Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

discovery’ 39 . ‘We have here the paradigm of all progress in science: discoveries are made bypursuing unsuspected possibilities suggested by existing knowledge’ 40 . These are words Boydwould makes his own, in particular in The Conceptual Spiral.But even the highest degree of intuitive originality can operate only by relying to aconsiderable extent on the hitherto accepted interpretative framework of science, Polanyiacknowledges 41 . Countering the ‘modern man’s Cartesian view that he will believe nothingunless it is unassailable by doubt, Polanyi asserts that science can only be pursued andtransmitted to succeeding generations within an elaborate system of traditional beliefs andvalues’ 42 . And here the social and consensual character of scientific knowledge comes to thefore, again exerting a tacit influence. In the essay ‘The Republic of Science’ in the book,Polanyi notes that ‘the first thing to make clear is that scientists, freely making their ownchoice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are infact cooperating as members of a closely knit group’ 43 . Each scientist sets himself a problemand pursues it with a view to results already achieved by all other scientists, who had likewiseset themselves problems and pursued them with a view to the result achieved by othersbefore.The practice of science therefore contains an internal tension, a theme that resurfacesin Boyd’s work. On the one hand, acceptance of the results of research depends on the levelof plausibility of the result and the scientific value of the research conducted in terms of theaccuracy, its systematic importance, and the intrinsic interest of its subject-matter. Theseelements translate into a social constraint in the sense that they tend to enforce conformity.On the other hand, the element of originality, also a prime criterion for judging scientificmerit, encourages dissent. This internal tension, Polanyi asserts, is essential in guiding andmotivating scientific work 44 . The professional standards of science must impose a frameworkof discipline and at the same time encourage rebellion against it. They must demand that, inorder to be taken seriously, an investigation should largely conform to the currentlypredominant beliefs about the nature of things, while allowing that in order to be original, itmay to some extent go against these. Thus the authority of scientific opinion enforces theteachings of science in general, for the very purpose of fostering their subversion inparticular points. Scientific opinion imposes an immense range of authoritivepronouncements on the student of science, but at the same time it grants the highestencouragement to dissent from them in some particular 45 .This feature leads to an additional relevant assertion: knowledge grows out of thenetwork that scientists form together; which form consensual chains. No single scientist has asound understanding of more than a tiny fraction of the total domain of science. How can anaggregate of such specialists possibly form a joint opinion? How can they exercise jointly thedelicate function of imposing a current scientific view about the nature of things, and thecurrent valuation of proposed contributions, even while encouraging an originality whichwould modify this orthodoxy? Polanyi asserts that a joint opinion of what constitutes realityemerges due to the fact that each scientist can usually judge an area adjoining their ownspecial studies that is broad enough to include some fields on which other scientists havespecialized. There is considerable overlap between fields and as scientists are thus linked39 Ibid.40 Ibid, p.79.41 Ibid, p.119.42 Ibid, p.68.43 Ibid, p.49.44 Ibid, p.54.45 Ibid, p.66.88