Humanomics

BEYOND FOUNDATIONALISM AND RELATIVISM: WHAT HOPE FOR

SCIENCES OR SOCIETY?
Jon D. Wisman
Article information:
To cite this document:
Jon D. Wisman, (1990),"BEYOND FOUNDATIONALISM AND RELATIVISM: WHAT
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

HOPE FOR SCIENCES OR SOCIETY?", Humanomics, Vol. 6 Iss 2 pp. 4 - 19

Permanent link to this document:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/eb006103
Downloaded on: 01 July 2016, At: 20:54 (PT)
References: this document contains references to 0 other documents.
To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 126 times since 2006*

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by

emerald-srm:108061 []
For Authors
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please
use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which
publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit
www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com
Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of
society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over
2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of
online products and additional customer resources and services.
Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a
partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico
and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.
 *Related content and download information correct at time of download.
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)
 4 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

BEYOND FOUNDATIONALISM AND RELATIVISM:

WHAT HOPE FOR SCIENCES OR SOCIETY?
Jon D. Wisman: Department of Economics, The American University.
At the end of the European Middle Ages, as the Church slowly lost its
monopoly held on truth and meaning, the traditional foundations of
knowledge crumbled, initiating an epistemological crisis that continues
to haunt Western thought. The problem became how can we have con-
fidence in our theories and beliefs. What grounds their validity? Bacon's
empiricism and Descartes' rationalism were the most concerted and in-
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

fluential early attempts to resolve the crisis. But their resolutions were
soon found inadequate, and ever since, the search for a way to provide
a solid foundation for our knowledge has been the dominant concern
of philosophy. The last grandiose and influential attempt at resolution
was positivism. But positivism too has fallen into disfavor. The epistemo-
logical crisis endures.

Yet in spite of being without foundations, we have good reason to

believe that knowledge has nonetheless progressed. Our best evidence
is that we are able to manipulate and control our environment with ever
greater efficiency. But the knowledge domains which provide this power
are those of the natural sciences. What of the human or social scien-
ces? Although we may believe that social knowledge has advanced, un-
ambiguous evidence of such progress is difficult to muster.

The fundamental question that haunts the social sciences is with

what confidence might practitioners feel what they are doing is more
than mere ideology of one form or another? With the fall from grace of
positivism, all forms of epistemological foundationalism have come
under intense attack. Yet the alternative to some form of foundational-
ism is often claimed to be extreme relativism that many contend leads
ultimately to nihilism. The purpose of this paper is to search for an un-
derstanding of social science which offers an alternative to the impasse
of foundationalism versus relativism.

After a brief discussion of the problems of foundationalism and rela-

tivism, the search will begin with a brief examination of the framework
set forth by the so-called evolutionary epistemologists. Their claim is
that the evolution of knowledge must be seen as analogous to Darwi-
nian biological evolution. Taken as a whole, social knowledge can be
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 5

viewed within this context as enhancing the survival potential, and hence
the welfare, of the human species.
Yet in retrospect, much social knowledge of the past can be seen
as contrary to human welfare. Therefore, to help explain the selection
process within social thought, the evolutionist perspective will be sup-
plemented by drawing on aspects of Jurgen Habermas' work in the so-
ciology of knowledge. The novelty of Habermas' approach is his focus
upon the manner in which the nature of knowledge is rooted in existen-
tial or anthropologically-given human needs. These needs constitute the
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

basic human interests that steer the search for knowledge. The last sec-
tion of the paper will discuss how the interests guiding the search for
social knowledge have shifted over time.

Foundationalism versus Relativism

In the history of philosophy, those who have believed it possible to for-

mulate a framework to justify our knowledge claims by providing them
a secure "foundation" have come to be called "foundationalists". A list
of the most influential foundationalists would include Descartes, Kant,
Comte, Husserl, Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein. The belief is
that an Archimedian point can be established from which an ultimate
grounding of knowledge can be leveraged. It would justify knowledge
claims, placing knowledge on a solid, indubitable, and unshakeable
basis. Thus, foundationalism makes epistemology the core of philos-
ophy, the core of knowledge. Epistemology, according to the founda-
tionalists, sets forth the procedure for determining what can and cannot
count as knowledge.

The appeal of foundationalism is clear. Since the dawn of recorded

time, one ideology after another has been invoked to justify war, slavery,
exploitation, genocide, and probably every atrocity imaginable. If only
there were a tried and true method for distinguishing between truth and
ideology! Indeed, the timing of the last influential attempt to establish a
solid foundation for knowledge, that of logical positivism or logical em-
piricism, was not accidental. The world had just come through the most
destructive war in human history and found itself in widespread econ-
omic disfunction; the powerful ideologies of fascism and communism
were being offered as solutions.

Yet whatever their early promise, none of the foundationalist posi-

 6 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

tions have survived critical scrutiny. All have been found flawed, and so
today, since the fall of positivism, no foundationalist scheme manages
to draw a comparable degree of allegiance from the community of phil-
osophers. This is not surprising to the anti- foundationals, who argue
that the quest for an indubitable method for distinguishing truth from
falsehood was from the start an impossible dream.
Over the past 30 years, the anti-foundationalists have slowly taken
the higher ground. And today, the dominant view in Western philosophy
is that knowledge can never be more than what humans intersubjective-
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

ly agree upon. Reason has no timeless structure, no fully neutral vant-

age point outside the ongoing discourse of the community of scholars.
Truth must be written with a small "t", its only hope that the socratic ideals
of critical openness, reflectiveness, willingness to listen be observed. Al-
though it is the product of "open conversation", it is limited and relative,
at least to some extent, to the values and interests inherent in the lin-
guistic practices of the participants. There is no possibility of objectiv-
ity in the strong sense of the term. The best-known names in
contemporary philosophy, W.V. Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Nelson Good-
man, Richard Rorty, Hans Georg Gadamer, and Jacques Derrida, count
among those claiming, in one way or another, that knowledge has no
foundations.

The debate betweenfoundationalistsand their critics often takes

on a moral tone. The foundationalists argue that their critics encourage
irrationalism, knowledge being reduced to nothing more than "mob psy-
chology".1 They charge that the relativist position of the anti-foundation-
alists lead ultimately to nihilism, to an inability to ground moral
judgments.2 The anti-foundationalists, on the other hand, argue that the
foundationalists are prisoners of a discredited quest for certainty; that
in claiming timeless standards for determining objective truth, they lend
legitimacy to authoritarian doctrines.

Although there have been numerous attempts to draw an intermedi-

ate position between these opposing stances, none has yet met with
broad consensus.3 Philosophy, many argue, is in a state of crisis.

Evolutionary Epistemology

There is, however, a school of thought which offers a way to circumvent

the impasse between foundationalism and relativism. This school is
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 7

called "evolutionary epistemology". Although it has only become a force

in the past 15 years or so, its origins date from the end of the nineteenth
century,4 and aspects of its more modern formulation are found in the
early work of Karl Popper.5 Today, in addition to Popper, adherents of
evolutionary epistemology are found not just in philosophy, but also
among biologists, philosophers of biology, psychologists, and etholog-
ists.6
Evolutionary epistemology argues that knowledge is objective, and
its growth and development occur through a process akin to Darwinian
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

biological evolution. In fact, they argue that biological evolution can be

viewed as the evolution of knowledge understood in the broadest sense
of the term. 7 When an organism adapts to an environment that has
changed, it is, in effect, incorporating new knowledge of that environ-
ment. Thus whatever its form, knowledge always develops through the
same process. As Popper has expressed this:
From the amoeba to Einstein, the growth of knowledge is always
the same: we try to solve our problems, and to obtain, by process
of elimination, something approaching adequacy in our tentative
solutions. (Popper, 1972, p. 261).
Most knowledge is not, according to this understanding, conscious
knowledge. Instead, it is endosomatic, carried by the genetic codes
which direct behavior. That is, in the process of adaption, organisms de-
velop genetic templates of certain environmental regularities important
to their survival. As environments change, those organisms that fail to
adapt genetically are eliminated. By contrast, genetic mutations that
best capture the regularities of the new environment, survive. These
genetic templates or maps constitute the organism's knowledge of its
environment.
Conscious knowledge develops in essentially the same manner.
Both genetic and conscious knowledge, "so Popper maintains, are pro-
duced by the same Darwinian mechanism: the highest creative thought,
just like animal adaptation, is the product of blind variation and selec-
tive retention - trial and error." (Bartley, 1987, p. 20)8 Both also develop
within competitive contexts. Both are objective structures and both can
be objectively examined. But although objective, knowledge is not in
any sense absolute. Indeed, it is always hypothetical ortentative, always
vulnerable to replacement by a superior template of a particular envi-
ronment.9
 8 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

However, whereas endosomatic knowledge is carried by genetic

codes, conscious knowledge is not; it is exosomatic. Conscious knowl-
edge is encoded in theories, beliefs, and attitudes. Science is a special
instance of exosomatic knowledge. As Donald Campbell puts it, "The
demarcation of science from other speculations is that the knowledge
claims be testable, and that there be available mechanisms for testing
or selecting which are more than social." (Campbell, 1987, p. 70) Pop-
per speaks of science in similar terms: "natural selection" becomes "the
natural selection of hypotheses". Further:
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

What is peculiar to scientific knowledge is this: that the struggle

for existence is made harder by the conscious and systematic criti-
cism of our theories. Thus, while animal knowledge and pre-scien-
tific knowledge grow mainly through the elimination of those
holding the unfit hypotheses, scientific criticism often makes our
theories perish in our stead, eliminating our mistaken beliefs be-
fore such beliefs lead to our own elimination. (Popper, 1972, p.
261).
Evolutionary epistemology takes Hume's argument against induc-
tion seriously. As Popper puts it, "we do not start from observations but
always from problems - either from practical problems or from a theory
which has run into difficulties...(and) the growth of knowledge pro-
ceeds from old problems to new problems, by means of conjectures
and refutations." (Popper, 1972, p. 258) The struggle of foundationalists
to find through epistemology a justification for knowledge has been mis-
guided. Epistemology cannot justify knowledge:
Science is... utterly unjustified and unjustifiable. It is a shot in the
dark, a bold guess... The question of its justification is irrelevant; it
is as irrelevant as any question about whether a particular muta-
tion is justified. The issue, rather, is the viability of the mutation -
or the new theory. This question is resolved through exposing it to
the pressures of natural selection - or attempted criticism and re-
futation. (Bartley, 1987, p. 24)
The Limitations of Evolutionary Epistemology
In a recent work, Ervin Laszlo has argued that our knowledge of reality
is converging into what he terms a "grand evolutionary synthesis". (Las-
zlo, 1987) This synthesis promises to link our understanding of the evol-
ution of matter, the evolution of life, and the evolution of culture or
society into a coherent model of reality. This model is non-teleological
and non-determinist. The evolution of science is a component of the
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 9

evolution of culture or society. Consequently, evolutionary epistemo-

logy is highly satisfying not merely because it offers a fully generalized
explanation of knowledge and a means of getting beyond the founda-
tionalist/relativist dispute, but also because it conforms well to our
emerging, more comprehensive understanding of our reality, to this
grand evolutionary synthesis.
Yet as it has been expressed, evolutionary epistemology's account
of the growth of science is incomplete, and unnecessarily so. Popper
and other adherents believe that science is sought for its own sake; that
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

it "will be regulated by the idea of truth, or of getting nearer to the truth,

rather than the idea of helping us to survive". (Popper, 1972, p. 264)
Therefore, evolutionary epistemologists find no need to appeal to the
sociology of knowledge for a full account of the growth and develop-
ment of science. This view is unconvincing.
From a societal vantage point the pursuit and generation of knowl-
edge must be viewed as a social expense, and thus it is not clear why
societies would allocate a portion of their scarce resources for the pur-
suit of knowledge for its own sake. Indeed, because societies do not
subsidize indiscriminantly the search for knowledge, forces must be at
work determining what is to be selected as worthy of resource expen-
diture. But not only is this view of knowledge for its own sake uncon-
vincing, it also appears to be unDarwinian, as if a part of evolution stands
as an exception to the selection process of evolution.

Popper's argument that in science "we do not start from observa-

tions but always from problems" is convincing (Popper, 1972, p. 258).
However, humanity constantly faces an infinite number of "problems",
and it is not convincing that they are addressed in a random fashion, or
in terms of "the aim of satisfying our curiosity by explaining things". (Pop-
per, 1972, p. 263) Science is socially grounded, and to grasp the direc-
tionality of its evolution requires an appeal to the sociology of
knowledge.10

Socially Grounding Knowledge

An adequate explanation for why human knowledge is sought must

begin with an examination of the species-nature of humans. What is
striking in the human species is the predominance of culture. Over a
half-century ago, V. Gordon Childe argued, with a bit of overstatement,
 10 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

that "Progress in culture has, indeed, taken the place of further organic
evolution in the human family". (Childe, 1936, p. 24) Overstated or not,
what this means is that an adequate understanding of human behavior
must be grounded in the social or cultural nature of humans as a species
of life. The human struggle for survival takes place not just at the level
of the genetic species, but also at the level of specific cultures.

What the dominant role of culture means for humans is that they
have a specific need for knowledge that is all but insignificant in other
species of life. This need is the result of the fact that relative to other
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

species, humans inherit little direction as to how specifically they must

behave. Consequently, much of their behavior, and their world gener-
ally, must be legitimated. This issue could be understood in terms of the
fact that humans suffer from what has been called "instinct poverty",
meaning that they possess relatively little in the way of a fixed relation-
ship to their environment. That is, although they have genetically in-
herited drives, in contrast with other species, 'these drives are highly
unspecialized and undirected". (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 48)
Consequently, there is an intrinsic "world openness", and it is through
cultural institutions and legitimation that a relative "world-closedness" is
achieved. Cultural institutions and legitimation complement inherited
drives to provide behavioral guidance for humans. Legitimation is the
process by which humans establish a meaningful order out of their re-
ality.11

As for the role of science within this struggle writ large, the philos-
opher-sociologist Jurgen Habermas has broken the human survival
struggle into three interrelated components: a struggle for liberation
from material privation; a struggle for a degree of social harmony; and
a struggle for liberation from false consciousness. (Habermas, 1968,
1971, 1974a, 1974b, 1979) Each of these aspects of the human struggle
for survival can be viewed as generating a behavior-guiding human in-
terest. These interests, which Habermas refers to alternatively as "cog-
nitive interests" and "knowledge-constitutive interests", are viewed as
existential or anthropologically-given. Because they exist as a conse-
quence of being human, these interests motivate and steer the search
for knowledge. Corresponding respectively to the struggles above,
these interests are the technical or instrumental, the consensual,12 and
the emancipatory.
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 11

Knowledge-Guiding Human Interests

The material struggle and the technical interest
As Darwinian evolutionary theory has made clear, the primordial fate of
all forms of life is the challenge of material scarcity. All life must struggle
with its environment to survive and reproduce, and the human species
is not exempt. Faced with material scarcity, humans must struggle with
nature to overcome privation. Thus, an end or goal is unambiguously
provided by the material condition of life. The goal of overcoming ma-
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

terial want is not arbitrary or a "value judgment". It is necessarily the case

that the material struggle generates a technical or instrumental interest
- perhaps not consciously acknowledged13 - in knowledge which will
enhance the successful attainment of the end. This human interest is
technical or instrumental in that it guides inquiry toward the accumula-
tion of such knowledge as will enable manipulation and control over
natural processes.

The social struggle and the consensual interest

Humans are by nature social beings. Their very strugglefor physical sur-
vival is a social one. It requires social coordination, and therefore social
communication and understanding. Therefore, to survive, humans must
struggle for freedom from social strife and a degree of social coordina-
tion or harmony. This struggle also generates a knowledge-guiding
human interest which is not arbitrary or merely the consequence of a
value judgment. It is a consensual interest in the intersubjective deter-
mination of the appropriate ends and norms of a "good" society. That
is, humans must attain a degree of consensus as to appropriate or "just"
social behavior. This interest is consensual in that it steers intersubjec-
tive understanding toward consensus. Without a minimum degree of
such consensus, the social coordination necessary for material survival
would not be possible.14

The ideological struggle and the emancipatory interest

As noted above, not only is the production of knowledge a critical ele-

ment of evolution, but for humans, it can be understood as a require-
ment for social-world legitimation. However, nothing automatically
ensures that the legitimation product will possess truth value. It may
make "sense" or give meaning to reality, and provide guidance for be-
 12 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

havior, but it need not in any other manner improve human welfare. In
fact, it may well impede success in either the material or social struggles,
or it may provide legitimacy for the exploitation of some by others.
Consequently, there is a constant struggle for liberation from false
consciousness, for freedom from those systems of belief which impede
welfare improvement for the species. This struggle is made possible by
the fact that humans are capable of self-reflective consciousness; they
are capable of "thinking about thinking". They possess the ability, there-
fore, of potentially correcting their mistaken conceptions. As a conse-
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

quence, insofar as ideology may retard the struggles for liberation from
material privation and social strife, there is a knowledge-guiding human
interest in emancipation from false consciousness or ideology.
Beyond Foundationalism and Relativism
Evolutionary epistemology, when supplemented with this Habermasian
sociology-of-knowledge framework, promises a new basis for under-
standing the nature and tasks of the social sciences. The social scien-
ces are not merely arbitrary historical products. Instead, they are the
consequence of humanity's evolutionary struggle. And this struggle can
be conceived of as guided by three anthropologically-given human in-
terests: an interest in liberation from material privation; an interest in libe-
ration from social discord; and an interest in liberation from false
consciousness.15

Social theories within any given social context may well reflect that
social context. But this does not mean that relativism is all that can be
attained; that one social theory is as valid as another; that social science
progress is not possible; that the social sciences cannot inform us as to
how we should live. The conceptual framework of knowledge-steering
human interests enables a clearer understanding of the social charac-
ter of social science. It enables us to understand better why and how
specific theories evolved and thus it provides an evaluative process for
better determining what is relativist from what may possess more univer-
sal potential.

Yet this evolutionist perspective does not promise a foundation for

determining absolute truth. Truth must remain provisional, always ten-
tative in face of the possibility of being proved wrong. Truth is a sort of
residual, having so far withstood attempts at refutation.
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 13

On the other hand, if this perspective argues that truth can be ob-
jective, it does not imply the sort of objectivity which is so frequently op-
posed to values. Values enter science at the very beginning of the
process. Given the finitude of human time and energy, not all problems
can be addressed. A selection process occurs which is necessarily
founded on values.
Finally, at the level of the social sciences, values are present in an-
other dimension. As noted above, the social sciences must struggle not
just for efficient means for attaining given ends, but also for clarification
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

of just what ends best further human welfare. Ideally, these ends are
determined through an open democratic process. It is a task of the so-
cial sciences to explore and clarify these ends. And the evolutionary ap-
proach outlined above insists that humans can do so rationally.
Addendum: The Evolution of Knowledge-Steering Human Interests
This addendum provides a brief outline of the manner in which the evol-
utionary framework of knowledge-steering human interests helps clar-
ify the historical transformation from pre-modern to modern social
thought. All three interests -the technical, the consensual, and the eman-
cipatory - have always been present. What is at issue is the relative
strength of each in steering the search and development of knowledge
in a given context or period of time. That is, the questions addressed
below are how and why these balances of interests have changed over
time, and how this has influenced the nature of social inquiry.
In relatively static traditional societies the influence of the inherited
ends and means - typically legitimated by religious monopolies on
meaning - minimized the problem of active decision-making for the
determination both of appropriate ends and of appropriate means. Of
course there was always an interpretive problem requiring the use of a
consensual form of rationality.16 But what is perhaps most surprising is
that pre- modern social thought did not view the principal human prob-
lem as material scarcity.17 The principal problem was understood not
as a material problem (a struggle with nature) but as a social one. Con-
sequently, the predominant human or social interest motivating the
search for knowledge was the avoidance of social strife. The principal
task of knowledge was to provide instruction and guide consensus as
to the appropriate norms for a good and just society. Efficiency counted
for little compared to the overriding concern with preserving agreement
 14 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

as to appropriate social goals.18 In terms of knowledge-guiding human

interests, the technical interest remained largely subsidiary to the con-
sensual interest: the how question of "the efficient means for attaining
given ends" was typically subordinate to the what question of "the proper
ends to be pursued". Reason was understood as a process for deter-
mining not only the proper means for attaining given ends, but also the
appropriate ends to be pursued.

Modern social thought, by contrast, especially in the domains of

economics and politics, increasingly defined the principal human prob-
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

lem as a struggle with nature to overcome material scarcity. The princi-

pal force propelling this transformation was the expansion of markets
(especially internal and national, as opposed to either local or distant
markets). As the pace of market expansion quickened, the nature of so-
cial thought began to change dramatically.19 Scholasticism was grad-
ually replaced by mercantilism. Legitimation of social institutions and
behavior through tradition (especially as mediated by religion) was
superceded by a search for legitimacy which was becoming increasing-
ly opportunistic,20 appealing to what was expedient as opposed to mo-
rally correct. Although Mercantilist thought lacked a high degree of
theoretical coherence, it was guided by a technical interest in genera-
ting knowledge for policies which would enhance the given end of state
power. Guided by a technical interest in domination and control, social
thought came to be dominated by instrumental rationality.

By mid-eighteenth century, this transformation from the pre-mod-

ern to the modern was in large part complete. As the market increasing-
ly became the socially dominant medium of social interaction, social
institutions and behavior came to be legitimated in terms of the require -
ments of the market. Material needs were given precedence over social
needs, and the guiding interest for social knowledge came to be the de-
velopment of the means for controlling and manipulating nature, and by
extension, society itself. The earlier focus on consensus for determin-
ing appropriate norms for the just social order was progressively lost
sight of; increasingly it was rendered scientifically illegitimate. Social
thought, especially its economic and political components, was being
fully transformed from a "science of ends" to a "science of means".

Political power came to be increasingly seen as dependent upon

an economic foundation. Consequently, the goals of efficiency and
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 15

growth appeared self-evident. Attention could be focused upon dis-

covering and implementing efficient means for attaining these ends.
What was all but lost in this transformation was the consensual interest
in the norms of the good and just society. In fact, the very need for the
question seemed to disappear by the end of the eighteenth century. The
ideology of a Natural Law Cosmology, according to which a natural so-
cial order would automatically and ideally self-adjust, meant that social
thinkers need not be concerned with questions of the good and just so-
cial order, since this was what the unfettered market system was pres-
umed to deliver.
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

The ideology of natural law cosmology would remain dominant in

the West until the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, just as the ideo-
logy of natural law cosmology was being discredited by the first world
war and then widespread economic dysfunction, social thinkers would
begin to embrace in earnest a positivistic understanding of the nature
of science. Whereas previously natural law cosmology had precluded
the need to discuss goals or ends, now positivism would declare all such
discussion unscientific.

Yet in spite of this distortion, the progression from traditional

meaning systems to mercantilism to natural law cosmology to positiv-
istic social science has been a progression toward meaning systems
with increasing potential for improving human welfare. This is so even
though each stage has continued to serve an ideological function, par-
tially impeding the quest for human liberation. All meaning systems prior
to positivism impaired welfare improvement by restricting the sets of ac-
ceptable ends and means. Positivism performed essentially the same
function by restricting the scope of human rationality in scientific inquiry
to the discovery of efficient means for attaining given ends. Ends are
grounded in values, and values involve, as Milton Friedman so Hobbe-
sianly put it, "differences about which men ultimately only fight." (Fried-
man, 1953, p. 5)

Among philosophers, positivism is passe. Social scientists have, for

the most part, not yet caught on. When they do, it is to be hoped that
they will understand more fully that their sciences cannot eschew a role
for values.
 16 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

References
Bartley, W.W., III. 1987. "Philosophy of Biology versus Philosophy of
Physics", in Radnitzky and Bartley, pp. 7-45.
Berger, Peter L. 1967. The Sacred Canopy. New York: Doubleday.
Berger, PeterL.and Thomas Luckmann. 1967. The Social Construction
of Reality. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books.
Bernstein, Richard J. 1983. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism:
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennysl-

vania Press.
Bloom, Alan. 1987. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon
and Schuster.
Campbell, Donald T. 1987. "Evolutionary Epistemology", in Radnitzky
and Bartley, pp. 47-89.
Childe, V. Gordon, 1936. Man Makes Himself. New York: New Ameri-
can Library, 1951.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1979. Communication and The Evolution of Society.
Boston: Beacon Press.
. 1968. Knowledge and Human Interest. Boston: Beacon Press.

. 1974a. Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press.

. 1974b. Theory and Practice. Boston: Beacon Press.

. 1971. Toward a Rational Society. Boston: Beacon Press.

Lakatos, Imre. 1970. "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Re-

search Programmes", in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Criticism and
The Growth of Knowledge (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

Laszlo, Ervin. 1987. Evolution: The Grand Synthesis. Boston: New

Science Library.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1537. The Prince. New York: Mentor Books, 1980.

Munz, Peter. 1987. "Philosophy and the Mirror of Rorty", in Radnitzky

and Bartley, pp. 345-98.
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 17

Popper, Karl R. 1972. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 1987. "Natural Selection and the Emergency of Mind", in Radnitz-
ky and Bartley, pp. 139-55.
Radnitzky, Gerald and W.W. Bartley, III, eds. 1987. Evolutionary Epi-
stemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge. La Salle, Illi-
nois: Open Court, 1987.
Smith, Adam. 1759. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis: Lib-
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

erty Classics, 1969.

Wisman, Jon D. 1988. 'The Dominance of Consensual over Technical
Rationality in Confucius' Socio-economic Thought". International Jour-
nal of Social Economics, 15 (1), pp. 58- 67.
Notes
1. "Irrationalism" and "mob psychology" are the terms used by Imre La-
katos to characterize what he viewed as Thomas Kuhn's relativist
stance. (Lakatos, 1970).

2. The broad concern with this charge is evidenced by the widespread

attention given to Alan Bloom's recent book (Bloom, 1987).

3. A highly readable account of this debate and the struggle to get be-
yond it is found in Bernstein (Bernstein, 1983).

4. Donald Campbell notes that a Spenserian conception of evolutionary

epistemology "had become a quite dominant view by 1890". (Campbell,
1987, p. 74).

5. Popper's concept of "eliminationism" in his The Logic of Scientific

Discovery, first published in German in 1934, suggests evolutionary epi-
stemology, even though he did not use the term or draw upon the biol -
ogical dimension at that time. (Popper, 1965).
6. According to W.W. Bartley, III, it is the American psychologist, Donald
T. Campbell, who "has made a fuller, more consistent, and more ade-
quate statement of the position than any other person. And it is he who
has given it the name of "evolutionary epistemology". (Bartley, 1987, pp.
21-22).
 18 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990

7. As W.W. Bartley, III has put it, "both Darwinian evolutionary theory
and western epistemology are accounts of the growth of knowledge;
and evolution is itself a knowledge process". (Bartley, 1987, p. 23).
8. It should be noted, however, that the evolution of human knowledge
appears more Lamarckian than Darwinian - acquired characteristics can
be inherited. This, of course, is why cultural evolution occurs so much
more rapidly than genetic evolution.
9. Philosopher-historian Peter Munz explains our inability to obtain ab-
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

solute truth as follows: "Evolutionary epistemology shows that the rea-

son why we cannot be 'certain' is because the cognitive apparatus which
has evolved by natural selection has evolved and is surviving only pro-
visionally. This is the real reason why in any piece of knowledge we have,
we can be confident that, provided it has survived selection, it is hypo-
thetically true, but not 'certainly' so". (Munz, p. 372).
10. Although Popper has noted in passing that "the search for truth pres-
upposes ethics", (Popper, 1987, p. 141) he provides no elaboration of
just what this means. His failure to do so is in keeping with his general
dismissal of the importance of the "context of discovery" for under-
standing the growth of science..
11. Berger suggests, convincingly, I believe, that there is "a human crav-
ing for meaning that appears to have the force of instinct. Men are con-
genially compelled to impose a meaningful order upon reality". (Berger,
1967, p. 22).

12. I have substituted "consensual" for Habermas' praktisch, due to the

fact that the offered English translation, "practical", implies the expedi-
ency which Habermas intends as characterizing the technical interest.

13. The issue of whether specific knowledge-guiding human interests

are recognised, and the extent to which they condition social thought,
will be discussed below.
14. Although economists are reluctant to take up issues of justice, Adam
Smith, the acknowledged father of modern economics, noted that "Jus-
tice... is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice (of society)".
(Smith, 1759, p. 167).

15. It should be clear that this division of the human struggle for survi-
 Humanomics Volume 6 Number 2 1990 19

val into three component struggles and their corresponding knowledge-

steering interests is heuristic - a useful way of conceptualizing the man-
ner in which human knowledge is sought.
16. Consensual rationality, as opposed to technical or mean-ends ra-
tionality, seeks intersubjective agreement via a hermeneutical process
as to the appropriate goals or ends of a good and just society.
17. The most striking instance of this among pre-modern thinkers is Con -
fucius. For a discussion, see Wisman, 1988.
Downloaded by University College London At 20:54 01 July 2016 (PT)

18. The struggle for consensus was, of course, constrained by the dis-
tribution of political power as defined by economic class relationships,
as well as by the necessity of maintaining norms which were consistent
with traditional and religious institutions.
19. An important aspect of this transformation is that the expansion of
market activity greatly expanded awareness of alternative ends and
means, and thus challenged the prevailing meaning system. More open
and flexible meaning systems were required which might permit greater
choice as to both ends and means. In politics, for instance, a more flex-
ible meaning system emerges with social contract theory and the idea
of democracy.
20. No single social thinker captured this transformation in thinking bet-
ter than Machiavelli, for whom "the end justifies the means", and who ar-
gued that necessity rather than virtue should guide the wise Prince: "(l)t
is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how
not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to
the necessity of the case." (Machiavelli, 1537, p. 94; p. 84).