The legitimation of science

pp. 77-84

in: Joseph Agassi, Science and society, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

The problem of the legitimation of science may have a different significance in one time and place than in another. Thus, at the dawn of modern science, when science became increasingly the intellectual competitor to religion, both science and religion, i.e. the spokesmen of both, each questioned the legitimacy of the other system. Once science won the hegemony, the problem arose afresh, but on a smaller scale and within science, every time a controversy raged. Soon science threatened the existing political order, and so representatives of the Establishment and of science questioned the legitimacy of each other's framework, and thus the whole system of science could be questioned afresh. But this did not happen: The representative of the Establishment only questioned the possibility of a social and political science — of a science of man. In the nineteenth century within the scientific community some saw the possibility of the science of man and remained radicalists, others raised doubts about the very possibility of the science of man, thereby giving legitimation to the Reaction.