Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

At various points in Western history – and oursseems to be one of them – classical Athens has beencondemned as a democracy of élite males supportedon the backs of women and slaves. Nevertheless,the Athenian political economy provided a uniqueenvironment for the cultivation of civic virtue.Because a secure income from local property was aprerequisite for citizenship, Athens expected itscitizens to be unafraid to speak their minds. Indeed,failing to speak was worse than failing to persuade.The two failures resembled, respectively, cowardiceand defeat in battle. One could return from defeatto fight another day, but cowardice was sometimespunished with ‘ostracism’, or expulsion from thefield of engagement. But worst of all was whatthe Greeks called stasis, a semantically rich wordthat covered everything from intransigence tocapriciousness in the conduct of public affairs.Common to these cases is that the public interest isheld hostage to self-interest. Thus, stasis, oftentranslated into English as ‘corruption’, underminesthe ideal that citizens, unconcerned with thematerial consequences of their speech, will be freeto think openly about what is in their city-state’sbest interests.If the Athenians regarded politics as war conductedby other means, Popper regarded science aspolitics conducted by still other means. However,105