A Morality of Science beyond Politics

George Steinmetz, University of Michigan

This paper proposes a new framing of the relationship between science and politics. Weber’s approach to axiological or value neutrality can be criticized for underestimating the existence of political dynamics within the scientific field and the permeation of even the most basic data by values. The opposite approach, which we can call Nietzschean, refuses to draw any boundary between science and politics. Both approaches can be criticized for making it impossible to justify a method for adjudicating among contending theories, explanations, and interpretations, for mischaracterizing the reality of scientific fields, and for ignoring the ability of scientists to reflexively control the effects of politics on their practices. The paper first revisits Robert K. Merton’s sociology of science and then turns to Pierre Bourdieu, asking how his theory of science criticizes Weber, Nietzsche, and Merton. I argue that Bourdieu offers a theory of the normative structure of science, like Merton. But where Merton views self-interestedness and dogmatism as antithetical to science, Bourdieu admits the ubiquity of both within science while emphasizing the collective defense of the autonomy of the scientific field and of the requirement to defend scientific arguments using scientific rather than political “weapons.” Bourdieu’s theory of reflexivity also places a different and distinctive burden on the individual intellectual. A common misunderstanding of Bourdieu is that he sees scientific power and political power as identical or inextricable. This paper argues that Bourdieu’s model of the distinctiveness of science and the scientific field helps to resolve the stalemate between Weberian and Nietzschean approaches and goes beyond the unrealistic shortcomings of the Mertonian alternative.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 56. Politics and Social Science: From Weber’s “Science as a Vocation” to Present-Day Discussions