Theories as Structures I – Kuhn’s Paradigms

“Examining the record of past research from vantage of contemporary historiography ‘the
historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigm changes ‘the world itself
changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new
places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when
looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the
professional community has been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects
are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well…..

It is as elementary prototypes for these transformations of the scientist’s world familiar

demonstrations of a switch in visual gestalt prove so suggestive. What were ducks in the
scientist’s world before the revolution are rabbits afterwards”

Thomas Kuhn

9.1 Introduction
Thomas Kuhn, the American philosopher of science marked a turning point in the 20 th century
philosophy of science by his major work (magnum opus) ‘The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions’. According to Kuhn, the life of every major science passes through two stages
which can be characterized as pre-paradigmatic and paradigmatic. During the pre-paradigmatic
period of a science, one finds more than one mode of practicing that science. In other words
there was a time when there were different schools of Astronomy, schools of Physics,
Chemistry, Biology, Philosophy, and Art etc. But whereas even today we speak of schools of Art,
schools of Literature, schools of Philosophy, schools of Social Science and systems or schools of
Medicine, we do not speak of schools of Astronomy, schools of Physics, schools of Biology etc.
This is because according to Kuhn, areas like Art, Literature, Philosophy, Social Science and
Medicine do not and perhaps cannot, make a transition from pre-paradigmatic stage to
paradigmatic stage. Therefore what characterizes a science which enters a paradigmatic stage is
the disappearance of plurality of the mode of practicing that science, that is, the disappearance
of ‘schools’. Kuhn claims that when a science reaches the paradigmatic stage, it becomes
‘mature’ or ‘science’ in the present sense of the term. Astronomy was the first to enter the
paradigmatic stage followed by Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Hence it is the acquisition of
paradigm which replaces plurality by uniformity of practice.

9.2 What are the paradigms?

Paradigms are universally recognized scientific achievements that for a considerable period of
time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners (scientific
community). Paradigms specify the exact manner in which the relevant disciplines (physics,
chemistry, biology etc.) ought to proceed. They laid the ground rules regarding what problems
these disciplines must tackle and how to tackle them.

A paradigm specifies what kind of things exist in the universe, how they interact with each
other and our senses, what kind of questions may legitimately be asked about these things,
what techniques are appropriate for answering those questions, what counts as evidence for a
theory, what questions are central to a particular science, what counts as a solution to a
problem, what counts as an explanation of some phenomena and so on. A ‘Disciplinary Matrix’
is a set of answers to the above mentioned questions that are learned by scientists in the
course of the education that prepares them for research and that provides the framework
within which a particular science operates. In other words, a paradigm is a disciplinary matrix of
a professional group. Once a science comes to possess a paradigm, it develops, what Kuhn calls,
a ‘normal science tradition’. Normal science is the day-to-day research activity purporting to
force nature into conceptual boxes provided by the paradigm.

Scientific practice is not exhausted in terms of day-to-day research of ‘normal science’. When a
paradigm fails to promote fruitful, interesting and smooth normal science, it is considered to be
in a crisis. The deepening of the crisis leads to the replacement of the existing paradigm by a
new one. This process of replacement is called a ‘scientific revolution’. Therefore, scientific
revolutions are the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition bound activity of normal
science. ‘Normal science’ occupies much larger time span than does ‘revolutionary science’.
That is to say, science is revolutionary once in a while, and mostly it is normal. Normal science is
an activity that purports not to question the existing paradigm, but to

(a) increase the precision of an existing theory and

(b) extend the existing theory to areas that it is expected to cover but in which it has never
before been tried.

Some examples of paradigms are mentioned below.

(i) Classical or Newtonian physics.

Newton’s laws of motions and gravitational theory with its metaphysical picture of the
world as composed of material particles, interacting by colliding with each other, and by
attractive and repulsive forces acting in straight lines between particles, and the guiding
image of the world as giant clockwork (machine).

(ii) Phlogiston theory of combustion

Based around the idea that combustion is the release of a substance called phlogiston

(iii) Doltonian Chemistry

Based on the chemical theory according to which the elements may be distinguished by
their differing atomic weights. Atoms are indivisible and are the ultimate particles in
nature.

(iv) Caloric theory of heat

According to which heat is a material fluid.

(v) Particle optics

According to which light is a collection of fast moving and tiny particles

(vi) Wave optics

According to which light is composed of waves of disturbance in some medium.

(vii) Relativistic Physics

According to which the time elapsed between two events is relative to the state of
motion of an observer (a frame of reference).Mass in the universe is not conserved.
Mass could be transformed into energy. Mass of a body increases with its velocity.

(viii) Quantum Physics

According to which the energy possessed by material objects or electromagnetic

waves comes in discrete units, rather than taking a continuous range of values. The
values of certain properties cannot be measured certainly; only a probability could be
assigned (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle).
 Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of the session you should be able to
 Explaining the concept ‘paradigm’ introduced by Kuhn
 Identifying the relation between paradigm and the uniqueness of science according to
Kuhn

Learning Activities

1. Describe clearly the concept ‘paradigm.’

2. Relate the concept’ paradigm’ with the uniqueness of science as mentioned by Kuhn

Co-references

Chalmers ,A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Theories as structures
i:Khun’s paradigms (chapter 8, pp104-129).Cambridge: Hackett publishing company

Supplementary references

Videos

Introduction to philosophy -Lectures by Prof. Hoyningen Huene , Leibniz University, Hannover,

Germany

Lecture 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAhD7nKrLbE
Session 10:
Normal Science, Revolutions and Scientific
Community
According to Kuhn normal science is the puzzle- solving activity which is a highly cumulative
enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of
scientific knowledge.

During this process of normal science activity, scientists come across ‘anomalies’. That is, an
anomaly arises when a puzzle remains a puzzle defying every attempt to solve it within the
framework of the paradigm. With the accumulation of major anomalies in a particular
paradigm ,the practitioners begin to loose confidence in that paradigm. Then that paradigm is
declared to be crisis – ridden, and the search for an alternative paradigm begins. But there is
no ‘clear cut’ and ‘objective’ criterion to decide which anomalies are major and how many
anomalies must be accumulated in order to declare a paradigm to be crisis – ridden. That will
be decided by the community of the practitioners of the discipline (scientific community),2
through the judgment of its peers (contemporaries or follow practitioners). The crisis – ridden
paradigm will not be given up until and unless a new paradigm is accepted in its place. The
issue concerning the paradigm choice cannot be settled by logic and experiment alone. What
ultimately matters is the consensus (agreement) of the relevant scientific community. In other
words the choice of a theory as the new paradigm has to be understood in terms of the value
judgments, which a scientific community exercises in the context in which they find themselves.

A theory is chosen as the new paradigm which fits the value commitments of a scientific
community. Hence the question of choice becomes the question of value. The ultimate
explanation of a theory choice is not methodological but sociological. Thus, the concept
‘scientific community’ is basic to the concept ‘paradigm’. The concept of scientific community
can be explicated only in sociological terms.

The hallmark of science, according to Popper is critical thinking but according to Kuhn, the
hallmark of science is tradition – bound thinking. In fact, according to Kuhn, what distinguishes
science from other areas of knowledge is that whereas in science one finds institutional
mechanisms of enforcing consensus (agreement), the other areas of knowledge suffer from
perpetual disagreements even on fundamentals. If Popper considers the individual to be the
locus of scientific activity, Kuhn bestows that status upon the scientific community. In other
words, as opposed to the individualistic account of scientific enterprise by Popper, Kuhn
propounds a collectivistic view of scientific activity.

Learning outcomes
Upon completion of the session you should be able to
 Identify the difference between normal science and revolutionary science.
 Identify the role of scientific community in bringing forth a revolution in science.
Learning Activities

1. Compare and contrast normal science and revolutionary science.

2. Explain the role of scientific community in bringing forth a revolution in science.

Co -References

Smith, P.G.(2003). Theory and Reality: Kuhn and Normal Science (chapter5,pp75-86).Chicago:
The University of Chicago press

Smith, P.G.(2003). Theory and Reality: Kuhn and Revolutions (chapter6,pp87-101).Chicago: The
University of Chicago press
Session 11:
Incommensurability, Relativism and Progress

11.1 What is the relation between the old paradigm which is overthrown and the new
paradigm which succeeds it?
Kuhn’s answer to this question is extremely radical. Kuhn maintains that two successive
paradigms cut the world differently. They speak different languages. What can be said in the
language of one paradigm cannot be translated into the language of the other. Therefore Kuhn
claims that the relation between two successive paradigms is incommensurable. With this, the
idea of scientific progress as a continuous process, and the idea of truth as the absolute
standard became totally repudiated. That is to say, what is true is relative to a paradigm and
there is no truth lying outside all paradigms. Thus, Kuhn advances what might appear to be an
undiluted ‘Relativism’. But Kuhn hesitated to be branded as a relativist. Thomas Kuhn’s
position regarding the scientific enterprise could be characterized as conservative.

Compared to Kuhn’s conservative character, his contemporary Pail Feyerabend was a radical
philosopher. Feyerabend in his classic, ‘Against Method’ repudiates the very idea of scientific
method. Both on grounds of logic and history, he questions the time-honoured belief that
these is something called the method of science which distinguishes science from the rest of
other knowledge systems.

Almost all the philosophers of science maintain that there are at least two conditions which
ought to be met by any theory that is proposed for acceptance. These conditions are called
‘consistency condition’ and ‘correspondence condition’. According to the consistency
condition, the new theory must be consistent with the already well established theories.
According to the second condition, the new theory must correspond to the well established
facts.

Feyerabend claims that both these conditions are illegitimate in the sense their acceptance
hinders the progress of science. By insisting upon the first condition, the traditional
philosopher of science, both Positivists and Popper, overlooked the fact that the so-called well
established theories may themselves be faulty. Their faculty character might come to surface
only if we allow the new theory provisional acceptance. Hence, Feyerabend insists that the real
test of a theory may be possible only by adopting an alternative theory. We might believe that
our existing theories are well supported by facts. But there may be some facts which might go
against these theories. However, we may never become aware of these new facts unless we
transcend these theories and adopt an alternative, just as we cannot become aware of all the
defects of our society unless we look at it from the point of view of another society.

Similarly, the corresponding condition too cannot be sustained. Given the fact that all
observations are theory-laden, it may be that what we consider to be observationally obvious
might be wrong due to the incorrectness of the theory. Hence, Feyearbend say that a new
theory must be allowed to grow even if it goes against well known facts. It may be noted that of
the two conditions, correspondence condition is primary because the consistency condition can
be reduced to it. The consistency condition says that a new theory must be consistent with
existing theories if the later are supported by facts. In other words, the consistency condition
seeks to guarantee that a new theory correspond with known facts by being consistent with
existing theories. By rejecting both conditions, Feyerabend advocates that a new theory should
not be constrained by the rule that it should first correspond with facts which we already know.
In fact, he says that we must make deliberate attempts to develop theories which go counter to
the so-called known facts.

Feyerabend goes one step further. He challenges his traditional opponents by saying “Give me
any norm you like. I will show that it is violated at certain important phases in the history of
science, not by oversight or negligence, but consciously and deliberately”. According to him, in
the most productive periods of any science, scientists found themselves in situations which are
too complex to be tackled by simple rules of thumb which philosophers of science glorify as
methodological norms. Since science in its history has violated every possible norm, we must
give up the very idea of the scientific method.

Kuhn claims that science is unique because it has reached the paradigmatic stage with the
scientific community agreeing to share (consensus) a paradigm. In other words, Kuhn
celebrates the fact that in natural sciences there is a qualitatively greater consensus than in
other knowledge systems (eg. Social Sciences). Feyerabend stands against this monolithic
view (monism) of Kuhn. According to Feyerabend, even if Kuhn is right in his description of the
actual (present day) scientific practice where the scientific community is in greater consensus
regarding a single paradigm, he (Kuhn) cannot justify that this monolithic state of affairs is the
ideal (best). Feyerabend strongly criticizes the scientific community for being arrogant (even
worse than the Catholic Church during Galileo’s era) by not allowing alternative theories to
blossom (grow). Feyerabend advocates the need for pluralism (allowing alternative theories to
compete) in scientific practice.

Finally, like Kuhn, Feyerabend maintains that successive paradigms in science are
incommensurable. He provided new arguments in favour of the incommensurably thesis
propounded by Kuhn.
Learning Outcomes
 Describe the concept ‘incommensurability’ according to Kuhn
 Identify the consequences of applying the concept ‘incommensurability’

Learning Activities

1. Explain the concept ‘incommensurability’ according to Kuhn.

2. Argue how ‘incommensurability’ leads to relativism of scientific knowledge.

Co -References
Smith, P.G.(2003). Theory and Reality: Kuhn and Revolutions (chapter6, 6.3,pp91-96).Chicago:
The University of Chicago press
Session 12:
Anarchistic theory of science-Feyerabend’s
views

12.1 Introduction
In his books’ Against Method ‘and’ Science in a Free Society’, Feyerabend defended the idea
that there are no methodological rules which are always used by scientists. He objected to any
single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that any such method would limit the
activities of scientists, and hence restrict scientific progress. In his view, science would benefit
most from a "dose" of theoretical anarchism. He also thought that theoretical anarchism was
desirable because it was more humanitarian than other systems of organization, by not
imposing rigid rules on scientists.

Feyerabend's position was originally seen as radical in the philosophy of science, because it
implies that philosophy can neither succeed in providing a general description of science, nor in
devising a method for differentiating products of science from non-scientific entities like myths.
(Feyerabend's position also implies that philosophical guidelines should be ignored by
scientists, if they are to aim for progress.)
To support his position that methodological rules generally do not contribute to scientific
success, Feyerabend provides counterexamples to the claim that (good) science operates
according to a certain fixed method. He took some examples of episodes in science that are
generally regarded as indisputable instances of progress (e.g. the Copernican revolution), and
showed that all common prescriptive rules of science are violated in such circumstances.
Moreover, he claimed that applying such rules in these historical situations would actually have
prevented scientific revolutions.
One of the criteria for evaluating scientific theories that Feyerabend attacks is the consistency
criterion. He points out that to insist that new theories be consistent with old theories gives an
unreasonable advantage to the older theory. He makes the logical point that being compatible
with a defunct older theory does not increase the validity or truth of a new theory over an
alternative covering the same content. That is, if one had to choose between two theories of
equal explanatory power, to choose the one that is compatible with an older, falsified theory is
to make an aesthetic, rather than a rational choice. The familiarity of such a theory might also
make it more appealing to scientists, since they will not have to disregard as many cherished
prejudices. Hence, that theory can be said to have "an unfair advantage".
Feyerabend was also critical of falsificationism. He argued that no interesting theory is ever
consistent with all the relevant facts. This would rule out using a naïve falsificationist rule which
says that scientific theories should be rejected if they do not agree with known facts.
Feyerabend uses several examples, but "renormalization" in quantum mechanics provides an
example of his intentionally provocative style: "This procedure consists in crossing out the
results of certain calculations and replacing them by a description of what is actually observed.
Thus one admits, implicitly, that the theory is in trouble while formulating it in a manner
suggesting that a new principle has been discovered “Against Method. p. 61. Feyerabend is not
advocating that scientists do not make use of renormalization or other ad- hoc methods.
Instead, he is arguing that such methods are essential to the progress of science for several
reasons. One of these reasons is that progress in science is uneven. For instance, in the time
of Galileo, optical theory could not account for phenomena that were observed by means of
telescopes. So, astronomers who used telescopic observation had to use ad- hoc rules until
they could justify their assumptions by means of optical theory.
Feyerabend was critical of any guideline that aimed to judge the quality of scientific theories by
comparing them to known facts. He thought that previous theory might influence natural
interpretations of observed phenomena. Scientists necessarily make implicit assumptions when
comparing scientific theories to facts that they observe. Such assumptions need to be changed
in order to make the new theory compatible with observations. The main example of the
influence of natural interpretations that Feyerabend provided was the tower argument. The
tower argument was one of the main objections against the theory of a moving earth.
Aristotelians assumed that the fact that a stone which is dropped from a tower lands directly
beneath it shows that the earth is stationary. They thought that, if the earth moved while the
stone was falling, the stone would have been "left behind". Objects would fall diagonally
instead of vertically. Since this does not happen, Aristotelians thought that it was evident that
the earth did not move. If one uses ancient theories of impulse and relative motion, the
Copernican theory indeed appears to be falsified by the fact that objects fall vertically on earth.
This observation required a new interpretation to make it compatible with Copernican theory.
Galileo was able to make such a change about the nature of impulse and relative motion.
Before such theories were articulated, Galileo had to make use of ad- hoc methods and proceed
counter-inductively. So, "ad-hoc" hypotheses actually have a positive function: they temporarily
make a new theory compatible with facts until the theory to be defended can be supported by
other theories.
Feyerabend considered the possibility of incommensurability, but he was hesitant in his
application of the concept. He wrote that "it is hardly ever possible to give an explicit definition
of [incommensurability]"Against Method. p. 225., because it involves covert classifications and
major conceptual changes. He also was critical of attempts to capture incommensurability in a
logical framework, since he thought of incommensurability as a phenomenon outside the
domain of logic. In the second appendix of Against Method(p. 114), Feyerabend states, "I never
said... that any two rival theories are incommensurable... What I did say was that certain rival
theories, so-called 'universal' theories, or 'non-instancial' theories, if interpreted in a certain
way, could not be compared easily." Incommensurability did not concern Feyerabend greatly,
because he believed that even when theories are commensurable (i.e. can be compared), the
outcome of the comparison should not necessarily rule out either theory. To rephrase: when
theories are incommensurable, they cannot rule each other out, and when theories are
commensurable, they cannot rule each other out. Assessments of (in)commensurability,
therefore, don't have much effect in Feyerabend's system, and can be more or less passed over
in silence.
In Against Method Feyerabend claimed that Imre Lakatos's philosophy of research programmes
is actually "anarchism in disguise", because it does not issue orders to scientists. Feyerabend
playfully dedicated Against Method to "Imre Lakatos: Friend, and fellow-anarchist". One
interpretation is that Lakatos's philosophy of mathematics and science was based on creative
transformations of Hegelian historiography ideas, many associated with Lakatos's teacher in
Hungary Georg Lukács. Feyerabend's debate with Lakatos on scientific method recapitulates
the debate of Lukács and (Feyerabend's would-be mentor) Brecht, over aesthetics several
decades earlier.

12.2 The decline of the physicist-philosopher

Feyerabend was critical of the lack of knowledge of philosophy shown by the generation of
physicists that emerged after World War II:
The withdrawal of philosophy into a "professional" shell of its own has had disastrous
consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may
be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors
like Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages,
they lack in philosophical depth – and this is the fault of the very same idea of professionalism
which you are now defending. (http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend)

While astronomy profited from pythagoreanism and from the platonic love for circles ,
medicine profited from herbalism, from the psychology, the metaphysics the physiology of
witches, midwives ,cunning men ,wandering druggists, it is well known that 16 th and 17th –
century medicine while theoretically hypertrophic was quite helpless in the face of disease
(and stayed that way for a long time after the scientific revolution ‘).Innovators such as
Paracelsus fell back on the earlier ideas and improved medicine .Everywhere science is enriched
by unscientific results ,while procedures which have often been regarded as essential parts of
science are quietly suspended or circumvented.

When the Communists in the fifties forced hospitals and medical schools to teach the ideas and
the methods contained in the Yellow Emperor’s Text book of Internal Medicine and to use them
in the treatment of patients, many Western experts (among them Eccles, one of the ‘ Popperian
Knights’) were aghast and predicted the downfall of Chinese medicine. What happened was the
exact opposite. Acupuncture, moxibustion, pulse diagnosis have let to new insights, new
methods of treatment, new problems both for the Western and for the Chinese physicians.

Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at
the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also
detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to
master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods and not just a small
selection of them. The assertion, however that there is no knowledge outside science – extra
scientiam nulla salus – is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale. Primitive tribes
have more detailed classifications of animals and plants than contemporary scientific zoology
and botany, they know remedies whose effectiveness astounds physician (while the
pharmaceutical industry already smells here a new source of income), they have means of
influencing their fellow men which science for a long time regarded as non-existent (Voodoo),
they solve difficult problems in ways which are still not quite understood (building of the
pyramids; Polynesian travels), there existed a highly developed and internationally known
astronomy in the old Stone Age, this astronomy was factually adequate as well as emotionally
satisfying, it solved both physical and social problems (one cannot say the same about modern
astronomy) and it was tested in very simple and ingenious ways (Stone observatories in England
and in the South Pacific; astronomical schools in Polynesia
(http://pnarae.com/phil/main_phil/fey/against.htm)
12.3 A summary of the views expressed by Feyerabend in his famous book ‘Against Method’.
 Science is an anarchistic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more
likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.
 This is shown both by an examination of historical episodes and by an abstract analysis of
the relation between idea and action. The only principle that does not inhibit progress is:
anything goes.
 For example, we may use hypotheses that contradict well-confirmed theories and/or well-
established experimental results. We may advance science by proceeding counter-
inductively.
 The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted
theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory.
Hypothesis contradicting well-confirmed theories give us evidence that cannot be obtained
in any other way. Proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs
its critical power. Uniformity also endangers the free development of the individual.
 There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our
knowledge. The whole story of thought is absorbed into science and is used to improve
every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the
chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.
 No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is
to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories
may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempts to find the principles implicit
in familiar observational notions.
 As an example of such an attempt, I examine the tower argument which the Aristotelians
used to refute the motion of the earth. The argument involves natural interpretations –
ideas so closely connected with observations that it needs a special effort to realize their
existence and to determine their content. Galileo identifies the natural interpretations
which are inconsistent with Copernicus and replaces them by others.
 The new natural interpretations constitute a new and highly abstract observation language.
They are introduced and concealed so that one fails to notice the change that has taken
place (method of anamnesis). They contain the idea of the relatively of all motion and the
law of circular inertia.
 Initial difficulties caused by the change are defused by ad- hoc hypotheses, which thus turn
out occasionally to have a positive function; they give new theories a breathing space, and
they indicate the direction of future research.
 In addition to natural interpretations, Galileo also changes sensations that seem to
endanger Copernicus. He admits that there are such sensations. He praises Copernicus for
having disregarded them; he claims to have removed them with the help of the telescope.
However, he offers no theoretical reasons why the telescope should be expected to give a
true picture of the sky.
 Nor does the initial experience with the telescope provide such reasons. The first telescopic
observations of the sky are indistinct, indeterminate, contradictory and in conflict with what
everyone can see with his unaided eyes. And, the only theory that could have helped to
separate telescopic illusions from veridical phenomena was refuted by simple tests.
 On the other hand, there are some telescopic phenomena which are plainly Copernican.
Galileo introduces these phenomena as independent evidence for Copernicus while the
situation is rather that one refuted view – Copernicanism – has a certain similarity with
phenomena emerging from another refuted view – the idea that telescopic phenomena are
faithful images of the sky. Galileo prevails because of his style and his clever techniques of
persuasion, because he writes in Italian rather than in Latin, and because he appeals to
people who are temperamentally opposed to the old ideas and the standards of learning
connected with them.
 Such ‘irrational’ methods of support are needed because of the ‘uneven development’
(Marx, Lenin) of different parts of science. Copernicanism and other essential ingredients of
modern science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past.
 Galileo’s method works in other field as well. For example, it can be used to eliminate the
existing arguments against materialism, and to put an end to the philosophical mind/body
problem (the corresponding scientific problems remain untouched, however).
 The results obtained so far suggest abolishing the distinction between a context of
discovery and a context of justification and disregarding the related distinction between
observational terms and theoretical terms. Neither distinction plays a role in scientific
practice. Attempts to enforce them would have disastrous consequences.
 Finally, the discussion in Chapters 6-13 shows that Popper’s version of Mill’s pluralism is not
in agreement with scientific practice and would destroy science as we know it. Given
science, reason cannot be universal and unreason cannot be excluded. This feature of
science calls for as anarchistic epistemology. The realization that science is not sacrosanct,
and that the debate between science and myth has ceased without having been won by
either side, further strengthens the case for anarchism in science.
(http://pnarae.com/phil/main_phil/fey/against.htm)

Learning Outcomes
 Explain the radical view of Feyerabend regarding the methodology of science namely
‘Anything goes ‘.
 Identify the critique of Feyerabend regarding the methodologies of Popper and Lakatos
 Compare the views of Feyerabend and Kuhn regarding paradigm, incommensurability
and uniqueness of science
Learning Activities

1. Express the arguments of Feyerabend in defense of his anarchistic views regarding the
methodology of science.

2. Compare and contrast the views of Feyerabend and Popper.

3. Compare and contrast the views of Feyerabend and Lakatos.

4. Compare and contrast the views of Feyerabend and Kuhn.

Co-References

Chalmers ,A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Feyerabend’s anarchistic
theory of science (chapter 10, pp149-159).Cambridge: Hackett publishing company

Bibliography

Chalmers ,A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Sophisticated
falsificationism, novel predictions and the growth of science .Cambridge: Hackett publishing
company

Chalmers, A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Theories as structures II:
Research programs).Cambridge: Hackett publishing company

Lakotos ,I. & Musgrave, A .(1970). Criticism and growth of knowledge: Discussion by Feyrabend
,Consolations for the specialist. London: Cambridge University press
Nandy, A..(1988). Science ,Hegamony and violence : a requiem for modernity : Francis Bacon
,the First Philosopher of Modern Science .New Dehli: Oxford University Press

Paul Feyrabend from,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend)

Paul Feyrabend’s Against the Method, from http://pnarae.com/phil/main_phil/fey/against.htm

Session 13:
Critique of Modern Science

13.1 Reductionism in modern science

Modern science has given rise to such a large volume of detailed but fragmental information,
that it is impossible for anyone or even a set of individuals to have even a less than detailed
knowledge of all of it. It has therefore bred a number of ‘subject specialists’, who know in
detail and claim to be experts in a small narrow field of activity. For example a Virologist, would
be a specialist on viruses (the smallest disease causing organism), and viral diseases. Although
he is likely to have a general background in Biological or medical sciences, after a few years of
specialized knowledge, he would have lost touch with part of this background knowledge.
Further he or she as a serious scientist would have been fully immersed in the narrow specialty
and his career, economic well being etc. and will be tied to it. Therefore it is natural that he
would have an exaggerated view of the importance of his specialty, if not he would at least be a
propagandist of this. He or she is now in danger of being a reductionist, ignoring the totality or
the whole and concentrating on his partitioned field of knowledge

13.2 Philosophical position of Reductionism

Reductionism provides the assumptions and criteria which guide modern science. The basic
assumptions are ontological and epistemological.

The ontological assumptions of reductionism are:

(a). that a system is reducible to its parts; and

(b). that all systems are made up of the same basic constituents which are discrete and
atomistic; and

(c). that all systems have the same basic processes which are mechanical.

The epistemological assumptions of reductionism are

(a). that knowledge of the parts of a system gives knowledge of the whole system;

(b). that ‘experts’ and ‘specialists’ are the only legitimate knowledge-seekers and knowledge-
justifiers.
13.3 The Politics of Reductionism
Well known environmentalist Vandana Shiva expresses clearly her views on the Politics of
Reductionism in an article titled “Reductionist Science as Epistemological Violence” as given
below.

The ontological and epistemological components of the reductionist worldview provide the
framework for a particular way of doing science, which is projected as the ‘scientific method’,
that is, as the only reliable and objective way of discovering the facts of nature and correctly
understanding nature. Deriving its inspiration and authority from Descartes, modern science
gives the Cartesian method a twist to christen (name) it the sole ‘scientific method’.

This reductionist method has its uses in the fields of abstraction such as logic and mathematics,
and in the fields of man made artefacts such as mechanics. But it fails singularly to lead to a
perception of reality (truth) in the case of living organisms such as nature, including man, in
which the whole is not merely the sum of the parts, if only because the parts are so cohesively
interrelated that isolating any part distorts perception of the whole.

In any event, there is no warrant for the claim that the reductionist method is a ‘scientific
method’, much less the sole scientific method. Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Michael
Polanyi and others have convincingly argued that modern science does not proceed according
to a well-defined and stable scientific method. All that can be granted to reductionist science is
that it is an approach, a way of looking, a mode of thought. Considering its predatory
treatment of nature, attested to by the ecological crisis, it is indeed a very unreliable way.

Controlled experiment in the laboratory is a central element of the methodology of reductionist

science. The object of study is arbitrarily isolated from its natural surroundings, from its
relationship with other objects and observer(s). The context (the value framework) so provided
determines what properties are perceived in nature, and leads to a particular set of beliefs
about nature.

These is threefold exclusion in this methodology:

(i). Ontological, in that other properties are not taken note of

(ii). Epistemological, in that other ways of perceiving and knowing are not recognized.

(ii). Sociological, in that the non-expert is deprived of the right both of access to knowledge and
of judging the claims of knowledge.
All this is the stuff of politics, not science. Picking one group of people (the specialists), who
adopt one way of knowing the physical world (the reductionist), to find one set of properties in
nature (the reductionist/mechanistic), is a political, not a scientific, act. It is this act that is
claimed to be the ‘scientific method’. The knowledge obtained is presented as ‘the laws of
nature’ wholly ‘objective’ and altogether universal.

It is argued in defence of modern science that it is not science but the political misuse of
science and the unethical technological application of science that lead to violence. The
speciousness of the argument was always clear, but is totally untenable in today’s world, when
science and technology have become cognitively inseparable and the amalgam has been
incorporated into the economic system.. Fragmentation of science into a variety of
specializations and sub-specializations is used as a smokescreen to blur the perception of this
linkage between science and a particular model of social organization that is, a particular
ideology. Science claims that since scientific truths, are verifiable, they are justified beliefs and
therefore universal, regardless of the social context.

The verificationist model of science was forcefully presented by Positivism. It claimed that
verification was direct observation of the ‘facts’ of nature, free from the proclivities of the
observer. This was, however, challenged by post-positivist philosophers. Kuhn, for example,
showed that facts and data in science are determined by the theoretical commitment of
scientists. In other words, scientific facts are determined by the social world of scientists, not
by the natural world.

While the Kuhnian model challenged the neutrality of scientific facts, it failed to provide an
adequate epistemological framework for handling the violence of reductionist science. By
insisting that ‘nature fits into the realistic boxes of paradigms’, Kuhn rendered his model of
science materially and politically vacuous. Moreover, he failed to take into account the value
system of the larger society that determines the choice of scientific research. Value-
determination in the Kuhnian model is done by scientific paradigms, not by social, political,
economic interests. By restricting itself to the social world of scientists, the Kuhnian model is
unable to deal with the more significant value determination of scientific facts by the demands
made on the system of science by economic interests. Moreover, by restricting himself to the
material world of the lab, Kuhn was unable to deal with those ecological situations in which
reductionist claims are falsified by nature, as symbolized by ecological crises.

A more appropriate account of modern science (including technology) should extend the
Kuhnian model both materially and socially. Materially, the testing of scientific beliefs has to be
taken out of cloistered labs into the wider physical world. Socially, the world of scientific
experiments and beliefs has to be extended beyond the social organization of science to the
social organization of society. The verification and validation of a system of science would then
be validation in practice, where practice is real life activity in society and nature.

13.4 Profits, Reductionism and Violence

The artificial cognitive dichotomy between science and technology dissolves when science is
viewed as a set of beliefs guiding practice, and technology as practice guided by scientific belief.
The duality between belief and action, thought and practice, is responsible for encouraging
many to mistake the cognitive weaknesses of reductionism for cognitive success.

Reductionism, however, is not an epistemological accident. It is related to the needs of a

particular form of economic organization. The reductionist worldview, the industrial revolution
and the capitalist economy were the philosophical, technological and economic components of
the same process. Individual firms and fragmented sectors of the economy, whether privately
or publicly owned, have their own efficiency needs in mind; and every firm and sector measures
its efficiency by the extent to which it maximizes its gains, regardless of the fact that in the
process it also maximizes the social and ecological costs of the production process. The logic of
this internal efficiency is provided by reductionism: only those properties of a resource system
are taken into account which generate profits through exploitation and extraction; properties
which stabilize ecological processes but are commercially non exploitative are ignored and
eventually destroyed.

The rationality and efficacy of the reductionist and non-reductionist knowledge systems are
never evaluated cognitively. The rationality of reductionist science is declared a-priori superior,
even though it can be argued that if reductionist science has displaced non-reductionist modes
of knowledge, it has done so not through cognitive competition, but through political support
from the state and the state’s development policies and development programmes which
provide both financial subsidies and ideological support for the appropriation of nature for
profits. Since the twin myths of progress (material prosperity and superior rationality) have lost
their sheen in the working out of development patterns and paradigms, and have been visibly
exploded by the widespread ecological crisis, the state has stepped in to transform myths into
an ideology. When an individual firm or sector directly confronts the larger society in its
commercial appropriation of nature, people can assess the costs and benefits for themselves;
they can differentiate between progress and regression, rationality and irrationality. But with
the mediation of the state, the citizen-as-subject becomes the object of change rather than its
determinant and consequently loses the right to assess progress. If they have to bear the costs
instead of reaping any benefit of ‘development’ it is justified as a minor sacrifice for the
‘national interest’.

The link between the state and the creation of surplus value provides the power with which
reductionism establishes its supremacy. Institutions of learning in agriculture, medicine and
forestry, for instance, selectively train people in reductionist paradigms, which are given the
names respectively of ‘scientific agriculture’, ‘scientific medicine’ and ‘scientific forestry’, to
prove the superiority of reductionist science. Stripped of the power the state invests it with,
such a science can be seen to be cognitively weak and ineffective in responding to problems
posed by nature. As a system of knowledge about nature, reductionist science is weak and
inadequate; as a system of knowledge for the market, it is powerful and profitable.

Let us consider some ecological crises created by the reductionst science and technology

(i). Eucalyptus Planting (under scientific forestry)

Desertification and its consequence, famine, has already caused the death of over 900,000
people in Ethiopia. In the Sahel, 40 to 90 percent of the livestock has died.

Since ancient times societies have known that forests are the best insurance against
desertification and famine. The reductionist version of this response to desertification is itself
a prescription for desertification. Under the World Food Programme, FAO planted eucalyptus
in Ethiopia, Under the social forestry schemes for ecological repair, the World Bank, SIDA,
USAID have coaxed India into putting farmlands under eucalyptus. People who for centuries
have been planters and protectors of trees have suddenly been marginalized. Knowledge of
tree planting has become the sole preserve of international and national bureaucracies.
Throughout the world, irrespective of local ecological conditions and economic needs, the
prescription is only one-eucalyptus. The biological wealth and diversity of the tropics have
been destroyed to make room for the reductionist solution, even through eucalyptus causes
rather than cures deserts, upsets the cycle of life, the hydrological cycle and the nutrient cycle.

The ecological audit of eucalyptus plantations reveals that it involves heavy economic costs
through the destruction of the hydrological stability and soil productivity in the following ways

First, in regions which have water scarcity, the high water intake of eucalyptus destroys the
natural processes that replenish soil moisture and recharge the sources of underground water,
turning the region into a completely arid zone. Moreover,eucalyptus damages the innate
allelomorphic capacity of all other plants, seriously depleting the gene pool. The process
initiated by large-scale cultivation of eucalyptus in water-scarce regions therefore leads
inexorably to desertification.
Second, on fertile agricultural lands, eucalyptus, when planted and harvested in short rotation,
heavily diminishes soil nutrients, destroying the soil’s capacity for biological productivity.
Moreover, eucalyptus destroys the environment for soil fauna that are at once ‘factories’ for
reproducing soil fertility, and efficient ‘machines’ for maintaining the soil structure.

In the countries of the South, desertification has become an increasingly severe threat to
human survival. The recently published UNEP report on deserts estimates that about 3-5
million hectares of productive and fertile rain-fed land is being lost annually. The food crisis in
Africa testifies to the cost of desertification in human and economic terms. It is also a reminder
that many of the economic problems of the poorest of mankind are rooted in the ecological
destruction caused by excessive demands on the natural resources by the elites of the world.

Eucalyptus emerged as a magical candidate for all kinds of a-forestation programmes during the
1960s because it is a fast-growing species. This belief was, however, challenged and it was
shown that many indigenous species have higher growth rates than eucalyptus.

In spite of eucalyptus being fast-growing and productive only in the narrow context of wood-
fibre production, it was prescribed as a universal means for achieving increased productivity of
biomass for the satisfaction of diverse needs. And so, a reductionist view of forestry wedded
to pulp industry was universalized at the cost of conservation of soil and water.

The rapid decline, and even total destruction, of water resources as a consequence of large-
scale planting of eucalyptus has been reported from all parts of India. The environmentalist
Sunderlal Bahuguna recorded the following statement of an elderly forest ranger in the Nainital
tarai of Uttar Pradesh: ‘We felled mixed natural forest of this area and planted eucalyptus. Our
hand pumps have gone dry as the water-table has gone down. We have committed a sin’.

Sri Lankan experience regarding eucalyptus

Eucalyptus Planting (Sri Lankan Experience)

As mentioned in this article by Vandana Shiva, eucalyptus planting programmes were

introduced and implemented in Ethiopia and India by the international organizations such as
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Bank and USAID. In Sri Lanka too an
eucalyptus planting programme was implemented under the patronage of the World Bank in
the early 1990s.

The Sri Lankan scholars who were trained in UK advised the government to carry out an
eucalyptus planting programme in Sri Lanka. This was implemented in various parts of the
country and the World Bank consultants even introduced a Forestry Master Plan for Sri Lanka
which included the world renowned tropical rain forest in Sri Lanka namely “Sinharaja Forest”.
Due to the strong protests by the peasants and environmentalists this forestry master plan was
withdrawn. After experiencing the harmful effects of the existing eucalyptus plantations and
the continuous protests by the environmentalists and rural people in those areas, the Sri
Lankan government finally decided to gradually clear the eucalyptus plantations and substitute
them with suitable indigenous species which restore ecological balance.

Reductionist forestry science is intimately linked to forest based industry, notwithstanding its
claim to be ‘objective’. When its violence to nature through desertification, and its violence to
man through famine, is exposed, official foresters turn on the victims of desertification and
accuse them of colossal ignorance of the science of forestry. But this science does not balk at
manufacturing data to legitimize misinformation; it violates the tradition of science itself to
deny people the right to know and to hide, under the protective umbrella of the state, the
nexus between modern science and capital accumulation.

(ii). Pesticides (Under Scientific agriculture)

Traditional, or what the reductionist world-view calls unscientific, systems of food production
have managed pest control by a series of measures which included building up plant resistance,
practising rotational and mixed cropping, and providing habitats for pest-predators in farm
trees and hedgerows. These practices created stable local conditions; a balance was achieved
between plants and their pests through natural competition, selection and predator-prey
relationships. Myths are generally found to be important sources of traditional knowledge
about quiet but essential ecological processes. For example, the Kayape Indians of the Amazon
basin have a ritual in which the women paint their faces with ant parts in the maize festival.
The principal theme of the myth is the celebration of the little red ant as the guardian of the
fields and a friend of women.

‘Scientific’ farming upset this balance and created favourable conditions for the multiplication
of disease. Organic fertilizer, which builds up plant resistance to disease, was replaced by
chemical fertilizers, which decrease plant resistance to by chemical fertilizers, which decrease
plant resistance to pests. Since many pests are specific to particular plants, replacing crop
rotations by the planting of the same crop year after year often encourages pest build-ups.
Substitution of mixed cropping pattern by monoculture also makes crops more prone to pest
attacks. The mechanization of farming leads to the destruction of hedgerows and trees, and
thus destroys the habitat for some pest-predators.

The problem of pest control was therefore mostly a problem created by the disturbance of the
ecological balance of agro-ecosystems by the introduction of ‘scientific agriculture’.
Reductionist science was concerned merely with the existence of pests, not with the ecology of
pests. The solution that suited both science and the pesticide industry was production and sale
of poisons to kill pests. As a pesticide company announced in a TV advertisement, ‘The only
good bug in a dead bug’.

Interference with natural balance also fails to anticipate and predict what will happen when
that balance is upset. Besides reflecting the cognitive weakness of the approach of over-kill,
the violence of the pesticide-based approach decreases plant resistance, increases pest attacks
and the need for even more pesticides. Gradually, pesticides are absorbed by plants and
animals in ever increasing quantities. Rachel Carson’s book titled “The Silent Spring” remains
the best commentary on how pesticides are becoming a major source of water pollution and
health hazards.

The claims made by reductionist science and the pesticides industries about the damage to
crops prevented by pesticides have a persuasive ring because the effect of pesticides is visible.
A heap of bugs killed in a lightning operation can be dramatized and turned into an impressive
sight and good selling point. Natural enemies of pests, on the other hand, although more
effective because they do not produce any destructive fall-out for flora, fauna and humans,
work quietly and invisibly and cannot therefore be shown on the
TV screen dancing round a heap of bugs. Chemical pesticides are successful but indiscriminate
killers; they kill not only pests, but the natural enemies of pests also.

That ignorance, irrationality and greed are characteristics of the pesticide industry have been
tragically revealed in the Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide was simultaneously a creator of
scientific knowledge, profits and violence.

(Note: Bhopal disaster ………… )

Pesticides and Kidney Disease in the North-Central Province of Sri Lanka

But in spite of its complete failure to solve the problem of pest control, and in spite of its
violence against nature and humans, the sale of pesticides continues to increase, because its
use is insured through state agricultural policy, through pesticide subsidies and through
pesticide propaganda, and also because pesticides destroy the ecological basis of the
alternative systems of pest management that show better and longer-lasting results.

(iii). Medical Drugs

Medicine is generally presented as an area in which modern science has the most achievements
and successes to its credit. But there is increasing evidence that modern medicine and
therapeutics have themselves become a source of disease and death. According to Ivan Illich,
diseases brought on by doctors are a greater cause of increased mortality than traffic accidents
and war-related activities. Iatrogenic illnesses cause between 60,000 to 140,000 deaths in
America alone each year, and leave 2 to 5 million others more or less seriously ill. The situation
is worst in establishments which generate medical knowledge, viz. University hospitals where
one in five patients contracts an iatrogenic disease which usually requires special treatment,
and leads to death in one case out of thirty.

‘Scientific medicine’ extends its monopoly even to those cases of common diseases in which
people would get well without therapeutic intervention. It only converts simple problems into
serous or fatal ones. Thus, diarrhoea has always been common illness managed traditionally by
diet control and re-hydration. Rice water, kanji, isabgol, curd, coconut water are just a few
among the numerous traditionally established means for controlling diarrhoea in tropical
countries like India.

When ‘scientific medicine’ steps in, it reduces the problem of diarrhoea to the existence of a
discrete entity in the guts that can be cured only by drugs. This shifts the focus from the
patient to the disease and applies solutions which result in violence on the patient, both
through drugs and the side effects of drugs. “It is not necessary to cure the patient, but the
disease itself must be the focus of medical attention with the patient as a kind of inert carrier of
his condition. The doctor is not interested in equilibrium. He is at war.

Clioquinol was introduced as an anti-diarrhoeal drug in 1934 by Ciba-Geigy under the brand
names of Mexaform and Enterovioform. Although its effectiveness was established only for
amoebiasis in lab and clinical trials, its therapeutic action was extrapolated to all kinds of
diarrhoea. Clioquinol was indicated for summer, traveller’s or unspecified diarrhoea, gastro-
enteritis, colitis, and digestive disorders associated with diarrhoea. It was even suggested for
prophylactic use. It therefore became a commonly dispensed drug for common aliments.

Ciba and the scientists working in its support universalized the efficacy of the drug on the basis
of scanty information in order to capture larger markets. But this medical ‘science’ showed an
amazing reluctance to use information already available about the toxic effects of the drug. As
early as 1935 two cases with severe neurological symptoms and signs were reported in
Argentina, and one of the authors of the report informed the drug company about the
suspected adverse effects. Between 1935 and 1970 the potential risk of irreversible
neurological damage was documented in the medical literature as well as in the internal files of
CIBA. According to late Dr. Olle Hanson, ‘Attempts to hide facts, deny facts and attempts to
convince doctors not to publish their negative experimental findings have been made
throughout by Ciba Geigy, the producers of Mexaform and Enterovioform.

The cost of hiding these facts in order to continue sales was the crippling of an estimated
10,000-30,000 people in Japan also, where the prescription of Clioquinol led to a SMON
epidemic, a severe neurological disorder caused by the drug. SMON stands for ‘Subacute Mylo
Optic Neuropathy’, in plain English it means loss of sight, loss of function of legs, loss of bladder
control, and constant pain in the legs.

In 1970, Professor Tadao Tusbaku discovered that SMON was caused by Clioquinol. In 1971,
5000 SMON victims filed law suits in Japan against Ciba-Geigy. In spite of all the evidence, the
drug company stated that there might be another factor to cause SMON, but could not prove
any factor besides Clioquinol through eight years of examination. The company that has
generalized the efficacy of the drug for all kinds of diarrhoea considered all the evidence
inadequate to prove the side effects of the drug. The Tokyo district court, however, decided
that Clioquinol was the cause of SMON.

The next ‘scientific’ move by Ciba smacked of racism. It said that the Japanese were genetically
prone to SMON. That canard was exploded when Dr. Hanson found forty cases of SMON in
Sweden. It became evident that the high incidence of the disease in Japan was due to over
prescription-because the doctor’s income in the Japanese health system depends on the
quantity of drugs he prescribes. The second reason is related to reductionism and the myth of
the universal validity of modern science, which ignores the fact that since the Japanese are of a
smaller build than Europeans and Americans, the dose advised per kilogram is relatively large
for the Japanese people.

Even the discovery of cases outside Japan was not accepted as an adequate reason to suspend
sales of the drug. At the Geneva press conference on SMON in 1980, Dr. Sabatkiewiez of Ciba-
Geigy stated:

“We have no medical reason to be afraid of this drug. I have seen Clioquinol used in tropical
countries. I know there is need for it, and we have no – I repet no – medical reason to
withdraw the drug from the market at this moment”.

As Ciba-Geigy continued to market the drug, SMON victims from Japan raised funds to inform
people in other countries of the hazards of the drug. Pressure mounted on Ciba Geigy when
Scandinavian doctors boycotted its product and demanded withdrawal of Mexaform and
Enterovioform from the third world. When, in 1978, Ciba eventually announced the withdrawal
of the drugs, there was hue and cry from some doctors in India who could not comprehend why
such a ‘wonderful’ drug was being withdrawn; they did not know that the drugs had been
proved to be harmful. And no wonder; for it is in the nature of their science to close the lid on
correct and full information, and to disseminate misinformation. That is why the Clioquinol
controversy did not deter drug companies from continuing to manufacture hazardous drugs on
the non-experts’ certificates about safety. For, without an adequate and appropriate challenge
of the kind that was offered to Ciba, the modern medical system is left free to grow in direct
proportion to the damage it does.

Scientific medicine uses different criteria for measuring a drug’s strength and weakness. It uses
one set of criteria for efficacy and quite another for drug toxicity. And this is supposed to be a
system of knowledge which is ‘objective’, which has no bias. In the case of Ciba it was because
of the involvement of doctors and the public in a campaign that the bias came out in the open.
In most cases, the bias lies undiscovered and passes for neutral, objective, universal science.

Simple ailments have been cured over centuries by appropriate use of dococtions made from
plants and minerals found in nature. ‘Scientific medicine’ removes the diversity by isolating
‘active’ ingredients or by synthesizing chemical combinations. Such processing first involves
violence against the complex balance inherent in natural resources. And then, when the
chemical is introduced into the human body, it is often a violation of human physiology.

But it is highly unlikely that medical science and pharmaceutical establishments will pay heed.
For the reductionist medical science cannot but manufacture reductionist products and
undermine the balance inherent in natural products. The multinationals that produce synthetic
drugs in pursuit of fabulous profits ignore their toxic side-effects. When they are forbidden to
sell some harmful drugs in the home countries, they find a lucrative market in the third world
where the elites, including the medical establishment, are usually bewitched by anything that is
offered as scientific, especially if it comes wrapped in pretty pay offs. They give a free hand to
multinationals to buy medicinal plants at dirt-cheap rates and sell the processed pills in the
third-world countries at exorbitant prices and at enormous cost to the health of the people.
The elites cannot accept that it would be more equitable socially, cheaper economically,
conductive to self reliance politically, and more beneficial medically for the third world
countries to use the plants locally according to time tested indigenous pharmacology.

While multinational drug companies and the third world political elites are out for profits, the
third world intellectual elites, eager to prove their scientific temper, join in a chorus to
denounce indigenous therapeutics and related knowledge systems as hocus-pocus and their
practice as quackery. It is through this mixture of misinformation, falsehood and bribes that a
reductionist medical science has established its monopoly on medical knowledge in many
societies.

And, as we have seen the links between modern medical science, violence and profits are not
only through politics and economics but also, as in the case of agriculture and scientific
forestry, through the internally determined structure and content of the system of scientific
knowledge.
Theories as Structures I – Kuhn’s Paradigms

“Examining the record of past research from vantage of contemporary historiography ‘the
historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigm changes ‘the world itself
changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new
places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when
looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the
professional community has been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects
are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well…..

It is as elementary prototypes for these transformations of the scientist’s world familiar

demonstrations of a switch in visual gestalt prove so suggestive. What were ducks in the
scientist’s world before the revolution are rabbits afterwards”

Thomas Kuhn

9.1 Introduction
Thomas Kuhn, the American philosopher of science marked a turning point in the 20 th century
philosophy of science by his major work (magnum opus) ‘The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions’. According to Kuhn, the life of every major science passes through two stages
which can be characterized as pre-paradigmatic and paradigmatic. During the pre-paradigmatic
period of a science, one finds more than one mode of practicing that science. In other words
there was a time when there were different schools of Astronomy, schools of Physics,
Chemistry, Biology, Philosophy, and Art etc. But whereas even today we speak of schools of Art,
schools of Literature, schools of Philosophy, schools of Social Science and systems or schools of
Medicine, we do not speak of schools of Astronomy, schools of Physics, schools of Biology etc.
This is because according to Kuhn, areas like Art, Literature, Philosophy, Social Science and
Medicine do not and perhaps cannot, make a transition from pre-paradigmatic stage to
paradigmatic stage. Therefore what characterizes a science which enters a paradigmatic stage is
the disappearance of plurality of the mode of practicing that science, that is, the disappearance
of ‘schools’. Kuhn claims that when a science reaches the paradigmatic stage, it becomes
‘mature’ or ‘science’ in the present sense of the term. Astronomy was the first to enter the
paradigmatic stage followed by Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Hence it is the acquisition of
paradigm which replaces plurality by uniformity of practice.

9.2 What are the paradigms?

Paradigms are universally recognized scientific achievements that for a considerable period of
time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners (scientific
community). Paradigms specify the exact manner in which the relevant disciplines (physics,
chemistry, biology etc.) ought to proceed. They laid the ground rules regarding what problems
these disciplines must tackle and how to tackle them.

A paradigm specifies what kind of things exist in the universe, how they interact with each
other and our senses, what kind of questions may legitimately be asked about these things,
what techniques are appropriate for answering those questions, what counts as evidence for a
theory, what questions are central to a particular science, what counts as a solution to a
problem, what counts as an explanation of some phenomena and so on. A ‘Disciplinary Matrix’
is a set of answers to the above mentioned questions that are learned by scientists in the
course of the education that prepares them for research and that provides the framework
within which a particular science operates. In other words, a paradigm is a disciplinary matrix of
a professional group. Once a science comes to possess a paradigm, it develops, what Kuhn calls,
a ‘normal science tradition’. Normal science is the day-to-day research activity purporting to
force nature into conceptual boxes provided by the paradigm.

Scientific practice is not exhausted in terms of day-to-day research of ‘normal science’. When a
paradigm fails to promote fruitful, interesting and smooth normal science, it is considered to be
in a crisis. The deepening of the crisis leads to the replacement of the existing paradigm by a
new one. This process of replacement is called a ‘scientific revolution’. Therefore, scientific
revolutions are the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition bound activity of normal
science. ‘Normal science’ occupies much larger time span than does ‘revolutionary science’.
That is to say, science is revolutionary once in a while, and mostly it is normal. Normal science is
an activity that purports not to question the existing paradigm, but to

(a) increase the precision of an existing theory and

(b) extend the existing theory to areas that it is expected to cover but in which it has never
before been tried.

Some examples of paradigms are mentioned below.

(i) Classical or Newtonian physics.

Newton’s laws of motions and gravitational theory with its metaphysical picture of the
world as composed of material particles, interacting by colliding with each other, and by
attractive and repulsive forces acting in straight lines between particles, and the guiding
image of the world as giant clockwork (machine).

(ii) Phlogiston theory of combustion

Based around the idea that combustion is the release of a substance called phlogiston

(iii) Doltonian Chemistry

Based on the chemical theory according to which the elements may be distinguished by
their differing atomic weights. Atoms are indivisible and are the ultimate particles in
nature.

(iv) Caloric theory of heat

According to which heat is a material fluid.

(v) Particle optics

According to which light is a collection of fast moving and tiny particles

(vi) Wave optics

According to which light is composed of waves of disturbance in some medium.

(vii) Relativistic Physics

According to which the time elapsed between two events is relative to the state of
motion of an observer (a frame of reference).Mass in the universe is not conserved.
Mass could be transformed into energy. Mass of a body increases with its velocity.
 (viii) Quantum Physics

According to which the energy possessed by material objects or electromagnetic

waves comes in discrete units, rather than taking a continuous range of values. The
values of certain properties cannot be measured certainly; only a probability could be
assigned (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle).

Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of the session you should be able to
 Explaining the concept ‘paradigm’ introduced by Kuhn
 Identifying the relation between paradigm and the uniqueness of science according to
Kuhn

Learning Activities

1. Describe clearly the concept ‘paradigm.’

2. Relate the concept’ paradigm’ with the uniqueness of science as mentioned by Kuhn

Co-references

Chalmers ,A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Theories as structures
i:Khun’s paradigms (chapter 8, pp104-129).Cambridge: Hackett publishing company
Supplementary references

Videos

Introduction to philosophy -Lectures by Prof. Hoyningen Huene , Leibniz University, Hannover,

Germany

Lecture 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAhD7nKrLbE

Session 10:
Normal Science, Revolutions and Scientific
Community
According to Kuhn normal science is the puzzle- solving activity which is a highly cumulative
enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of
scientific knowledge.

During this process of normal science activity, scientists come across ‘anomalies’. That is, an
anomaly arises when a puzzle remains a puzzle defying every attempt to solve it within the
framework of the paradigm. With the accumulation of major anomalies in a particular
paradigm ,the practitioners begin to loose confidence in that paradigm. Then that paradigm is
declared to be crisis – ridden, and the search for an alternative paradigm begins. But there is
no ‘clear cut’ and ‘objective’ criterion to decide which anomalies are major and how many
anomalies must be accumulated in order to declare a paradigm to be crisis – ridden. That will
be decided by the community of the practitioners of the discipline (scientific community),2
through the judgment of its peers (contemporaries or follow practitioners). The crisis – ridden
paradigm will not be given up until and unless a new paradigm is accepted in its place. The
issue concerning the paradigm choice cannot be settled by logic and experiment alone. What
ultimately matters is the consensus (agreement) of the relevant scientific community. In other
words the choice of a theory as the new paradigm has to be understood in terms of the value
judgments, which a scientific community exercises in the context in which they find themselves.

A theory is chosen as the new paradigm which fits the value commitments of a scientific
community. Hence the question of choice becomes the question of value. The ultimate
explanation of a theory choice is not methodological but sociological. Thus, the concept
‘scientific community’ is basic to the concept ‘paradigm’. The concept of scientific community
can be explicated only in sociological terms.

The hallmark of science, according to Popper is critical thinking but according to Kuhn, the
hallmark of science is tradition – bound thinking. In fact, according to Kuhn, what distinguishes
science from other areas of knowledge is that whereas in science one finds institutional
mechanisms of enforcing consensus (agreement), the other areas of knowledge suffer from
perpetual disagreements even on fundamentals. If Popper considers the individual to be the
locus of scientific activity, Kuhn bestows that status upon the scientific community. In other
words, as opposed to the individualistic account of scientific enterprise by Popper, Kuhn
propounds a collectivistic view of scientific activity.
Learning outcomes
Upon completion of the session you should be able to
 Identify the difference between normal science and revolutionary science.
 Identify the role of scientific community in bringing forth a revolution in science.

Learning Activities

1. Compare and contrast normal science and revolutionary science.

2. Explain the role of scientific community in bringing forth a revolution in science.

Co -References

Smith, P.G.(2003). Theory and Reality: Kuhn and Normal Science (chapter5,pp75-86).Chicago:
The University of Chicago press

Smith, P.G.(2003). Theory and Reality: Kuhn and Revolutions (chapter6,pp87-101).Chicago: The
University of Chicago press
Session 11:
Incommensurability, Relativism and Progress

11.1 What is the relation between the old paradigm which is overthrown and the new
paradigm which succeeds it?
Kuhn’s answer to this question is extremely radical. Kuhn maintains that two successive
paradigms cut the world differently. They speak different languages. What can be said in the
language of one paradigm cannot be translated into the language of the other. Therefore Kuhn
claims that the relation between two successive paradigms is incommensurable. With this, the
idea of scientific progress as a continuous process, and the idea of truth as the absolute
standard became totally repudiated. That is to say, what is true is relative to a paradigm and
there is no truth lying outside all paradigms. Thus, Kuhn advances what might appear to be an
undiluted ‘Relativism’. But Kuhn hesitated to be branded as a relativist. Thomas Kuhn’s
position regarding the scientific enterprise could be characterized as conservative.

Compared to Kuhn’s conservative character, his contemporary Pail Feyerabend was a radical
philosopher. Feyerabend in his classic, ‘Against Method’ repudiates the very idea of scientific
method. Both on grounds of logic and history, he questions the time-honoured belief that
these is something called the method of science which distinguishes science from the rest of
other knowledge systems.

Almost all the philosophers of science maintain that there are at least two conditions which
ought to be met by any theory that is proposed for acceptance. These conditions are called
‘consistency condition’ and ‘correspondence condition’. According to the consistency
condition, the new theory must be consistent with the already well established theories.
According to the second condition, the new theory must correspond to the well established
facts.

Feyerabend claims that both these conditions are illegitimate in the sense their acceptance
hinders the progress of science. By insisting upon the first condition, the traditional
philosopher of science, both Positivists and Popper, overlooked the fact that the so-called well
established theories may themselves be faulty. Their faculty character might come to surface
only if we allow the new theory provisional acceptance. Hence, Feyerabend insists that the real
test of a theory may be possible only by adopting an alternative theory. We might believe that
our existing theories are well supported by facts. But there may be some facts which might go
against these theories. However, we may never become aware of these new facts unless we
transcend these theories and adopt an alternative, just as we cannot become aware of all the
defects of our society unless we look at it from the point of view of another society.

Similarly, the corresponding condition too cannot be sustained. Given the fact that all
observations are theory-laden, it may be that what we consider to be observationally obvious
might be wrong due to the incorrectness of the theory. Hence, Feyearbend say that a new
theory must be allowed to grow even if it goes against well known facts. It may be noted that of
the two conditions, correspondence condition is primary because the consistency condition can
be reduced to it. The consistency condition says that a new theory must be consistent with
existing theories if the later are supported by facts. In other words, the consistency condition
seeks to guarantee that a new theory correspond with known facts by being consistent with
existing theories. By rejecting both conditions, Feyerabend advocates that a new theory should
not be constrained by the rule that it should first correspond with facts which we already know.
In fact, he says that we must make deliberate attempts to develop theories which go counter to
the so-called known facts.

Feyerabend goes one step further. He challenges his traditional opponents by saying “Give me
any norm you like. I will show that it is violated at certain important phases in the history of
science, not by oversight or negligence, but consciously and deliberately”. According to him, in
the most productive periods of any science, scientists found themselves in situations which are
too complex to be tackled by simple rules of thumb which philosophers of science glorify as
methodological norms. Since science in its history has violated every possible norm, we must
give up the very idea of the scientific method.

Kuhn claims that science is unique because it has reached the paradigmatic stage with the
scientific community agreeing to share (consensus) a paradigm. In other words, Kuhn
celebrates the fact that in natural sciences there is a qualitatively greater consensus than in
other knowledge systems (eg. Social Sciences). Feyerabend stands against this monolithic
view (monism) of Kuhn. According to Feyerabend, even if Kuhn is right in his description of the
actual (present day) scientific practice where the scientific community is in greater consensus
regarding a single paradigm, he (Kuhn) cannot justify that this monolithic state of affairs is the
ideal (best). Feyerabend strongly criticizes the scientific community for being arrogant (even
worse than the Catholic Church during Galileo’s era) by not allowing alternative theories to
blossom (grow). Feyerabend advocates the need for pluralism (allowing alternative theories to
compete) in scientific practice.

Finally, like Kuhn, Feyerabend maintains that successive paradigms in science are
incommensurable. He provided new arguments in favour of the incommensurably thesis
propounded by Kuhn.
Learning Outcomes
 Describe the concept ‘incommensurability’ according to Kuhn
 Identify the consequences of applying the concept ‘incommensurability’

Learning Activities

1. Explain the concept ‘incommensurability’ according to Kuhn.

2. Argue how ‘incommensurability’ leads to relativism of scientific knowledge.

Co -References
Smith, P.G.(2003). Theory and Reality: Kuhn and Revolutions (chapter6, 6.3,pp91-96).Chicago:
The University of Chicago press
Session 12:
Anarchistic theory of science-Feyerabend’s
views

12.1 Introduction
In his books’ Against Method ‘and’ Science in a Free Society’, Feyerabend defended the idea
that there are no methodological rules which are always used by scientists. He objected to any
single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that any such method would limit the
activities of scientists, and hence restrict scientific progress. In his view, science would benefit
most from a "dose" of theoretical anarchism. He also thought that theoretical anarchism was
desirable because it was more humanitarian than other systems of organization, by not
imposing rigid rules on scientists.

Feyerabend's position was originally seen as radical in the philosophy of science, because it
implies that philosophy can neither succeed in providing a general description of science, nor in
devising a method for differentiating products of science from non-scientific entities like myths.
(Feyerabend's position also implies that philosophical guidelines should be ignored by
scientists, if they are to aim for progress.)
To support his position that methodological rules generally do not contribute to scientific
success, Feyerabend provides counterexamples to the claim that (good) science operates
according to a certain fixed method. He took some examples of episodes in science that are
generally regarded as indisputable instances of progress (e.g. the Copernican revolution), and
showed that all common prescriptive rules of science are violated in such circumstances.
Moreover, he claimed that applying such rules in these historical situations would actually have
prevented scientific revolutions.
One of the criteria for evaluating scientific theories that Feyerabend attacks is the consistency
criterion. He points out that to insist that new theories be consistent with old theories gives an
unreasonable advantage to the older theory. He makes the logical point that being compatible
with a defunct older theory does not increase the validity or truth of a new theory over an
alternative covering the same content. That is, if one had to choose between two theories of
equal explanatory power, to choose the one that is compatible with an older, falsified theory is
to make an aesthetic, rather than a rational choice. The familiarity of such a theory might also
make it more appealing to scientists, since they will not have to disregard as many cherished
prejudices. Hence, that theory can be said to have "an unfair advantage".
Feyerabend was also critical of falsificationism. He argued that no interesting theory is ever
consistent with all the relevant facts. This would rule out using a naïve falsificationist rule which
says that scientific theories should be rejected if they do not agree with known facts.
Feyerabend uses several examples, but "renormalization" in quantum mechanics provides an
example of his intentionally provocative style: "This procedure consists in crossing out the
results of certain calculations and replacing them by a description of what is actually observed.
Thus one admits, implicitly, that the theory is in trouble while formulating it in a manner
suggesting that a new principle has been discovered “Against Method. p. 61. Feyerabend is not
advocating that scientists do not make use of renormalization or other ad- hoc methods.
Instead, he is arguing that such methods are essential to the progress of science for several
reasons. One of these reasons is that progress in science is uneven. For instance, in the time
of Galileo, optical theory could not account for phenomena that were observed by means of
telescopes. So, astronomers who used telescopic observation had to use ad- hoc rules until
they could justify their assumptions by means of optical theory.
Feyerabend was critical of any guideline that aimed to judge the quality of scientific theories by
comparing them to known facts. He thought that previous theory might influence natural
interpretations of observed phenomena. Scientists necessarily make implicit assumptions when
comparing scientific theories to facts that they observe. Such assumptions need to be changed
in order to make the new theory compatible with observations. The main example of the
influence of natural interpretations that Feyerabend provided was the tower argument. The
tower argument was one of the main objections against the theory of a moving earth.
Aristotelians assumed that the fact that a stone which is dropped from a tower lands directly
beneath it shows that the earth is stationary. They thought that, if the earth moved while the
stone was falling, the stone would have been "left behind". Objects would fall diagonally
instead of vertically. Since this does not happen, Aristotelians thought that it was evident that
the earth did not move. If one uses ancient theories of impulse and relative motion, the
Copernican theory indeed appears to be falsified by the fact that objects fall vertically on earth.
This observation required a new interpretation to make it compatible with Copernican theory.
Galileo was able to make such a change about the nature of impulse and relative motion.
Before such theories were articulated, Galileo had to make use of ad- hoc methods and proceed
counter-inductively. So, "ad-hoc" hypotheses actually have a positive function: they temporarily
make a new theory compatible with facts until the theory to be defended can be supported by
other theories.
Feyerabend considered the possibility of incommensurability, but he was hesitant in his
application of the concept. He wrote that "it is hardly ever possible to give an explicit definition
of [incommensurability]"Against Method. p. 225., because it involves covert classifications and
major conceptual changes. He also was critical of attempts to capture incommensurability in a
logical framework, since he thought of incommensurability as a phenomenon outside the
domain of logic. In the second appendix of Against Method(p. 114), Feyerabend states, "I never
said... that any two rival theories are incommensurable... What I did say was that certain rival
theories, so-called 'universal' theories, or 'non-instancial' theories, if interpreted in a certain
way, could not be compared easily." Incommensurability did not concern Feyerabend greatly,
because he believed that even when theories are commensurable (i.e. can be compared), the
outcome of the comparison should not necessarily rule out either theory. To rephrase: when
theories are incommensurable, they cannot rule each other out, and when theories are
commensurable, they cannot rule each other out. Assessments of (in)commensurability,
therefore, don't have much effect in Feyerabend's system, and can be more or less passed over
in silence.
In Against Method Feyerabend claimed that Imre Lakatos's philosophy of research programmes
is actually "anarchism in disguise", because it does not issue orders to scientists. Feyerabend
playfully dedicated Against Method to "Imre Lakatos: Friend, and fellow-anarchist". One
interpretation is that Lakatos's philosophy of mathematics and science was based on creative
transformations of Hegelian historiography ideas, many associated with Lakatos's teacher in
Hungary Georg Lukács. Feyerabend's debate with Lakatos on scientific method recapitulates
the debate of Lukács and (Feyerabend's would-be mentor) Brecht, over aesthetics several
decades earlier.

12.2 The decline of the physicist-philosopher

Feyerabend was critical of the lack of knowledge of philosophy shown by the generation of
physicists that emerged after World War II:
The withdrawal of philosophy into a "professional" shell of its own has had disastrous
consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may
be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors
like Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages,
they lack in philosophical depth – and this is the fault of the very same idea of professionalism
which you are now defending. (http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend)

While astronomy profited from pythagoreanism and from the platonic love for circles ,
medicine profited from herbalism, from the psychology, the metaphysics the physiology of
witches, midwives ,cunning men ,wandering druggists, it is well known that 16 th and 17th –
century medicine while theoretically hypertrophic was quite helpless in the face of disease
(and stayed that way for a long time after the scientific revolution ‘).Innovators such as
Paracelsus fell back on the earlier ideas and improved medicine .Everywhere science is enriched
by unscientific results ,while procedures which have often been regarded as essential parts of
science are quietly suspended or circumvented.

When the Communists in the fifties forced hospitals and medical schools to teach the ideas and
the methods contained in the Yellow Emperor’s Text book of Internal Medicine and to use them
in the treatment of patients, many Western experts (among them Eccles, one of the ‘ Popperian
Knights’) were aghast and predicted the downfall of Chinese medicine. What happened was the
exact opposite. Acupuncture, moxibustion, pulse diagnosis have let to new insights, new
methods of treatment, new problems both for the Western and for the Chinese physicians.

Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at
the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also
detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to
master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods and not just a small
selection of them. The assertion, however that there is no knowledge outside science – extra
scientiam nulla salus – is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale. Primitive tribes
have more detailed classifications of animals and plants than contemporary scientific zoology
and botany, they know remedies whose effectiveness astounds physician (while the
pharmaceutical industry already smells here a new source of income), they have means of
influencing their fellow men which science for a long time regarded as non-existent (Voodoo),
they solve difficult problems in ways which are still not quite understood (building of the
pyramids; Polynesian travels), there existed a highly developed and internationally known
astronomy in the old Stone Age, this astronomy was factually adequate as well as emotionally
satisfying, it solved both physical and social problems (one cannot say the same about modern
astronomy) and it was tested in very simple and ingenious ways (Stone observatories in England
and in the South Pacific; astronomical schools in Polynesia
(http://pnarae.com/phil/main_phil/fey/against.htm)
12.3 A summary of the views expressed by Feyerabend in his famous book ‘Against Method’.
 Science is an anarchistic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more
likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.
 This is shown both by an examination of historical episodes and by an abstract analysis of
the relation between idea and action. The only principle that does not inhibit progress is:
anything goes.
 For example, we may use hypotheses that contradict well-confirmed theories and/or well-
established experimental results. We may advance science by proceeding counter-
inductively.
 The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted
theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory.
Hypothesis contradicting well-confirmed theories give us evidence that cannot be obtained
in any other way. Proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs
its critical power. Uniformity also endangers the free development of the individual.
 There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our
knowledge. The whole story of thought is absorbed into science and is used to improve
every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the
chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.
 No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is
to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories
may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempts to find the principles implicit
in familiar observational notions.
 As an example of such an attempt, I examine the tower argument which the Aristotelians
used to refute the motion of the earth. The argument involves natural interpretations –
ideas so closely connected with observations that it needs a special effort to realize their
existence and to determine their content. Galileo identifies the natural interpretations
which are inconsistent with Copernicus and replaces them by others.
 The new natural interpretations constitute a new and highly abstract observation language.
They are introduced and concealed so that one fails to notice the change that has taken
place (method of anamnesis). They contain the idea of the relatively of all motion and the
law of circular inertia.
 Initial difficulties caused by the change are defused by ad- hoc hypotheses, which thus turn
out occasionally to have a positive function; they give new theories a breathing space, and
they indicate the direction of future research.
 In addition to natural interpretations, Galileo also changes sensations that seem to
endanger Copernicus. He admits that there are such sensations. He praises Copernicus for
having disregarded them; he claims to have removed them with the help of the telescope.
However, he offers no theoretical reasons why the telescope should be expected to give a
true picture of the sky.
 Nor does the initial experience with the telescope provide such reasons. The first telescopic
observations of the sky are indistinct, indeterminate, contradictory and in conflict with what
everyone can see with his unaided eyes. And, the only theory that could have helped to
separate telescopic illusions from veridical phenomena was refuted by simple tests.
 On the other hand, there are some telescopic phenomena which are plainly Copernican.
Galileo introduces these phenomena as independent evidence for Copernicus while the
situation is rather that one refuted view – Copernicanism – has a certain similarity with
phenomena emerging from another refuted view – the idea that telescopic phenomena are
faithful images of the sky. Galileo prevails because of his style and his clever techniques of
persuasion, because he writes in Italian rather than in Latin, and because he appeals to
people who are temperamentally opposed to the old ideas and the standards of learning
connected with them.
 Such ‘irrational’ methods of support are needed because of the ‘uneven development’
(Marx, Lenin) of different parts of science. Copernicanism and other essential ingredients of
modern science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past.
 Galileo’s method works in other field as well. For example, it can be used to eliminate the
existing arguments against materialism, and to put an end to the philosophical mind/body
problem (the corresponding scientific problems remain untouched, however).
 The results obtained so far suggest abolishing the distinction between a context of
discovery and a context of justification and disregarding the related distinction between
observational terms and theoretical terms. Neither distinction plays a role in scientific
practice. Attempts to enforce them would have disastrous consequences.
 Finally, the discussion in Chapters 6-13 shows that Popper’s version of Mill’s pluralism is not
in agreement with scientific practice and would destroy science as we know it. Given
science, reason cannot be universal and unreason cannot be excluded. This feature of
science calls for as anarchistic epistemology. The realization that science is not sacrosanct,
and that the debate between science and myth has ceased without having been won by
either side, further strengthens the case for anarchism in science.
(http://pnarae.com/phil/main_phil/fey/against.htm)

Learning Outcomes
 Explain the radical view of Feyerabend regarding the methodology of science namely
‘Anything goes ‘.
 Identify the critique of Feyerabend regarding the methodologies of Popper and Lakatos
 Compare the views of Feyerabend and Kuhn regarding paradigm, incommensurability
and uniqueness of science
Learning Activities

1. Express the arguments of Feyerabend in defense of his anarchistic views regarding the
methodology of science.

2. Compare and contrast the views of Feyerabend and Popper.

3. Compare and contrast the views of Feyerabend and Lakatos.

4. Compare and contrast the views of Feyerabend and Kuhn.

Co-References

Chalmers ,A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Feyerabend’s anarchistic
theory of science (chapter 10, pp149-159).Cambridge: Hackett publishing company

Bibliography

Chalmers ,A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Sophisticated
falsificationism, novel predictions and the growth of science .Cambridge: Hackett publishing
company

Chalmers, A.F.(1999). What is this thing called Science? , Third edition: Theories as structures II:
Research programs).Cambridge: Hackett publishing company

Lakotos ,I. & Musgrave, A .(1970). Criticism and growth of knowledge: Discussion by Feyrabend
,Consolations for the specialist. London: Cambridge University press
Nandy, A..(1988). Science ,Hegamony and violence : a requiem for modernity : Francis Bacon
,the First Philosopher of Modern Science .New Dehli: Oxford University Press

Paul Feyrabend from,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend)

Paul Feyrabend’s Against the Method, from http://pnarae.com/phil/main_phil/fey/against.htm

Session 13:
Critique of Modern Science

13.1 Reductionism in modern science

Modern science has given rise to such a large volume of detailed but fragmental information,
that it is impossible for anyone or even a set of individuals to have even a less than detailed
knowledge of all of it. It has therefore bred a number of ‘subject specialists’, who know in
detail and claim to be experts in a small narrow field of activity. For example a Virologist, would
be a specialist on viruses (the smallest disease causing organism), and viral diseases. Although
he is likely to have a general background in Biological or medical sciences, after a few years of
specialized knowledge, he would have lost touch with part of this background knowledge.
Further he or she as a serious scientist would have been fully immersed in the narrow specialty
and his career, economic well being etc. and will be tied to it. Therefore it is natural that he
would have an exaggerated view of the importance of his specialty, if not he would at least be a
propagandist of this. He or she is now in danger of being a reductionist, ignoring the totality or
the whole and concentrating on his partitioned field of knowledge

13.2 Philosophical position of Reductionism

Reductionism provides the assumptions and criteria which guide modern science. The basic
assumptions are ontological and epistemological.

The ontological assumptions of reductionism are:

(a). that a system is reducible to its parts; and

(b). that all systems are made up of the same basic constituents which are discrete and
atomistic; and

(c). that all systems have the same basic processes which are mechanical.

The epistemological assumptions of reductionism are

(a). that knowledge of the parts of a system gives knowledge of the whole system;

(b). that ‘experts’ and ‘specialists’ are the only legitimate knowledge-seekers and knowledge-
justifiers.
13.3 The Politics of Reductionism
Well known environmentalist Vandana Shiva expresses clearly her views on the Politics of
Reductionism in an article titled “Reductionist Science as Epistemological Violence” as given
below.

The ontological and epistemological components of the reductionist worldview provide the
framework for a particular way of doing science, which is projected as the ‘scientific method’,
that is, as the only reliable and objective way of discovering the facts of nature and correctly
understanding nature. Deriving its inspiration and authority from Descartes, modern science
gives the Cartesian method a twist to christen (name) it the sole ‘scientific method’.

This reductionist method has its uses in the fields of abstraction such as logic and mathematics,
and in the fields of man made artefacts such as mechanics. But it fails singularly to lead to a
perception of reality (truth) in the case of living organisms such as nature, including man, in
which the whole is not merely the sum of the parts, if only because the parts are so cohesively
interrelated that isolating any part distorts perception of the whole.

In any event, there is no warrant for the claim that the reductionist method is a ‘scientific
method’, much less the sole scientific method. Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Michael
Polanyi and others have convincingly argued that modern science does not proceed according
to a well-defined and stable scientific method. All that can be granted to reductionist science is
that it is an approach, a way of looking, a mode of thought. Considering its predatory
treatment of nature, attested to by the ecological crisis, it is indeed a very unreliable way.

Controlled experiment in the laboratory is a central element of the methodology of reductionist

science. The object of study is arbitrarily isolated from its natural surroundings, from its
relationship with other objects and observer(s). The context (the value framework) so provided
determines what properties are perceived in nature, and leads to a particular set of beliefs
about nature.

These is threefold exclusion in this methodology:

(i). Ontological, in that other properties are not taken note of

(ii). Epistemological, in that other ways of perceiving and knowing are not recognized.

(ii). Sociological, in that the non-expert is deprived of the right both of access to knowledge and
of judging the claims of knowledge.
All this is the stuff of politics, not science. Picking one group of people (the specialists), who
adopt one way of knowing the physical world (the reductionist), to find one set of properties in
nature (the reductionist/mechanistic), is a political, not a scientific, act. It is this act that is
claimed to be the ‘scientific method’. The knowledge obtained is presented as ‘the laws of
nature’ wholly ‘objective’ and altogether universal.

It is argued in defence of modern science that it is not science but the political misuse of
science and the unethical technological application of science that lead to violence. The
speciousness of the argument was always clear, but is totally untenable in today’s world, when
science and technology have become cognitively inseparable and the amalgam has been
incorporated into the economic system.. Fragmentation of science into a variety of
specializations and sub-specializations is used as a smokescreen to blur the perception of this
linkage between science and a particular model of social organization that is, a particular
ideology. Science claims that since scientific truths, are verifiable, they are justified beliefs and
therefore universal, regardless of the social context.

The verificationist model of science was forcefully presented by Positivism. It claimed that
verification was direct observation of the ‘facts’ of nature, free from the proclivities of the
observer. This was, however, challenged by post-positivist philosophers. Kuhn, for example,
showed that facts and data in science are determined by the theoretical commitment of
scientists. In other words, scientific facts are determined by the social world of scientists, not
by the natural world.

While the Kuhnian model challenged the neutrality of scientific facts, it failed to provide an
adequate epistemological framework for handling the violence of reductionist science. By
insisting that ‘nature fits into the realistic boxes of paradigms’, Kuhn rendered his model of
science materially and politically vacuous. Moreover, he failed to take into account the value
system of the larger society that determines the choice of scientific research. Value-
determination in the Kuhnian model is done by scientific paradigms, not by social, political,
economic interests. By restricting itself to the social world of scientists, the Kuhnian model is
unable to deal with the more significant value determination of scientific facts by the demands
made on the system of science by economic interests. Moreover, by restricting himself to the
material world of the lab, Kuhn was unable to deal with those ecological situations in which
reductionist claims are falsified by nature, as symbolized by ecological crises.

A more appropriate account of modern science (including technology) should extend the
Kuhnian model both materially and socially. Materially, the testing of scientific beliefs has to be
taken out of cloistered labs into the wider physical world. Socially, the world of scientific
experiments and beliefs has to be extended beyond the social organization of science to the
social organization of society. The verification and validation of a system of science would then
be validation in practice, where practice is real life activity in society and nature.

13.4 Profits, Reductionism and Violence

The artificial cognitive dichotomy between science and technology dissolves when science is
viewed as a set of beliefs guiding practice, and technology as practice guided by scientific belief.
The duality between belief and action, thought and practice, is responsible for encouraging
many to mistake the cognitive weaknesses of reductionism for cognitive success.

Reductionism, however, is not an epistemological accident. It is related to the needs of a

particular form of economic organization. The reductionist worldview, the industrial revolution
and the capitalist economy were the philosophical, technological and economic components of
the same process. Individual firms and fragmented sectors of the economy, whether privately
or publicly owned, have their own efficiency needs in mind; and every firm and sector measures
its efficiency by the extent to which it maximizes its gains, regardless of the fact that in the
process it also maximizes the social and ecological costs of the production process. The logic of
this internal efficiency is provided by reductionism: only those properties of a resource system
are taken into account which generate profits through exploitation and extraction; properties
which stabilize ecological processes but are commercially non exploitative are ignored and
eventually destroyed.

The rationality and efficacy of the reductionist and non-reductionist knowledge systems are
never evaluated cognitively. The rationality of reductionist science is declared a-priori superior,
even though it can be argued that if reductionist science has displaced non-reductionist modes
of knowledge, it has done so not through cognitive competition, but through political support
from the state and the state’s development policies and development programmes which
provide both financial subsidies and ideological support for the appropriation of nature for
profits. Since the twin myths of progress (material prosperity and superior rationality) have lost
their sheen in the working out of development patterns and paradigms, and have been visibly
exploded by the widespread ecological crisis, the state has stepped in to transform myths into
an ideology. When an individual firm or sector directly confronts the larger society in its
commercial appropriation of nature, people can assess the costs and benefits for themselves;
they can differentiate between progress and regression, rationality and irrationality. But with
the mediation of the state, the citizen-as-subject becomes the object of change rather than its
determinant and consequently loses the right to assess progress. If they have to bear the costs
instead of reaping any benefit of ‘development’ it is justified as a minor sacrifice for the
‘national interest’.

The link between the state and the creation of surplus value provides the power with which
reductionism establishes its supremacy. Institutions of learning in agriculture, medicine and
forestry, for instance, selectively train people in reductionist paradigms, which are given the
names respectively of ‘scientific agriculture’, ‘scientific medicine’ and ‘scientific forestry’, to
prove the superiority of reductionist science. Stripped of the power the state invests it with,
such a science can be seen to be cognitively weak and ineffective in responding to problems
posed by nature. As a system of knowledge about nature, reductionist science is weak and
inadequate; as a system of knowledge for the market, it is powerful and profitable.

Let us consider some ecological crises created by the reductionst science and technology

(i). Eucalyptus Planting (under scientific forestry)

Desertification and its consequence, famine, has already caused the death of over 900,000
people in Ethiopia. In the Sahel, 40 to 90 percent of the livestock has died.

Since ancient times societies have known that forests are the best insurance against
desertification and famine. The reductionist version of this response to desertification is itself
a prescription for desertification. Under the World Food Programme, FAO planted eucalyptus
in Ethiopia, Under the social forestry schemes for ecological repair, the World Bank, SIDA,
USAID have coaxed India into putting farmlands under eucalyptus. People who for centuries
have been planters and protectors of trees have suddenly been marginalized. Knowledge of
tree planting has become the sole preserve of international and national bureaucracies.
Throughout the world, irrespective of local ecological conditions and economic needs, the
prescription is only one-eucalyptus. The biological wealth and diversity of the tropics have
been destroyed to make room for the reductionist solution, even through eucalyptus causes
rather than cures deserts, upsets the cycle of life, the hydrological cycle and the nutrient cycle.

The ecological audit of eucalyptus plantations reveals that it involves heavy economic costs
through the destruction of the hydrological stability and soil productivity in the following ways

First, in regions which have water scarcity, the high water intake of eucalyptus destroys the
natural processes that replenish soil moisture and recharge the sources of underground water,
turning the region into a completely arid zone. Moreover,eucalyptus damages the innate
allelomorphic capacity of all other plants, seriously depleting the gene pool. The process
initiated by large-scale cultivation of eucalyptus in water-scarce regions therefore leads
inexorably to desertification.
Second, on fertile agricultural lands, eucalyptus, when planted and harvested in short rotation,
heavily diminishes soil nutrients, destroying the soil’s capacity for biological productivity.
Moreover, eucalyptus destroys the environment for soil fauna that are at once ‘factories’ for
reproducing soil fertility, and efficient ‘machines’ for maintaining the soil structure.

In the countries of the South, desertification has become an increasingly severe threat to
human survival. The recently published UNEP report on deserts estimates that about 3-5
million hectares of productive and fertile rain-fed land is being lost annually. The food crisis in
Africa testifies to the cost of desertification in human and economic terms. It is also a reminder
that many of the economic problems of the poorest of mankind are rooted in the ecological
destruction caused by excessive demands on the natural resources by the elites of the world.

Eucalyptus emerged as a magical candidate for all kinds of a-forestation programmes during the
1960s because it is a fast-growing species. This belief was, however, challenged and it was
shown that many indigenous species have higher growth rates than eucalyptus.

In spite of eucalyptus being fast-growing and productive only in the narrow context of wood-
fibre production, it was prescribed as a universal means for achieving increased productivity of
biomass for the satisfaction of diverse needs. And so, a reductionist view of forestry wedded
to pulp industry was universalized at the cost of conservation of soil and water.

The rapid decline, and even total destruction, of water resources as a consequence of large-
scale planting of eucalyptus has been reported from all parts of India. The environmentalist
Sunderlal Bahuguna recorded the following statement of an elderly forest ranger in the Nainital
tarai of Uttar Pradesh: ‘We felled mixed natural forest of this area and planted eucalyptus. Our
hand pumps have gone dry as the water-table has gone down. We have committed a sin’.

Sri Lankan experience regarding eucalyptus

Eucalyptus Planting (Sri Lankan Experience)

As mentioned in this article by Vandana Shiva, eucalyptus planting programmes were

introduced and implemented in Ethiopia and India by the international organizations such as
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Bank and USAID. In Sri Lanka too an
eucalyptus planting programme was implemented under the patronage of the World Bank in
the early 1990s.

The Sri Lankan scholars who were trained in UK advised the government to carry out an
eucalyptus planting programme in Sri Lanka. This was implemented in various parts of the
country and the World Bank consultants even introduced a Forestry Master Plan for Sri Lanka
which included the world renowned tropical rain forest in Sri Lanka namely “Sinharaja Forest”.
Due to the strong protests by the peasants and environmentalists this forestry master plan was
withdrawn. After experiencing the harmful effects of the existing eucalyptus plantations and
the continuous protests by the environmentalists and rural people in those areas, the Sri
Lankan government finally decided to gradually clear the eucalyptus plantations and substitute
them with suitable indigenous species which restore ecological balance.

Reductionist forestry science is intimately linked to forest based industry, notwithstanding its
claim to be ‘objective’. When its violence to nature through desertification, and its violence to
man through famine, is exposed, official foresters turn on the victims of desertification and
accuse them of colossal ignorance of the science of forestry. But this science does not balk at
manufacturing data to legitimize misinformation; it violates the tradition of science itself to
deny people the right to know and to hide, under the protective umbrella of the state, the
nexus between modern science and capital accumulation.

(ii). Pesticides (Under Scientific agriculture)

Traditional, or what the reductionist world-view calls unscientific, systems of food production
have managed pest control by a series of measures which included building up plant resistance,
practising rotational and mixed cropping, and providing habitats for pest-predators in farm
trees and hedgerows. These practices created stable local conditions; a balance was achieved
between plants and their pests through natural competition, selection and predator-prey
relationships. Myths are generally found to be important sources of traditional knowledge
about quiet but essential ecological processes. For example, the Kayape Indians of the Amazon
basin have a ritual in which the women paint their faces with ant parts in the maize festival.
The principal theme of the myth is the celebration of the little red ant as the guardian of the
fields and a friend of women.

‘Scientific’ farming upset this balance and created favourable conditions for the multiplication
of disease. Organic fertilizer, which builds up plant resistance to disease, was replaced by
chemical fertilizers, which decrease plant resistance to by chemical fertilizers, which decrease
plant resistance to pests. Since many pests are specific to particular plants, replacing crop
rotations by the planting of the same crop year after year often encourages pest build-ups.
Substitution of mixed cropping pattern by monoculture also makes crops more prone to pest
attacks. The mechanization of farming leads to the destruction of hedgerows and trees, and
thus destroys the habitat for some pest-predators.

The problem of pest control was therefore mostly a problem created by the disturbance of the
ecological balance of agro-ecosystems by the introduction of ‘scientific agriculture’.
Reductionist science was concerned merely with the existence of pests, not with the ecology of
pests. The solution that suited both science and the pesticide industry was production and sale
of poisons to kill pests. As a pesticide company announced in a TV advertisement, ‘The only
good bug in a dead bug’.

Interference with natural balance also fails to anticipate and predict what will happen when
that balance is upset. Besides reflecting the cognitive weakness of the approach of over-kill,
the violence of the pesticide-based approach decreases plant resistance, increases pest attacks
and the need for even more pesticides. Gradually, pesticides are absorbed by plants and
animals in ever increasing quantities. Rachel Carson’s book titled “The Silent Spring” remains
the best commentary on how pesticides are becoming a major source of water pollution and
health hazards.

The claims made by reductionist science and the pesticides industries about the damage to
crops prevented by pesticides have a persuasive ring because the effect of pesticides is visible.
A heap of bugs killed in a lightning operation can be dramatized and turned into an impressive
sight and good selling point. Natural enemies of pests, on the other hand, although more
effective because they do not produce any destructive fall-out for flora, fauna and humans,
work quietly and invisibly and cannot therefore be shown on the
TV screen dancing round a heap of bugs. Chemical pesticides are successful but indiscriminate
killers; they kill not only pests, but the natural enemies of pests also.

That ignorance, irrationality and greed are characteristics of the pesticide industry have been
tragically revealed in the Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide was simultaneously a creator of
scientific knowledge, profits and violence.

(Note: Bhopal disaster ………… )

Pesticides and Kidney Disease in the North-Central Province of Sri Lanka

But in spite of its complete failure to solve the problem of pest control, and in spite of its
violence against nature and humans, the sale of pesticides continues to increase, because its
use is insured through state agricultural policy, through pesticide subsidies and through
pesticide propaganda, and also because pesticides destroy the ecological basis of the
alternative systems of pest management that show better and longer-lasting results.

(iii). Medical Drugs

Medicine is generally presented as an area in which modern science has the most achievements
and successes to its credit. But there is increasing evidence that modern medicine and
therapeutics have themselves become a source of disease and death. According to Ivan Illich,
diseases brought on by doctors are a greater cause of increased mortality than traffic accidents
and war-related activities. Iatrogenic illnesses cause between 60,000 to 140,000 deaths in
America alone each year, and leave 2 to 5 million others more or less seriously ill. The situation
is worst in establishments which generate medical knowledge, viz. University hospitals where
one in five patients contracts an iatrogenic disease which usually requires special treatment,
and leads to death in one case out of thirty.

‘Scientific medicine’ extends its monopoly even to those cases of common diseases in which
people would get well without therapeutic intervention. It only converts simple problems into
serous or fatal ones. Thus, diarrhoea has always been common illness managed traditionally by
diet control and re-hydration. Rice water, kanji, isabgol, curd, coconut water are just a few
among the numerous traditionally established means for controlling diarrhoea in tropical
countries like India.

When ‘scientific medicine’ steps in, it reduces the problem of diarrhoea to the existence of a
discrete entity in the guts that can be cured only by drugs. This shifts the focus from the
patient to the disease and applies solutions which result in violence on the patient, both
through drugs and the side effects of drugs. “It is not necessary to cure the patient, but the
disease itself must be the focus of medical attention with the patient as a kind of inert carrier of
his condition. The doctor is not interested in equilibrium. He is at war.

Clioquinol was introduced as an anti-diarrhoeal drug in 1934 by Ciba-Geigy under the brand
names of Mexaform and Enterovioform. Although its effectiveness was established only for
amoebiasis in lab and clinical trials, its therapeutic action was extrapolated to all kinds of
diarrhoea. Clioquinol was indicated for summer, traveller’s or unspecified diarrhoea, gastro-
enteritis, colitis, and digestive disorders associated with diarrhoea. It was even suggested for
prophylactic use. It therefore became a commonly dispensed drug for common aliments.

Ciba and the scientists working in its support universalized the efficacy of the drug on the basis
of scanty information in order to capture larger markets. But this medical ‘science’ showed an
amazing reluctance to use information already available about the toxic effects of the drug. As
early as 1935 two cases with severe neurological symptoms and signs were reported in
Argentina, and one of the authors of the report informed the drug company about the
suspected adverse effects. Between 1935 and 1970 the potential risk of irreversible
neurological damage was documented in the medical literature as well as in the internal files of
CIBA. According to late Dr. Olle Hanson, ‘Attempts to hide facts, deny facts and attempts to
convince doctors not to publish their negative experimental findings have been made
throughout by Ciba Geigy, the producers of Mexaform and Enterovioform.

The cost of hiding these facts in order to continue sales was the crippling of an estimated
10,000-30,000 people in Japan also, where the prescription of Clioquinol led to a SMON
epidemic, a severe neurological disorder caused by the drug. SMON stands for ‘Subacute Mylo
Optic Neuropathy’, in plain English it means loss of sight, loss of function of legs, loss of bladder
control, and constant pain in the legs.

In 1970, Professor Tadao Tusbaku discovered that SMON was caused by Clioquinol. In 1971,
5000 SMON victims filed law suits in Japan against Ciba-Geigy. In spite of all the evidence, the
drug company stated that there might be another factor to cause SMON, but could not prove
any factor besides Clioquinol through eight years of examination. The company that has
generalized the efficacy of the drug for all kinds of diarrhoea considered all the evidence
inadequate to prove the side effects of the drug. The Tokyo district court, however, decided
that Clioquinol was the cause of SMON.

The next ‘scientific’ move by Ciba smacked of racism. It said that the Japanese were genetically
prone to SMON. That canard was exploded when Dr. Hanson found forty cases of SMON in
Sweden. It became evident that the high incidence of the disease in Japan was due to over
prescription-because the doctor’s income in the Japanese health system depends on the
quantity of drugs he prescribes. The second reason is related to reductionism and the myth of
the universal validity of modern science, which ignores the fact that since the Japanese are of a
smaller build than Europeans and Americans, the dose advised per kilogram is relatively large
for the Japanese people.

Even the discovery of cases outside Japan was not accepted as an adequate reason to suspend
sales of the drug. At the Geneva press conference on SMON in 1980, Dr. Sabatkiewiez of Ciba-
Geigy stated:

“We have no medical reason to be afraid of this drug. I have seen Clioquinol used in tropical
countries. I know there is need for it, and we have no – I repet no – medical reason to
withdraw the drug from the market at this moment”.

As Ciba-Geigy continued to market the drug, SMON victims from Japan raised funds to inform
people in other countries of the hazards of the drug. Pressure mounted on Ciba Geigy when
Scandinavian doctors boycotted its product and demanded withdrawal of Mexaform and
Enterovioform from the third world. When, in 1978, Ciba eventually announced the withdrawal
of the drugs, there was hue and cry from some doctors in India who could not comprehend why
such a ‘wonderful’ drug was being withdrawn; they did not know that the drugs had been
proved to be harmful. And no wonder; for it is in the nature of their science to close the lid on
correct and full information, and to disseminate misinformation. That is why the Clioquinol
controversy did not deter drug companies from continuing to manufacture hazardous drugs on
the non-experts’ certificates about safety. For, without an adequate and appropriate challenge
of the kind that was offered to Ciba, the modern medical system is left free to grow in direct
proportion to the damage it does.

Scientific medicine uses different criteria for measuring a drug’s strength and weakness. It uses
one set of criteria for efficacy and quite another for drug toxicity. And this is supposed to be a
system of knowledge which is ‘objective’, which has no bias. In the case of Ciba it was because
of the involvement of doctors and the public in a campaign that the bias came out in the open.
In most cases, the bias lies undiscovered and passes for neutral, objective, universal science.

Simple ailments have been cured over centuries by appropriate use of dococtions made from
plants and minerals found in nature. ‘Scientific medicine’ removes the diversity by isolating
‘active’ ingredients or by synthesizing chemical combinations. Such processing first involves
violence against the complex balance inherent in natural resources. And then, when the
chemical is introduced into the human body, it is often a violation of human physiology.

But it is highly unlikely that medical science and pharmaceutical establishments will pay heed.
For the reductionist medical science cannot but manufacture reductionist products and
undermine the balance inherent in natural products. The multinationals that produce synthetic
drugs in pursuit of fabulous profits ignore their toxic side-effects. When they are forbidden to
sell some harmful drugs in the home countries, they find a lucrative market in the third world
where the elites, including the medical establishment, are usually bewitched by anything that is
offered as scientific, especially if it comes wrapped in pretty pay offs. They give a free hand to
multinationals to buy medicinal plants at dirt-cheap rates and sell the processed pills in the
third-world countries at exorbitant prices and at enormous cost to the health of the people.
The elites cannot accept that it would be more equitable socially, cheaper economically,
conductive to self reliance politically, and more beneficial medically for the third world
countries to use the plants locally according to time tested indigenous pharmacology.

While multinational drug companies and the third world political elites are out for profits, the
third world intellectual elites, eager to prove their scientific temper, join in a chorus to
denounce indigenous therapeutics and related knowledge systems as hocus-pocus and their
practice as quackery. It is through this mixture of misinformation, falsehood and bribes that a
reductionist medical science has established its monopoly on medical knowledge in many
societies.

And, as we have seen the links between modern medical science, violence and profits are not
only through politics and economics but also, as in the case of agriculture and scientific
forestry, through the internally determined structure and content of the system of scientific
knowledge.