OPEN FORUM

Two cultures of science: the limits of

positivismn

Irving Louis Horowitz

Were it not linguistically awkward, I would be of science, while many are impacted by app-
inclined to entitle these remarks a discourse on lications of scientific work that often have
what went wrong with the love affair of policy- indeterminate, or even worse, destructive con-
makers, academic pundits, and hard-core sequences.
positivists with the world of science. In the nine- Despite popular unease, scientists them-
teenth century, science was as identified with selves seem to have retained a lively sense of
progress as bacon is with eggs. This optimism has optimism about the work they do and the
given way to a pandemic mistrust of science by all products their work yields. In her recent book,
sorts of elites. Popular dis- Evelyn Fox Keller speaks
pleasure became transpar- Irving Louis Horowitz is University Dis- about how biologists
ently evident in the waning tinguished Professor Emeritus of Soci- work: ‘‘Often we want
decades of the twentieth cen- ology and Political Science at Rutgers, more: we want the sense
tury. Mistrust of science has The State University of New Jersey. He is that we have understood a
also chairman of the board and editorial
only deepened in the first director of Transaction Publishers, lo- process or phenomenon,
years of the new millennium. cated at the New Brunswick campus of the feeling that we have
The ease with which scientific Rutgers. He has written widely on the brought it within our con-
products are converted into subject of the intersection of science and ceptual grasp. And for
destructive weaponry only society in totalitarian contexts. His recent many, it is just this sense
books include The Decomposition of So-
partially accounts for the ciology (1994), Taking Lives: Genocide and
of cognitive mastery that
new scepticism about conven- th
State Power (5 edition, 1997), and computability has tradi-
tional claims. Unanticipated Behemoth. Main Currents in the History tionally promised.’’ (Fox
negative human consequences and Theory of Political Sociology (1999). Keller 2002: 299). In an
of actual discoveries in areas Email: ihorowitz@transactionpub.com equally exquisite book on
ranging from genetic engi- the history of chemistry,
neering to wireless communication is at least as Paul Strathern details the search for principles as
important an element in popular concerns. such. ‘‘Darwin had discovered that all life forms
Nonetheless, professional assertions about the progressed by evolution. And two centuries
benefits of science continue unabated. These earlier Newton had discovered that the universe
claims are typified by Peter Watson in his worked according to gravity. The chemical
fine recent survey on The Modern Mind, elements were the linchpin between the two.
in which he asserts science as such ‘‘provides a The discovery of a structure here would do for
new kind of humanity and a canon for life as it is chemistry what Newton had done for physics
now lived’’ (Watson 2001: 503). The limitation and Darwin for biology. It would reveal the
in this by no means unusual formulation is blueprint of the universe.’’ (Strathern 2002: 3–4).
that few people are actually involved in the life He goes beyond Darwin and Newton alike in his

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claims for the universal impact of such admit-
tedly extraordinary discoveries.
Social reformers have been quick to follow
suit. Marx envisioned doing for society what
Newton had done for physics, Darwin had done
for biology, and Mendeleyev had sought to
achieve in his periodic table for chemistry:
providing a blueprint for the social universe.
The early history of socialism, like capitalism
before it, was tied directly to the rise of science as
a purposive goal, a Western way of life, and not
simply a series of formal operations. Indeed, this
utopian vision of science as a blueprint for
society lasted deep into the twentieth century.
The foremost Marxist journal in the United
States was entitled (although it is no longer
identified with Marxist principles) Science &
Society. In its early years, the journal gave
considerable space to problems of social struc-
ture and scientific advancement. All sorts of
discourse on supposed bases and super-struc-
tures found their way into a journal dedicated
not simply to reflecting upon, but also to
fostering the place of science in society. Indeed,
it envisioned dialectical materialism as the core
science of society, much as relativity theory was
thought of as the basis of the science of physics.
What the pioneers of communist theory did not
appreciate in modern science is the so-called
‘‘Copenhagen Interpretation’’, that is the differ-
ence between the similar and even uniform
outcomes of experimentation and the logical
inferences or metaphysical meanings that can be
drawn from them (Gribbin 1995: 28–30).
The universals of science come hard upon
the particulars of serendipity. As a result, the
gulf between the scientific imagination and the
policy implications of modern technology has
widened. Widespread destruction by the tech-
nological offshoots of modern science and the
ease of destruction with scientific precision has
deepened the gulf between the extraordinary
capacity of science and the everyday affairs of
society. Attitudes within different societies –
both totalitarian and democratic – toward
scientific achievement are distinct. It is simplistic
to assume that totalitarian societies necessarily
fail for lack of responsiveness to science. The
contrary syllogism, that democratic societies
must succeed because of their widespread appre-
ciation of science, is equally simplistic. Similarly,
the old-fashioned struggle between C. P. Snow
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Irving Louis Horowitz
(1959) and F. R. Leavis (1996) concerning the
‘‘two cultures’’ is just that, old-fashioned. It was
contrived as a cultural distinction to begin with,
and it is now clearly inadequate. To carve the
universe of learning into the scientific and the
humanistic is a pleasant fiction, well suited to the
bare bones of learning in thirteenth century
cathedrals. It is much more to the point to con-
sider how societies respond to science and techno-
logy in advanced systems, and at the other end,
how science, for its part, responds to society’s
welfare requirements and human engineering.
What make obsolete positivist notions that
the main struggle is between modern science and
classical learning are changes at two levels: the
paradigm shift within science, and the virtual
abandonment by the humanities of direct
opposition to the sciences. With the sole excep-
tion of the cult of post-modernism, the huma-
nities have simply accepted the reality of science
in the modern world, and have sought – for
better or for worse – to find their place within the
metaphysical suppositions of scientific endea-
vour. Thus, literary criticism has employed
computer science to determine the dynamics of
Elizabethan drama; philosophy has flowered in a
world of science that takes for granted the
functions of Boolean logic. Historical analysis of
everything from the Black Plague to the uses of
firearms has drawn sustenance from fields
ranging from medicine to physics. Scientific
illiteracy is harder to countenance in a world
dominated by computer-driven technology than
it has been at any previous period in history. It is
simply no longer fashionable to claim cultural
elitism by parading ignorance of so-called
‘‘hard’’ science or its technological by-products.
The ‘‘two cultures’’ of the 1960s have been
replaced today by the struggle within scientific
discourse as such. At one level, exactitude of
measurement, precision of predictability, and
quantification of results define the quality of
science. Methodological safeguards ensure that
results can be generalised. But, except among
extreme positivists, who also dominated pre-war
Europe, a second sense of science, in a subtle but
convincing way, has emerged among scholars –
a body of information that somehow helps
fashion knowledge and policy, without mandat-
ing specific policy outcomes. And while it hardly
merits the appellation ‘‘versus’’, this new sense
of science adds a dimension that cannot be
Two cultures of science
ignored or suppressed within the community of
scientists and learned societies generally. In an
expansive view of science, it fosters a naturalistic
view of the universe but leaves wide space for
doubt and speculation on ultimate moral issues.
It is demarcated by tolerance for differences in
scientific operations, appeals to evidence, and a
recognition that errors occur and disputes must
be countered with stronger evidence rather than
suppressing the evidence that exists. The sciences
foster a non-punitive response to findings, con-
clusions, and hence a certain tentativeness with
respect to recommending policy and evaluating
the need for new areas of investigation.
Being critical of the positivist legacy does
not require that we become dismissive of a
science of ethics as a potential branch of the
social sciences in the twenty-first century. The
empirical investigation of moral propositions is
clearly a step in the achievement of a workable
social ethic. My problem with the past efforts of
those working in this area, such as Emile
Durkheim’s view of ethics as a system of social
order, as well as the more extreme forms of
positive critiques of the metaphysical supposi-
tions of ethical propositions like those made by
Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick, and other
members of the Vienna Circle, is their confusion
of ethical dilemmas with value choices as such. It
is important not to conflate public choice made in
moral reasoning with the proposition that moral
decisions as such are simply an inventory of non-
rational decisions or metaphysical presumptions.
That being said, it is fair to note that we owe to
positivism the sensible proposition that the
greater the scientific study of actual ethical
choices made on the ground, the more likely it
will be that better decisions will flow. That at least
is the causal supposition of positivist analysis.
This distinction between science as a
measure of explanation and prediction and
science as a culture of equity and liberality is
crucial to any serious examination of how the
sciences function within a variety of societies.
For many reared after the Second World War, a
certain myth has prevailed: that totalitarian
regimes are self-defeating because they are anti-
scientific. Researchers in the communications
field have assumed that blocking information for
the masses is the same as suspending specific
research tasks (de Sola Pool 1997). This demo-
cratic dogma is simply not borne out by the
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facts. The director of the nuclear research
programme in Iraq was trained at MIT. Even
the terror bombers of 11 September 2001
received sound technical education in well-
regarded aviation schools in Florida. The 1993
World Trade Centre bombers were trained in
chemistry and mathematics at first rank uni-
versities. At some operational levels at least,
fanaticism and fundamentalism are seemingly
quite compatible with the principles of science.
The implicit assumption of positivism that
science is a discursive technique is dangerous
and reductionistic. The practical applications of
scientific discovery and the cultural conse-
quences of science in the behaviour of its
practitioners and the larger society are for the
most part distinct from science as such. Science
functioned within Nazi Germany and Commu-
nist Russia largely unimpeded during the rela-
tively long period these two political systems
were in power. It is as mistaken a premise to
claim that totalitarianism in and of itself pushes
science into the background, as it would be to
claim that only good people know how to build
and deliver weapons systems. My present topic is
not made any easier by this truth, but far more
difficult – and I daresay more interesting as well.
The near total disillusion with totalitarian
models of society has produced a literature in
which science itself is characterised as an ally of
the democratic order. Typical of this newer trend
is the work of Freeman Dyson, who holds in
rather categorical fashion that science and
technology projects driven by practical, opera-
tional considerations work well, while those that
are driven by ideology work badly. Dyson
further claims that totalitarian systems embrace
rigid organisation and discipline, while science in
democratic societies tends to embrace creative
chaos and freedom (Dyson 1997). While this is
certainly a pleasant point of view, there are several
flies in the ointment. To start with, science works
relatively well in totalitarian societies – especially
in its theoretical and pragmatic contexts. A
second fly that cannot be easily swatted away is
that science demands organisation and discipline
no less than creative chaos and freedom.
To evaluate the successes of science in
democratic and dictatorial contexts one must
start with location. In democratic societies,
science essentially takes place in universities
and in privately funded laboratories. In both
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places, we have a mixed pattern of private
investment with a variety of public supports.
Such support is often filtered through a complex
granting network called the third stream. For all
of the Byzantine logrolling, inside animosities,
and political preferences of the system, there is a
reasonable distance between the world of science
and the world of government. The classic model
in physics and biology is clearly a network of
institutional attachments and associations that
allows for creativity to unfold in an uninhibited
manner. In reading a biography of Richard
Feynman (Gribbin and Gribbin 1997), we are
taken for a long career ride from Princeton to
Cornell to the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology to the California Institute of Techno-
logy. While there was a period of time when
Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project in
Los Alamos, is clear that this was a special
moment, not a permanent choice. Indeed, the
very concept of this as a ‘‘project’’ indicates as
much. After the dropping of the atomic bombs
and the conclusion of the war, Feynman like
most other scientists returned to university
surroundings – in Feynman’s case for a brief
stay at Cornell. Commenting on the California
Institute of Technology, the biographers say
‘‘the point about Caltech, in academic terms, is
that not only does it bring out the best work
from its scientists, it also (partly for that reason)
attracts the best scientists’’ (Gribbin and Grib-
bin 1997: 281–282). What is clear is that the
world of academic life does not only nourish
science in democratic cultures; it permits a sense
of individualism to flourish, precisely because
the university is a shield and a bulwark against
the political forces of the state.
But such value considerations are related to
the context of science far more than its content,
to technological application rather than empiri-
cal research. In order to understand the full
implication of the dictatorial environment, I
examined in detail the 775-page work by the
outstanding Russian physicist, Andrei Sakharov
(Sakharov 1990). His work is certainly compar-
able in honour and reputation to that of Richard
Feynman. But beyond this, the differences
simply take over. In Sakharov’s entire Memoirs
one detects no fealty toward or even a sense of
being a part of a university environment, much
less one that is autonomous unto its responsi-
bilities. The closest one comes to a spirit of
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Irving Louis Horowitz
scientific community is Sakharov’s respect for
and loyalty to the work of four colleagues.
These figures, like him, were part of Soviet
projects – nuclear and non-nuclear alike. The
lines of authority flowed downward from Stalin
and Beria, to the Soviet Presidium, to the chief
project administrators, to the scientists in charge
of projects, and then to the creative talents
working under this huge bureaucratic umbrella.
The physicists themselves worked as a collective
– most often connected to state enterprises, or to
specific engineering or construction conglomer-
ates. When someone like Sakharov ventured off
by himself to the library, as he did in order to
learn of developments in nuclear fission in the
West, he did so with a clear understanding of
supervisory approval. Sakharov reports, half in
amusement and half in horror, that when he
spent his library time reading Western publica-
tions such as Science and Nature, the librarian
found this exclusive emphasis dangerous as well
as curious. She remarked to Sakharov’s superior
that he spent whole days at the library but never
once asked to read books by Marx, Engels,
Lenin, or Stalin! Sakharov’s superior offered a
mild rebuke to him, and the ‘‘incident’’ was
dropped. Considering such scenarios, it is
amazing is that the Soviet Union ever managed
to construct nuclear weapons, not how tardy
they were in doing so vis-à-vis the West.
In order to perform his scientific duties,
Sakharov was compelled to realise that ‘‘deceit,
exploitation, and outright fraud were involved in
[Stalinist] notions, as much they deviated from
reality’’ (Sakharov 1990: 164). Since it bears so
directly on the theme of our discourse, it is
interesting to see the extent to which Sakharov
came to symbolise the general condition of
science in Soviet society. In a peak of self-
criticism, he notes that his own early cynicism
and continuing work on nuclear projects pre-
supposed that all notions and regimes are
oppressive. But as he emerged as a social critic,
he came to understand that the idea of symmetry
between West and East was itself a fallacy.
‘‘How can one speak of symmetry between a
normal cell and a cancerous one? With all its
messianic pretensions, its totalitarian suppres-
sion of dissent, and its authoritarian power
structure, our [Soviet] regime resembles a cancer
cell’’ (Sakharov 1990: 167). Again, one senses
throughout the total absence of any voluntary
Two cultures of science
associations in the totalitarian setting, either at
the institutional or the personal level. The idea
of the university as a place of autonomous
creation was simply banished during the long
totalitarian night – and with it, the possibility of
powerful sentiments of loyalty and fealty to
agencies other than those sanctioned by the
state, indeed other than to the state as such.
Sakharov worked in areas of science that
did not challenge the Soviet state’s perspectives
on human nature and efforts to change that
nature. As a result, he could continue his work
throughout the darkest of Soviet periods. In
contrast, social scientists who worked in areas
such as linguistics, anthropology, and sociology,
were either harnessed to the needs of the Marxist
ideology and the ultra-nationalistic ambitions of
the state or were simply dismissed. Sociology,
political science, and indeed for a while, even
anthropology, were not permitted. Soviet
science exhibited a schizoid pattern in which a
charlatan geneticist such as Trofim Lysenko
could proclaim the death of classical genetics in
the name of environmental engineering, while at
the same time, normal physics – at least
relatively normal – continued albeit under harsh
conditions. This pattern was also pronounced in
Nazi Germany – only with a reversal in certain
fields like genetics, in which inherited character-
istics were attributed to the general culture no
less than to the individual person. In this way,
‘‘racial science’’ could be justified in Germany
on the same basis that ‘‘class partisanship’’ could
be justified in Soviet Russia.
The situation in physics under Nazi Ger-
many has been thoroughly explored. Indeed, it is
a subject of bitter contention with respect to the
work of Werner Heisenberg and his colleagues
on the development, or better, non-development
of atomic weapons despite the fabled abilities of
German scientists. Whether the failure of Ger-
man scientists to match the scientific efforts
underway in the Manhattan Project was a
consequence of wilful refusal or simply less
sophisticated ability is really a secondary matter.
(It is, however, one that has received an
inordinate amount of attention as a result of
the book by Thomas Powers (1993) on Heisen-
berg’s War). More to the point is the exalted
place of the nuclear physicist in the Nazi scheme
of things. Quite unlike those engaged in the
social and behavioural sciences in the Soviet
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Union, whose ranks were decimated and ideas
banned, the physicists within the Nazi regime
operated under the direct supervision of the
Wehrmacht, and were protected from Nazi
attacks.
One also observes a sharp cleavage between
how the physical and social sciences were treated
by the Nazi authorities. The literature on such
dichotomies from anthropology to sociology is
extensive. But differences in the way in which the
Nazis and Soviets separated the physical from
the social do merit attention. The Nazis pro-
moted certain areas such as psychiatry and
anthropology, whereas the Soviets virtually
disbanded both. Psychoanalysis was purged of
its Freudian or Jewish elements by the Nazis, but
the techniques and premises of the field were left
undisturbed at places, like the Goering Institute.
Similarly, the Nazis promoted anthropology as
delineating the races of mankind to start with,
and celebrated what they saw as demonstrable
ethnographic proofs that there were superior
and inferior racial strains – as attested to by
patterns of development in the Nordic areas and
backwardness in places like Africa and the
South Pacific. In other words, the agenda of
the Nazi regime was central in defining the
content no less than contours of social research,
whereas in the physical sciences, the content was
left essentially undisturbed, as long as the larger
policy contexts were accepted were followed.
One might conjecture that the Nazis were
less dedicated to restricting social research than
were the Communists for several reasons: the
retention of the university as a base for social
research during the Nazi period, and the more
highly developed nature of social research that
made it more difficult to dismantle. But perhaps
the more important factor is that Nazi ideology
did not come equipped with a scientific frame-
work, whereas the Communist ideology, decked
out with Marxism, had a ready-made set of
propositions about the economy and the society.
This allowed Soviet authorities to move against
social scientists in the name of social class, as if
social science was in its very nature ‘‘bourgeois’’
in character and hence an enemy of Marxism–
Leninism and the Soviet state. The Nazis were
forced to make do with corrupting and manip-
ulating the social sciences, since Nazi doctrines
were more rooted directly in state power politics
and legal scaffolds. While these tendencies do
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not override the shared identities of the two
major forms of totalitarianism, the actual
operations were different. The utopian vision
of science was more readily extended to the
social as well as physical sciences under Nazism,
whereas, armed with the weapon of Marxism,
the vision of utopia was conflated, even con-
stricted, to exclude a variety of social sciences.
Marxism itself became the king and arbiter of
social research (Horowitz 1993).
That said, a subtle shift has taken place in
the half century or more that separates the main
strands of totalitarian state power from present
debates. The new century has shown a shift in
the sociology and philosophy of science from
the totalitarian-democratic continuum to a dis-
course on issues of utilisation and account-
ability. In that sense, moral concerns have
re-appeared in the philosophy of science with a
centrality that previously was thought to have
been banished from the field. This shift in fault
lines has led to a deepening appreciation that
scientific conduct and experimentation in open
societies have by no means automatically resol-
ved moral concerns. Rather, questions ranging
from fraud in research design to funding agency
demands for pre-determined results have sur-
faced with great concern. The character of the
state regime or the economic system does not in-
sure probity in science, much less maximisation
of human ends. As a result, we must move to a
new discourse on the relation of science to society.
The contradiction within professional life is
increasingly between science as a project in itself,
and the ultimate goals of any single project. It is
here that the struggle between the popular will
and the political aim within democratic societies
becomes evident. For in determining its goal as
something apart from its operations, the utopian
dimension of science joins forces with an
ideological framework. When the new civilisa-
tion seeks a world in which genetic intervention
for the prolongation of life through artificial
means is possible, it reintroduces issues thought
to have been left behind with the defeat of the
totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.
For, however noble the purposes of such
researches, they come to rest on purposes apart
from the actual performance of science.
Tzvetan Todorov, writing about ‘‘Totalita-
rianism between religion and science’’, comes
close to the mark in describing the common
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Irving Louis Horowitz
impulses of the major variants of totalitarian
science, the utopian fantasy that perfection can
be achieved in this world. The single-minded faith
in this proposition caused the loss of millions of
lives, but it also exempted science from being
liquidated by extremist rulers. Todorov holds
that when seen in this light the utopianism of
European totalitarian regimes is in turn revealed
as an ‘‘atheistic millennialism’’. His analysis is
persuasive, at least up to a point. He tells us that
‘‘Scientism rests on the existence of science, but it
is not in itself scientific. Its underlying assump-
tion, the total transparency of reality, cannot be
proved or disproved. At both its foundations and
its summit, scientism demands an act of faith.’’
(Todorov 2001: 141–144).
The problem is that democratic as well as
authoritarian regimes can adopt scientism with-
out necessarily encouraging scientific research.
While this earlier emphasis on the need for
dogma in totalitarian states is well established, it
remains a subtle way of avoidance, of failing to
come to grips with the problem of science and
authority. Many annalists revert in the final
analysis to the commonsensical vision of science
as somehow uniquely endowed by and embraced
by the open society or the democratic society. I
suspect that the more uncomfortable position,
one that people of good will want desperately to
shy away from, is that totalitarian systems can
indeed embrace science, and use it to pursue all
sorts of horrid end products and policy out-
comes. But at the same time, democratic systems
have the capacity of also using science for
destructive and even anti-human ends. Even
relatively harmless social sciences can be har-
nessed to inhuman ends. This is now so well
understood that every field of social research
with Federal sponsorship in the United States
must file a report that it would not harm human
subjects in the process. This, in turn, raises the
antithesis, namely the extent to which such
ethical guidelines frustrate the conduct of
important research as such.
So it comes down to the fact that the issue of
moment is not for democracies to turn mystical,
or presume the functional existence of salvation
as on a par with science. More to the point is the
need to appreciate the limits of science at one
end and the limits of moral guideposts at the
other. Democracy has always been compelled to
operate between and within such dualities. The
Two cultures of science
fatuous notion that democracy as such does
away with the problem of choice is clearly no
longer tenable. A theory of values is not simply
an investigation or extrapolation of how people
behave. For such a view, while a legitimate part
of the sociology of decision-making, utterly fails
to get beyond a calculus of value prospects. It
does not guide us in the actual process of making
decisions. Value theory is a set of propositions
that derive from sources that recognise catego-
rical imperatives and a priori propositions. It is
an oxymoron to speak of the science of ethics,
unless one is prepared further to argue that value
judgements are little more than propositions
about how to advance one’s interest, lofty or
venal, in the world. Such an argument comes
perilously close to a utilitarian or pragmatic
model of such interests. And implicit in all value
theory is the assumption that things that can be
reduced to scientific equations, and that we exist
in a deterministic universe that would deprive
the human order of any act of creativity at one
end, or simply serve as an argument for
inevitability and infallibility at the other.
Repudiating totalitarianism does not auto-
matically secure a more generous estimate of
science – which really amounts to little more
than an insistence upon the separation of the
conduct of science from the aims of science.
Whatever the political system, now and in the
past, we are faced with a set of mandates, rules of
conduct, norms, call them what you will, that are
subject to scrutiny but not necessarily to
scientific demonstration. We are back in a
Kantian universe (if one is a secularist), and
must accept Kant’s arguments for rejecting the
existence of the supernatural. Or, we may be in a
Thomistic universe, if one accepts the hard and
fast distinction between the divine realm of God
and the secular realm of man. But the long
tradition of value theory rests squarely on the
idea that the warrant for value behaviour is not
physical but metaphysical. Were that not the
case, were we to search for scientific evidence to
demonstrate the superiority of one value premise
over another, democratic theory would find its
way back into the totalitarian cul-de-sac of
ideology as a way of life and utopia as an aim of
life. That would reduce ethical theory to a
scientific exercise of applications.
Bronislaw Malinowski reminded his pupils
that the principles of sailing a vessel are different
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from the symbols and signs painted on the sides
of boats. Furthermore, he noted that sailors of
ancient times understood perfectly well this
distinction. To move a boat requires that each
person learn the nature of sailing. To reach safe
harbour is a dream perhaps, or perhaps not,
aided by amulets and magic. It was a fudging of
exact science with inexact technology that
proved to be the ultimate downfall of positivism.
The dark side of the distinction between science
and symbols is how to fashion a technology that
serves precise ends. For example, in the Second
World War, the Japanese government decided
that its fighter craft, the renowned Zero, should
have high speed, extraordinary mobility, ade-
quate but light firepower. In exchange, for these
features, the plane sacrificed thick armour
plating – this permitting even casual hits by
enemy fighters to be fatal. American fighters of
the time were, in contrast, awkward, slower,
made with thicker armour and more safety
features for escape if hit by enemy fire. This
made such planes more vulnerable to being shot
down, but less fatal to the pilots. This ‘‘trade-
off’’ represents a clear indication that the nature
of the craft, not the principles of flight, is
involved in moral decisions undertaken by poli-
tical systems. In turn, value choices in construc-
tion are intimately related to the technological
order. This distinction between means and ends,
between science and values, is known to all in
practice. Hence the struggle for a good society
can never be reduced to the search for a pure
science. To think otherwise is to encourage
the heresy of scientific thinking. That search
must recognise the great chain of being is a
dualistic daisy chain, much like Watson’s double
helix chain.
It is precisely this admission of how science
is actually conducted, never mind its limitations,
that seems difficult for those who write on this
subject. What we have is the residue of Enlight-
enment thinking. Thus Philip Kitcher offers us,
in Science, Truth, and Democracy (Kitcher
2002), a ‘‘well-ordered science’’ that intersects
with a ‘‘well-ordered society’’. In such an
admittedly ideal world, for which we must all
strive, there would be an agenda for science and
society alike – one based on a study of resources
in short supply. Such study would result in the
efficient use of investigation that, subject to
ethical and moral constraints, enhances a sense
436
of democratic deliberation. Finally, research in
this utopian universe, when agreement is
reached on what research is to be done, must
be conducted with a socially agreed agenda of
social action. Alas, what characterised Nazi and
Soviet scientific practice appears to be firmly
ensconced in American theory.
The answer to such totalitarian prescrip-
tions, disguised as democratic order, requires
transcending the Enlightenment presumption
that there is a war between science and theology,
and that the latter needs to be destroyed in order
to move ahead collectively toward engineering
the common destiny of the new human being.
Without dismissing or disparaging the myth-
breaking potentials of scientific research, my
own belief is that we are far better served by an
intertwining two-tiered system of science and
values. Neither is reducible to the other. Such co-
existence may be less elegant or enticing than a
unified theory of relativity at one end or a
systematic theory of values at the other. Indeed,
it may be viewed as little more than a pragmatic
de´tente, a time out in long-standing hostilities
between supernaturalist and naturalist visions of
the universe. But such a view at the level of the
social function of science affords a measure of
respect to each endeavour.
Perhaps the best way to appreciate the
existence of multiple realms of discourse is how
scientific endeavour itself generates valuational
considerations. Donald Kennedy has recently
pointed out that we are undergoing a great
revolution in the way basic research is conducted
in advanced democratic open societies (Kennedy
2002). It turns out that these ‘‘revolutionary
developments’’ hinge greatly on valuation con-
siderations. Are proprietary rights to discoveries
lodged in the person or in the institution? Do
faculty members at public institutions have the
right to license their own inventions and start
their own companies? Should there be a
preference for nonexclusive licensing, or is the
faculty member developing a new patent the sole
owner? If work is performed on university
grounds using its facilities, does that bestow
ownership on the University? When research is
reported out, does it promote or disguise
proprietary data, work done on commission?
What in short are the public obligations in
contrast to the private rights of the researcher,
the university, the sponsor or the corporation?
r UNESCO 2004.
Irving Louis Horowitz
The discerning observer will appreciate that
these concerns about property and publicity go
back at least to the ancient Greek philosophers.
The solutions are as vexing as they were to
Aristotle 2500 years ago. The multiple cultures
of science well illustrate the larger dualism of
experimentation and ethics that we live with
more or less comfortably on an everyday basis.
My purpose here is not to reopen the
current canonical attitude of scientists that
science and morality operate in equally legit-
imate but separate areas. Even less do I aim to
equate totalitarian and democratic models of
scientific conduct. But the latter, more open
approach does, as Stephen Jay Gould pointed
out, allot ‘‘the mechanisms and phenomena of
nature to scientists and the basis for ethical
decisions to theologians and humanists in
general. In exchange for freedom to follow
nature down all her pathways, scientists relin-
quish the temptation to base moral inferences
and pronouncements upon the physical state of
the world – an excellent and proper arrange-
ment, since the facts of nature embody no moral
claims in any case.’’ (Gould 1989: 263). Diffi-
culties with this pragmatic dichotomy irritat-
ingly persist. To start with, such a neat
pragmatic division disallows the scientific study
of the status and claims of moral rules and
norms. To end with, this same division does not
settle the question of the pace at which scientific
and ethical changes take place. My own view is
to settle for this dualism on pragmatic grounds,
even though it rests on shaky philosophical
underpinnings and allows for democratic per-
suasions stripped of their dogmas. It also must
come to terms with the history of nature as
subject to the nature of history. However, claims
for the historical grounding of change in ethical
discourse are far less compelling. Aristotle on
the nature of the good is still compelling, but
Aristotle on the nature of the heavens is an
archaism – pleasant to meditate over, but hardly
a compelling descriptive framework for modern
astrophysics.
The British theoretical physicist Paul Da-
vies put forth this position clearly in his popular
work on God and the New Physics: ‘‘It is only by
understanding the world in its many aspects –
reductionist and holist, mathematical and poe-
tical, through forces, fields, and particles as well
as through good and evil – that we will come to
Two cultures of science 437

understand ourselves and the meaning behind
this universe, our home’’ (Davies 1983: 228–
229). Democracy comes to rest on an eclectic
framework in its vision of differential realms in
the natural order. Science is located in the fast
lane of technology, while religion is more readily
identified with the slow lane of ethics. But
whatever the ultimate construct of the universe
turns out to be, each realm, or each lane, deser-
ves respect, without presuming that only the
subsuming of one set of metaphysical supposi-
tions by the other will suffice. In such a dualism,
in such recognition of two or more distinctive
realms of being, one can locate a democratic
way, and avoid the horrors of traditional or
totalitarian methods for the fixation of belief. In
short, in contrast to earlier philosophies of
science, I am suggesting that the task of demo-
cracy is not to collapse or conflate distinction in
the name of the unity of science or the inevitable
expansion of technology. The actual course of
the history of democratic ideas is relatively
modest: to make sure that the long-standing
concern with paradigms of unity or multiplicity
remains an agenda item within the sociology and
philosophy of science, not a post-modernist
dogma that reduces meaning to grammar. To
quote from the concluding remarks of Ignazio
Silone’s The God that Failed (1949), ‘‘On a group
of theories one can found a school; but on a
group of values one can found a culture (. . .) a
new way of living together among men’’.

Note

This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered before the Institute for Continued Learning at the
n

University of California, San Diego on 5 November 2002.

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