method is not merely bad science; it is non-scientific, since it does not measure up to the concept.
Lastly, the world is dynamic, and so is science. The truth of scientific knowledge ontologically depends on the coherence of its schemata with every new observation. This means that scientific truth is not absolute, itself relational to anthropomorphic constructions. What it does not mean, however, is that science is non-objective. Saying of scientific knowledge that it is objective means nothing more than saying that its truth value does not vary from one person to the next, i.e., that it is stance-independent. Aesthetics and ethics are domains of discourse whose claims are non-objective, since the relevant expressions are not attempted descriptions of a singular reality. It is, by contrast, impossible for a claim to be both scientific and non-objective. Insofar as it measures up to the concept of science, it must be commonly observable, replicable, verifiable. The moment a claim fails to have these properties, it already fails to be scientific. Being scientific entails being objective.
Moreover, being scientific is a sufficient condition for being value-neutral. Science is explanatory knowledge of the natural world; it is a structured hierarchy of is’s, not of ought’s. Little elaboration should be required for the idea that normative statements are unverifiable and non-replicable, and as such, are external to science proper. Given this, Ward’s ascribing to the concept of science the property of being ideological is as enigmatic as it is problematic.
Perhaps, in salvaging this insight, one may slightly alter Ward’s position in two different ways. The first way is to posit, instead, that scientism is ideological. This is agreeable. The thesis that science is the best way or the only way to gain knowledge clearly contains a normative premise, in virtue of which it is potentially ideological. This is the conclusion which Ward should have arrived at in their penultimate paragraph. Notice that this line of critique is not at all directed at science; it addresses rather a specific religion, viz., that whose god is Science. The second way is to say that the appeal to science as an authority is characteristic of certain ideologies, such as democracy, e.g., in privileging the common over the unique, or authoritarianism, e.g., in championing certain things as absolute and devaluing the virtue of tolerance with respect to differences in beliefs. This is all well and good, but it is clear that the worry addresses the social and political use of science as an instrument for us, while nothing meaningful is leveled against science itself as a mode of knowledge, as a method, or as a process.
A thing’s use is not its purpose. The purpose, i.e., the final cause, is that towards whose fulfillment it may be said to have value. For instance, the value of a kitchen knife stems from its sharpness, which helps it realize its purpose as an instrument. At the same time, circumstantially, a kitchen knife would be reached first as a weapon if a fight were to break out in the kitchen, also in virtue of being sharp. It is noted here, in conclusion, that the purpose of science, which belongs to the concept of science as its final cause, is uniquely to realize itself. This is because the value of true knowledge is intrinsic. All uses of science beside its own attainment are external to the concept. This conclusion rejects Ward’s third claim qua critique of science.
Next, consider the idea that science is historically situated: What does this mean? Unfortunately, Ward did not make explicit the meaning of this assertion. Still, from their single-use term “historicity,” an accusation may be made that Ward is a disciple of Thomas Kuhn, who held the view that science is done within a framework of paradigms, i.e., a seeing-as, against which observations are posed and hypotheses understood. These paradigms can change through time by means of revolutions in the face of evidential anomalies. A discussion of what this means for the concept of rationality is currently irrelevant, but would otherwise be highly stimulating. It suffices to note that Ward intended for this idea to support their claims of non-objectivity and ideology as properties of science, when it can in fact lend credence to neither. That science is relational to its paradigms does not suggest non-objectivity. That its paradigms change with time, even if this change is construed as a historical phenomenon, is nonetheless compelled by its sole purpose, i.e., to realize itself as truth, rather than by a socio-political aim. Kuhn himself would likely balk at the idea that science is an ideology.
Finally, Ward’s fifth claim is brilliant insofar as it is a critique of scientism. Indeed, one should always be suspicious of the claim that science is the best, or the only, method of obtaining knowledge about the world. Spiritual and aesthetic experiences are equally capable of providing true knowledge. Ward’s own example is the indigenous sciences. This is sensible—in fact, one should seek out Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” as a rewarding book-length treatment of the topic. Still, it should be clear that insularity is not a property of science. Science does not have agency. In a trivial sense, everything is exclusive of that which is not it. Science is exclusive of non-science, and tables are exclusive of non-tables. So soon as values are brought into the present discourse, e.g., by stating that other modes of knowledge are “unjustly overlooked” by science, as if the latter were capable of sight, then Ward is no longer talking about science.