Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

Cold War science policy – namely, the selfalienationof ‘autonomous science’. In Plato’sAcademy, the pursuit of pure inquiry had beenjustified in terms of the mental discipline itprovided for statecraft. According to Plato, aconsequence of being focused on the ideal for manyyears would be a resolve to do what is right, evenwhen it is unpopular. What Plato had not envisagedwas that this fixation on the ideal would become anend in itself, which would then enable the work ofthe pure inquirers – mathematicians, philosophers,computer programmers, physicists – to be insertedunproblematically into military strategy and othergovernance schemes that were decided withouttheir consent. That is, the Cold War social conditionsunderwriting the autonomy of scienceencouraged the scientist to function less as a freeagent who aims to transcend boundaries than acognitive module who operates within strictparameters. For those Central European émigréswho had experienced multiple regimes of sciencepolicy in their lifetime – Popper, Feyerabend andLakatos included – this perversion of the Platonicprogramme was epitomised in Kuhn’s valorisationof ‘normal science’, which locates the collectivegenius of science in its occasional ability to eke outinnovation from a very narrow set of epistemicconstraints. Today’s philosophical underlabourers87