By Greg Ransom  - Dept. of Philosophy, UC-Riverside. 

INTRODUCTION -- THE DIVISION OF EPISTEMIC AUTHORITY

Thomas Kuhn has transformed contemporary discussions of scientific rationality by shifting philosophical attention from the behavior of the individual scientist to the structure of the scientific community as a whole. Kuhn points out that the rationality of the individual scientist is dependent on a social context which is itself the product of an evolutionary process of group competition and selection. Kuhn argues that only this sort of evolutionary process can lead to the advance of science. I wish to explore and defend this new paradigm as a scientific theory within the branch of knowledge known as general economics, a theory which I believe has policy implications for those who would inject themselves into the scientific process through the instrument of government.

General economy has been conceived as a discipline which makes use of both economic and biological concepts to explain complex human and biological systems. Michael Ghiselin, who coined the expression, has defined general economy as, "the study of how the availability and utilization of resources affect the structure and activity of organized beings." In his theoretical work Ghiselin has concentrated on the significance of the division of labor for biological evolution. Ghiselin has shown how a distribution of functional specializations -- a 'division of labor' -- among individual organisms can extend the resource utilization of a kinship community and thus can be selected for through the mechanism of natural selection.

Similarly, in the field of human sociology, Friedrich Hayek has explored the importance of the division of practical knowledge in the evolution of human social institutions. Hayek has shown how a human community in which a distribution of local information about resource availability is coordinated through the price signals of a market economy can be selected for through a mechanism of group selection.

In this paper and other papers I have been concerned with the significance of the division of epistemic authority for the evolution of human scientific knowledge. Individual skill in the tasks of constructing and evaluating scientific theories is a resource available to all scientists which is necessarily distributed through out the scientific community. Indeed, I have sought to show that Kuhn has given us good reason to believe that a distribution of epistemic authority, both within normal science and during scientific revolutions, is essential to the advance of science. I have argued that Kuhn's model of science can be seen as a process in which ever improving desiderata for theory choice are selected for through a process I call membership selection.

A significant part of any such study must be the relation of the theory to the practical affairs of working scientists and those who would hope to influence or inject themselves into such affairs. This topic touches upon many of the most difficult issues in epistemology. In this paper I wish to focus specifically on the social conception of scientific rationality and the policy implications such a conception has for those who view the institution of government as the very model of collective rationality.

The epistemological interest of the role of government in scientific policy can be illustrated by an article titled "Managing the Unmanageable" which was recently featured in The Atlantic Monthly. The authors, Robert Crease, a philosopher and historian, and Nicholas Samios, Director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, raise concerns about the effect of government management upon the advance of science. They are particularly concerned about the growing role of government in what they call "big science", those massive research projects which involve hundreds of researchers and millions of research dollars.

One of the difficulties with government control of science is that the bureaucratic structure of government is directed from the top toward pre-determined objectives. As Crease and Samios point out, successful government management "is the effective coordination of resources and personnel toward a particular end." But, they ask skeptically, "how can one coordinate an activity whose end is unforeseen and unforeseeable?" In fact, the development of science can even transform our appreciation of what we thought we already knew and understood. To illustrate this point, Crease and Samios tell the story of P.A.M. Dirac, the originator of the "Dirac equation." Dirac, they relate, was fond of saying that his equation was smarter than he was in that the equation contained solutions to problems that were still unknown to him.

Indeed, Crease and Samios point out that one of the central aims of basic research is to seek out unanticipated results, which is very unlike most human projects which seek to avoid such surprises. Although they admit that many scientific discoveries are the expected and unsurprising outcome of a deliberate process, they suggest that researchers are "always aware of the possibility of--and often hope for--novel developments." This follows from the fact that the goal of scientific research is to recognize previously unknown structures. With this conception of the goal of science in mind, Crease and Samios argue that a necessary condition for the success of basic scientific research is that individual scientists must have the freedom, "to follow new paths should they open up, to risk dead ends, to shift direction abruptly on a hunch."

Unfortunately, recent attempts by government officials to micro-manage the advance of science have pushed aside such epistemological considerations in favor of the pragmatic concerns which are generated by the political process itself. In this kind of atmosphere the open-ended goals of science are replace by the particular institutional goals of politicians and government officials. From the perspective of Crease and Samios, "Behind the proliferation of bureaucracy and politics is a deep misunderstanding of the scientific process." The dangerous consequence of this misunderstanding is that it has allowed government officials to treat basic scientific research, "as essentially a corporate undertaking and hence something that can be manipulated for profit or social ends."

It is the threat of government to the legitimacy of science along with epistemological considerations listed above which has lead Crease and Samios to conclude that, "Genuine scientific culture, like all human culture, is achieved through organic growth rather than the execution of a plan." My hope with this paper is to better articulate the nature and significance of this basic insight. My success can be judged on the degree to which I have helped to articulate the fact that in science as in society, ".. if left free, men will often achieve more than individual human reason could design or foresee."

1: KUHN'S NEW SOCIAL PARADIGM OF SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY

Let me begin, then, with a sort account of Kuhn's philosophy of science and its relation to other views of scientific rationality. Thomas Kuhn uses the history of scientific development to show that scientific rationality cannot be understood as a fixed calculus or universal norm which sets eternal standards for individual acts of theory choice. Kuhn argues instead that individual desiderata for theory choice must be seen as an evolutionary product of the scientific process which are necessarily diverse during periods of scientific crisis and revolution. Indeed, Kuhn shows that the development of science across paradigms is itself only made possible by of the variability of theoretical commitments displayed by various individual scientists who then form rival groups during periods of scientific crisis.

On Kuhn's model of the scientific process a period of scientific crisis closes when a single group triumphs over its rivals due to the groups superior success at normal science puzzle solving. Such a group is successful in part because it shares a relatively uniform desiderata set which determine when a normal science puzzle has been solved. That is, Kuhn describes science as a two-stage process of evolutionary change which produces what we recognize as the advance of science. At one stage a scientific paradigm is investigated and articulated by a uniform group until the paradigm begins to face intractable anomalies. At another stage a paradigm which has become racked by crisis is replaced by a successor after a period of scientific revolution in which rival groups vie for the allegiance of their fellow scientists.

For Kuhn, the exemplar of scientific rationality cannot be the individual scientist, because during normal science an individual might make mistakes which the group must identify and correct, and during revolutionary science an individual might make a theory choice which proves mistaken in hindsight. Although in neither case is it correct to attribute irrationality to the individual scientist it is clear that the choices of the individual scientist cannot be relied upon for the advance of science. This is because an individual may fail to propose puzzle solutions in accord with accepted desiderata during periods of normal science or may fail to make theory choices which prove successful after a period of scientific crisis. In fact then, rather than serving as the exemplar of scientific rationality, the individual scientist depends on the scientific community itself for his own rationality. It is the scientific community which serves to correct the conjectural mistakes of the individual scientists during normal science and to overcome the unfruitful choices of the individual scientist during revolutionary science.

Because it is the two-stage social process of normal science and scientific revolution which is responsible for the advance of science, and not any single methodological norm, Kuhn points to the scientific process itself as the exemplar of scientific rationality. Implicitly Kuhn identifies the scientific process as the exemplar of scientific rationality because it is the social process of science itself which is responsible for the advance of science. We might say, then, that for Kuhn scientific rationality as exemplified by the sort of social process which leads to scientific advance.

Kuhn's account of scientific rationality contrasts significantly from the traditional view. On the traditional view scientific rationality is an attribute of the individual scientist which the scientist exhibits only when he conforms to a transcendent standard of scientific procedure which is fixed eternally for all scientists at all times and in all contexts. This single methodological standard lies outside of science and can be known only through philosophical reflection. It is the task of the philosopher of science then to discover and make explicit this universally valid methodological principle. Irrational scientific behavior can be identified by the fact that individual behavior fails to conform to the prescriptive criteria provided by the philosopher.

With this universal standard of scientific methodology in hand, historians, philosophers and practicing scientists can use it either to evaluate past or future scientific choices or to consciously direct or guide current scientific research. For example, historians of science can make use of this universal standard as the proper criteria for evaluating the rationality of past theory choices and methodological procedures. Or practicing scientists can make use this standard as the one true guide for their research activities and their choices between competing theories. On this model the universal standard of scientific methodology becomes something like a calculus from which the individual can produce scientific results simply by making calculations on the basis of logic and experimentation alone.

On the traditional view of scientific rationality it is easy to see why scientific advance is understood as the cumulative product of individual acts of rational choice. The traditional view of scientific rationality is widely thought to be modeled after the example of logical deduction.

As we have already seen, very unlike the traditional philosopher of science, Kuhn views individual criteria for theory choice as an ever changing evolutionary product which are uniform among scientists only during periods of normal science and but which are divergent during periods of scientific crisis. On Kuhn's model individual scientists can only act irrationally when they deliberately act contrary to their own conscious understood standards for evaluating puzzle solutions during periods of normal science.

Furthermore, the theory choices which an individual scientist makes during periods of crisis are influenced by scientific values which vary among the various members of the scientific community. These choices are not determined by a single and universal standard which make us of only logic and experiment, as the traditional view would have it. As a consequence, on Kuhn's view individual scientists who make different choices during periods of scientific crisis cannot be said to be acting irrationally or unscientifically.

Indeed, Kuhn has emphasized the fact that alternative theoretical commitments are not only useful but necessary during periods of scientific crisis to insure that a variety of alternative paradigms can be identified and investigated as the potential source of a new normal scientific research tradition. Without this variety, Kuhn claims that a scientific community might find itself fixed upon a hopeless research tradition permanently wracked by anomaly. Because it lacked diversity in its theoretical desiderata such a community would be unable to recognize any alternative paradigm as the promising subject for further investigation. Of course, once identified, one of these alternative paradigms might provide all of the resources needed for highly successful puzzle solving activity if given the appropriate scientific effort, supported within an appropriate scientific community.

In fact, Kuhn argues that every choice made between rival theories during a period of scientific crisis must be viewed going in as something of a risky venture. Each theory is a risky venture because every one of them may prove to be a dead end upon further investigation, rather than the source of successful new puzzle solving tradition. Kuhn holds that the variety found within the various individual desiderata for theory choice distributed among the members of the scientific community are the means which allow that community to 'hedge its bets' during periods of scientific crisis. That is, because different scientists will see greater scientific virtue in a variety of different theories during a scientific crisis, the community will be able to 'see past' those theories which will in the course of time prove themselves to be a hopeless dead-end and the community will instead be able to 'recognize' and explore the theory which over the course of time will prove itself viable as a normal science research tradition.

Kuhn clearly sees a distribution of individual differences during periods of scientific crisis as essential to the scientific process. He emphasizes the need for alternative scientific commitments during these periods in order to try out a variety of alternative paradigms as the potential future focus of a new normal science tradition. Kuhn sees each of these alternative commitments as a risky venture, each potentially a dead end as the source for normal science puzzle solving. Yet without these diverse theory commitments a scientific community might never identify and develop a potentially promising paradigm. Instead, the variety among individual desiderata for theory choice within a scientific community allow that community to 'hedge its bets' with different scientists seeing greater virtue in alternative theories. Consequently a variety of paradigms will be developed and explored despite the fact that each paradigm represents a potentially risky venture from a contemporary position in the history of science. On Kuhn's view, then, the risks of alternative theory development will be borne by the several members of a scientific community due to the fact that individual members of the community will make different judgements as to the virtue of rival theories.

On Kuhn's view then, the risks inherent in alternative theory development will be borne by the various members of a scientific community spontaneously as a direct result of the fact that individual scientists will vary in their judgments of the virtue and promise of rival scientific paradigms during periods of scientific crisis. As we have seen, Kuhn claims that without a the resulting diversity of theoretical commitments a scientific community would never identify and articulate potentially promising paradigms which could be capable of supporting a new normal science research tradition. If follows that on Kuhn's model of the scientific process a distribution of individual differences during times of scientific crisis is essential to the future success of the scientific community and thus to the scientific process itself. Furthermore, Kuhn suggests that, "No process essential to scientific development can be labelled 'irrational'. ." The upshot of Kuhn's arguments then is that it must be considered scientifically rational for the members of a scientific community to display a diversity of theory choices during a period of crisis in science.

Philosophers trained in the old school which takes individual rationality at the exemplar of scientific rationality have had great difficulty coming to terms with Kuhn's paradigm shift over the nature of scientific rationality. For these philosophers rationality is considered by definition to be a procedure of individual calculation. Their model of rationality has implicitly been the activity of logical deduction, which is a procedure undertaken within the scope of the mind of a single individual. Empirically goal oriented activity, such as that of scientific discovery, is seen as a simply a variation upon the purely formally goal oriented activity of logical deduction. That is, where the goal of the activity of logical deduction is simply the preservation of truth, the instrumental rationality of empirically goal oriented activity has as its goal a given empirical target implicitly available within a given empirical basis.

Scientific rationality has been taken then to be a special case of instrumental rationality in which an individual calculates from an explicitly known set of means (logic and particular experimental results) to an explicitly defined end (a universal generalization) which is contained in those means. Just as the conclusion of a deductive argument is to be found contained within its premises, so to is the conclusion of a rational scientific procedure to be found contained within a given series of experimental observations.

As we have seen, Kuhn has sought to shift the exemplar of scientific rationality from the calculating individual to the social process of scientific advance. Kuhn's most powerful argument in this regard is the claim that both the means and the goals of scientific advance are beyond the scope of any single calculating mind. The force of Kuhn's argument consists in the claim that the model of instrumental rationality fails as an explanation of the advance of science which is shown by the fact that scientific revolutions lead to the discovery of novel conceptual frameworks which no man could have perceived before such a revolution and which no man could have perceived with certainty as the paradigm which would prove most fruitful as the focus of normal scientific research.

However, what any single man could not perceive the community as a whole does discover through the two-stage process consisting of alternative episodes of normal science and scientific revolution. And even within the process of normal science itself, which on Kuhn's view fits very closely the model of instrumental rationality, the capacity of any individual to display this form of rationality is only made possible by the scientific community. The scientific community not only supplies the individual scientists with the conceptual tools required for normal science puzzle solving, the community also supplies the individual with standards for evaluation normal science puzzle solutions.

In addition, it is the community of scientists rather than the isolated individual which serves as the validator of the instrumental success of the individual scientist. That is, despite the fact that on Kuhn's model the solutions to normal science puzzles are contained within the normal science framework itself and are perceived as such by practicing scientists, individual scientists are always subject to inadvertent error not only in their theory constructions and experimental observations, but also in their application of normative standard for puzzle solution evaluation. Yet through the constant checking of the results of other scientists within the group, the members of the scientific community are able to validate the triumphs and correct the errors of the individual scientists. So the scientific community plays the essential role of making scientific rationality possible even during periods of normal science.

Yet Kuhn's most radical proposal is the contention that from a global perspective, which views scientific advance as a two-stage process in which one paradigm is transcended by another, science must be model as an evolution process which is affected through a mechanism of competition and selection. Thus a necessary condition of scientific advance is a non-coercive intellectual environment which can allow for the free expression of diverse and competing theoretical choices during periods of scientific crisis. A rational scientific community can therefore be defined on this model as a community which allows for the free display of alternative theory choices which make revolutionary episodes in science possible. That is, it must be a system in which, "nobody can know who knows best and .. the only way by which we can find out is through a social proces in which everybody is allowed to try and see what he can do."

2: SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY WITHOUT COLLECTIVE CRITERIA

The response within the philosophical community to Kuhn's work on the rationality of science has been widely varied, but a major trend is for philosophers to offer rival models of the relationship between individual rationality and the social process of scientific development. Almost invariably these attempts have sought to push Kuhn's social model of scientific advance back into the old box of individual instrumental rationality. However, there is little reason to believe that any of these efforts have improved upon Kuhn's original articulation of the role of the notion of scientific rationality in our characterizations of the scientific process.

Among the first philosophers who attempted to reconstruct the social process of science within an individualist framework were the former Popperians Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. Their results cannot be viewed as encouraging. The conclusion reached by these preliminary efforts to force the social model of science back into the individualistic mold seems to have been that is science is in fact the sort of social process Kuhn describes, then the individual scientist and perhaps science itself must be considered irrational.

More recently, Husain Sarkar, Catherine Elgin, and Philip Kitcher have made new efforts to reconstruct the social process of scientific advance within the confines of individual rationality. What distinguishes these new efforts is that they have all been inspired by distinction derived from economics and moral theory. It is my claim is that all of these efforts commit what I call the constructivistic fallacy. The constructivistic fallacy can be defined as the mistaken belief that a social process can be reconstructed upon the model of an individual human mind.

The constructivistic fallacy is a fallacy because the most significant fact about any social process is that such a process necessarily extends beyond the scope of any single mind. For example, in the field of economics the constructivistic fallacy often takes the form of the neo-classical model of the auctioneer and the delusion of a centrally planned economy. The neo-classical paradigm of the auctioneer commits the constructivistic fallacy by assuming that the data proper to economic science can be modeled as the information available to a single mind possessing 'perfect knowledge' about the economy. Yet the most significant fact about a market economy is the fact that within such an economy much more economic data is generated and made use of in the form of price signals than is surveyable by any single economic actor. Similarly, those taken with the dream of a centrally planned economy image the economy as somehow directed as a single individual directs the affairs of his own household. However these would be central planners are deluded into imagining the possibility of central economic direction by their individualistic model of the social process. But whereas an individual actor can rationally order his household affairs by placing the particular elements of his local situation into the logical structure of a well calculated plan, the central economic planner has no such luxury due to the fact that all of the particular facts required for the coordination of an extended economic system can never be perceived, collected or understood by any single individual or administrative organization.

My claim here is that any attempt to fit a social process into the model of individual instrumental rationality inevitably limits any characterization of the social process to that which can be foreseen, produced or designed by a single mind. As a result, such models fail to capture the capacity of social structure or process to generate, discover and make use of far more knowledge or information than can be known to any individual mind. As we have seen, Kuhn's own model of the social process of scientific advance can account for this capacity as the result of the functioning of a selective process which necessarily depends upon a diversity of individual perceptions of scientific virtue and conceptual reality.

Their is a close connection between the attempt to provide explanations of a social process based on the paradigm of individual rationality and the attempt to characterize collective rationality itself upon the example of individual rationality or as the collective sum of isolated acts of individual rationality. It is no accident that the leading theorists of collective economic planning were neo-classical economists taken by the model of the Walrasian auctioneer. For these economics central economic planning offered the possibility of replacing the 'chaos' of market activity with the collective 'rationality' of a directively organized command economy.

The philosophers of science listed just above have not only attempted to offer a model of the social process of science based upon the model of individual instrumental rationality, they have also attempted to characterize the collective rationality of science as a social process upon the paradigm of individual rationality. There is little reason to believe that these models have improved upon Kuhn's own characterization of collective scientific rationality and much doubt whether these models have produced accounts of the social process of scientific advance which compare to the strength of Kuhn's own account.

3: SARKAR AND METHODOLOGICAL PROLIFERATION

Husain Sarkar begins his account of the social process of scientific advance by introducing what he calls the 'many-methods' approach to scientific rationality. Sarkar contends that a scientific community which encompasses many sub-groups each with its own rival methodology will have a greater chance of making rapid scientific progress than can a scientific community in which all researcher find themselves committed to a single methodological standard.

Sarkar suggests that the central problem with the classic view of individualistic scientific rationality is that on this model all scientists are assumed to be working with the same universal methodology of science. As a result all scientists will select the very same theory as the best theory for current scientific research. Unfortunately, such a result would leave many potentially better theories uninvestigated, a problem which would not occur if there were instead a proliferation of methodological standards. Rather, a proliferation of methodological standards would result instead in the investigation of a proliferation of rival theories.

Sarkar's implicit assumption is that with enough investigation there is good chance that any number of these other rival theories will prove to be a better theory over time than the particular theory selected in unanimity by a community of scientists working with only one methodology of science. Thus according to Sarkar, "One of the problems facing the classical view was that it every individual scientist, using the same method, adopted the best theory T, the net result would be no proliferation of theories, and yet everyone would be rational."

As a remedy for this problem Sarkar has proposed a two-level conception of scientific rationality which he says was inspired by the work of John Rawls. On this conception scientific rationality is recognized both at the level of the individual scientist and at the level of the scientific community as a whole. Sarkar wishes to distinguish between the principles which govern individual rationality and the principles which govern community rationality, much as Rawls distinguishes between the principles of individual just conduct and the principles of a justly ordered political community.

Sarkar argues that we can determine whether a scientific community is governed rationally in much the same manner as we can determine whether a society is governed justly. In each instance the rationality of the community can be seen in its social design. Thus for Sarkar, "the primary subject of rationality in science ought to be the basic structure or form or organization of the scientific community whose members are engaged in the pursuit of shared goals."

Sarkar implies that it is possible to identify a unique and concretely specifiable common goal for all the members within an extended scientific community encompassing rival groups with divergent methodological norms. Sarkar is suggesting that once we have acquired knowledge of this common goal we can then construct guidelines for maximizing collective scientific success.

Perhaps Sarkar thinks that a concern for scientific progress is the consciously shared goal of a scientific community. Taking this goal as a given, Sarkar would then be suggesting that the collective rationality of a scientific community can be judged by the efficiency a community has in making scientific progress. Sarkar's basic claim, then, is that a scientific community will display greater efficient at making scientific progress if there exists a proliferation of rival methodologies within the community which will result in the concurrent investigation of a proliferation of rival scientific theories. That is, Sarkar holds that a scientific community which consists of many sub-groups each with its own methodology is to be considered a more rational community than a scientific community which possesses only a single methodology. In Sarkar's own words, a scientific group which encompasses many sub-groups possessing rival methodologies, "has a better chance of making more rapid progress in the accumulation of knowledge than a group envisaged on the classical view [of individual rationality]."

There are several objections to Sarkar's proposal. To begin with, there is little reason to believe that the rival methodologies of these various sub-groups constitute a single shared community goal. If Sarkar believes that scientific progress constitutes this single shared community goal he must show how we can identify scientific progress and what relationship exists between a diversity of different methodologies and this single common goal.

Thomas Kuhn and others have argued that the divergent methodologies adopted by rival sub-groups within a community actually constitute divergent group goals. In fact, Sarkar offers no argument for believing that these various rival sub-groups do in fact share the same goal. Indeed, Sarkar even seems to agree with Kuhn that groups which adopt fundamentally different scientific methods will aim at fundamentally different scientific goals. For as Sarkar says, "..methods aim at certain basic goals, a failure of a method may reflect the failure of fundamental goals. How else can fundamental goals be adjudged?"

However, if the goals of the various sub-groups differ fundamentally, then there is real reason to question whether or not these fundamentally differing goals can be accurately characterized by a single concretely specifiable common goal. Yet, as I have been suggesting, what is most worrying about Sarkar's many-methods approach to collective scientific rationality is that this method seems to require a single identifiable goal for all of the many rival sub-groups within the community. His approach requires a single goal despite the fact that each sub-group is assumed to be working with a different methodology. If on Sarkar's model a single common goal must be identified and articulated in advance before any model of collective scientific rationality can be constructed, then there is serious concern that no such collective criteria can be identified by the various members of the many rival sub-groups within the scientific community.

I might be helpful here to compare Sarkar's method for deriving the criteria of collective scientific rationality with the method John Rawls uses to derive the structural principles of a just social order. Rawls begins with the assumption that each individual within a liberal society will have his own unique goals and plans which he need not share with any other individual. According to Rawls, the central problem of liberalism is to derive the principles of justice for a social community lacking any identifiable goal other than the diverse and often conflicting goals of its many members.

Rawls' proposed solution asks each of us to assume that we know that we are to be members of a prosperous society but that we in fact know nothing more about our particular place in that society. Granting that we could be given just this information, Rawls concludes that each of us would choose a social system in which all of us would be best able to achieve our own separate and diverse individual goals.

It should be obvious from this brief characterization that Sarkar and Rawls offer us very different methods for deriving normative principles for evaluating or constructing the structure of a social community. For example, The Rawlsian model for deriving collective principles of social justice begins with the premise that the many individuals within a liberal community do not share any common goal. By contrast, Sarkar's model for deriving the principles of collective scientific rationality begins from the assumption that the diverse members of the scientific community in fact do share a single common goal. Also, on the Rawlsian model a social structure is to be ordered according to principle which are designed to make possible the optimal fulfillment of diverse individual goals. However, on Sarkar's model a social structure is to be ordered according to principles which are designed to maximize the fulfillment of a single collective goal of the community.

Of course, Sarkar never claims anything more than that he has found inspiration in Rawls for his own idea that a theory of scientific rationality should be concerned with deriving the principles of collective rationality. That is, the work of John Rawls may serve simply as a source of inspiration Sarkar rather than as the intended model for his own method of deriving principles of collective rationality. This only becomes a serious if Sarkar is unable to provide a plausible substitute to take the place of the method offered by Rawls. And this is just what is most worrying about Sarkar's many-methods approach. In fact, as I suggested earlier, it seems that Sarkar has given us no reason to believe that we will be able to identify a specifiable common goal for the many diverse sub-groups working within rival methodological frameworks.

What I am claiming is that Sarkar's own methodology seems incapable of providing a viable theory of collective rationality because it requires but seem incapable of producing a single specifiable collective goal upon which all members of the scientific community concur. In this context, then, it becomes problematic that Sarkar's methodology differs too radically from Rawls own proposal for determining the normative standards to be used in evaluating the structure of a social community. Furthermore, if Sarkar is indeed unable to provide a plausible procedural substitute which can take the place occupied by Rawls's own method for deriving normative principles of collective order, then one can doubt whether Sarkar still has any right to draw a distinction between individual and collective rationality.

If a many-methods approach to science cannot give us a single given common goal toward which all scientists aim, we might look elsewhere for some other way in which the many-methods approach might lead us to a coherent conception of collective scientific rationality. Sarkar does suggest that, ".. the view of may be a first step toward a conjecture of how goals, like theories, may compete, grow and improve." It seems here that Sarkar is suggesting along with Kuhn that the scientific process itself must be relied upon to adjudicate between fundamentally competing goals of rival scientific sub-groups. Yet there are significant differences between Kuhn's account of this process and the view put forward by Sarkar, differences which I would argue are not favorable to Sarkar's position.

According to Sarkar, a sub-group is unsuccessful when it is 'unstable' and this instability is relative to its success with a problem set, the stability of other groups, and the larger social environment. The overall community moves away from 'disequilibrium' and towards 'equilibrium' when the diversity within the community is reduced by the elimination of a particular sub-group and methodology. Sarkar likens this process to Popper's trial and error model of the scientific process.

Perhaps my most fundamental concern about Sarkar's many-methods approach is that a theory which proposes the wanton proliferation of methodologies actually offers a model for collective irrationality rather than a model for collective rationality. Indeed, Sarkar's proposal seems subject to all of the same charges of relativism and irrationality which met Paul Feyerabend's proposal for the wanton proliferation of theories. Sarkar argues that, "the chances of producing the desired results, which those who stipulate the principles of proliferation of theories hope for, are better on the proposed view of group rationality than on any alternative theory of rationality." I would suggest that this way lies the breakdown of our confidence in the advance of science.

4: ELGIN AND REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM

Like Sarkar, Catherine Elgin has also seen great significance in the Rawlsian distinction between justification of individual action within a practice and justification of the framework which constitutes a practice. However, rather than assuming with Sarkar that the members of a scientific community all hold a concretely specified and commonly shared epistemic goal, Elgin recognizes that rivals within the epistemic community will have differing epistemic goals. Her proposal is to apply the Rawlsian technique of reflective equilibrium to adjudicate between these goals to find the one true goal, rather than, as Sarkar proposes, to attempt to identify a 'just' scientific social structure which best promotes a previously 'given' epistemic goal.

The central difficulty for those who have in the past attempted to adjudicate between rival epistemological conceptions from a universal standpoint is that the collective criteria for rationality they are seeking tends inevitably to collapse into what are in fact individual criteria for rationality. Elgin seeks to resist this reduction with an appeal to the work of Rawls and his well known technique of reflective equilibrium. Through the use of this technique Rawls hoped to situate the individual hypothetically in a position from which he can make social judgments as is they were taken from an unbiased or universal social standpoint. From this universal point of view the rational individual could invent the rules or design the system which would best produce what a self interested and yet unbiased man would view as a fair or just distribution of the goods which will allow for the achievement of a diversity of individual plans.

However, one can argue that any model which requires us to step into a universal point of view is blocked even before it gets off the ground due to the practical impossibility of taking a complete step into the conceptual shoes of any individual other than oneself. Just as there is a constitutional limitation on the scope of a single man's knowledge and interest, there is also a limitation on a man's ability to take on the theoretical and normative perspective of another individual. Certainly Rawls never makes plausible that notion that we can actually try on for size the genuine article of another man's point of view.

In fact ,I would argue that attempting to construct a universal point of view for judging the principles which govern collective rationality by somehow imagining oneself in another man's conceptual scheme is not only impossible, but shear folly. The folly consists not simply in the attempt to do the impossible, but more importantly in the hidden assumption it carries that any individual can every put himself a position in which he can cast judgement upon the whole of the framework in which not only others but in which he himself operates.

There is, however, one other difficulty with Elgin's appeal to Rawlsian reflective equilibrium which I find even more serious and more troubling than any other of its many difficulties. This problem consists in the false sense of epistemic authority which overcomes an individual who has fooled himself into believing that he has possession of a universal standpoint for judging conceptual frameworks. A person who believes himself to be in such a superior epistemic position can only view those working within differing frameworks as irrational, immoral, or perhaps worse. I call this 'the problem of Soviet psychiatry.' The title is meant to suggest the practice which once existed in the Soviet Union in which political dissidents where sent to psychiatric hospitals to be treated for cases of insanity which could be identified by their inability to recognize or appreciate the superiority of the Soviet system.

I would argue that a man who feels that he has somehow assumed the standpoint of collective rationality can only view others who disagree with him as the enemies of reason. On this model of scientific rationality groups and individuals who diverge from this presumedly collective standpoint can be only thought of as deviant thinkers, rather than as potential contributors to a collective process. Indeed, in that these 'deviants' may be rivals to the supposed 'collective' standpoint assumed by the man in reflective equilibrium, those working within opposing conceptual frameworks must be considered potential threats to collective rationality, rather than as potentially vital elements of the process which in fact produces collective rationality. Let me suggest, then, that the Rawlsian epistemologist who assumes that he has attained some sort of reflective equilibrium by doing what is palpably impossible, i.e. by having subjected all possible perspectives to an unbiasedly evaluation after engaging in a collective mind-meld with each and every other individual, is a potentially intolerant and therefore dangerous man.

This may seem to some to be nothing more than a bit of hyperbole. But I would argue that the allusion to Soviet psychiatry seems apt when we consider what a Rawlsian epistemologist might consider to be appropriate treatment for the deviant thinkers who threaten his own supposedly 'collectively rational' point of view. If groups of deviant thinkers represent a threat to rationality -- as the Rawlsian must perceive it from his 'universal' standpoint -- then he certainly must think himself fully justified in taking action to suppress any possible challenge to his authority from these other points of view.

We could say that the partisans of a particular framework, who satisfy themselves that they have reached an a state of reflective equilibrium, have every right to feel themselves sanctioned on this model to judge non-community members as having failed the test of rationality and therefore subject to exclusion from the intellectual community at large for representing the equivalent of conceptual disease. On this model deviant thinkers can represent nothing else but threatening horde of irrationality. It follows that those who value scientific rationality would view deviant thinkers as the deserving subjects of repression as builders and teachers of a subversive tradition.

5: KITCHER AND THE PLANNING OF SCIENCE

Philip Kitcher argues for a many-theories approach to collective rationality. According to Kitcher the possibility that there could be a "mismatch between the demands of individual rationality and those of collective rationality" is a neglected problem in the philosophy of science, a problem which Kitcher contends was first raised by Thomas Kuhn in his essay, "Objectivity, Value Judgment and Theory Choice". Kitcher believes that this problem is one which faces any theory of the growth of knowledge. Kitcher's point is that the abandonment of one theory for another on the basis of what at one time may appear to be good reasons could leave a potentially better theory undeveloped. In other words, a theory which looks to be the better today may prove to be the worse tomorrow.

Kitcher illustrates this problem using the fate of continental drift theory as his as his primary example. In earlier part of the 20th century continental drift theory was rejected by most of the research community, although today it is universally accepted within the scientific community. According to Kitcher, this kind of example shows that there can be a conflict between the optimal research strategy of each individual and the optimal research strategy for the community at large. What Kitcher wants to argue is that it would have been rational for the scientific community to assign more scientific workers to the theory of continental drift during the time in which few scientists viewed the theory as a promising research program. "I claim," says Kitcher, "that we sometimes want to maintain cognitive diversity even in instances where it would be reasonable for all to agree that one of two theories was inferior to its rival."

In his own mind, what Kitcher advocates is an "optimal division of cognitive labor" within the scientific community. In reality, what Kitcher offers us is a solution to the problem of socialist calculation all over again, this time in the context of the science rather than economics. Just as the socialist once condemned the irrationality of unplanned economic activity, Kitcher now condemns the irrationality he sees in unplanned scientific activity. Like the socialist of yesteryear, Kitcher believes that the mutual adjustment of individual plans toward collective goals can be better coordinated by the central direction of a master authority. According to the economist Friedrich Hayek, socialists had once dreamed of the "reconstruction of society on rational lines" believing that the "deliberate regulation of all social affairs must necessarily be more successful than the apparent haphazard interplay of independent individuals." In sum, according to Hayek, the program of socialism was "to apply reason to the organization of society." If we replace the words "society" or "social affairs" with the words "science" or "scientific affairs" in the above characterization it is clear that Kitcher's program which is intent on making scientific activity collectively rational mirrors the old socialist program which was intent on making economic activity collectively rational.

In both of these cases the would be economic planner and the would be scientific planner have made the mistake of viewing of the problem of collective rationality as a problem of optimal distribution. Such a stance to the problem of collective rationality is in serious error because it demands an impossible 'god's eye view' from which to judge the optimality of any given distribution. Unfortunately, since men have never been and cannot be such gods, the criteria used for judging the optimality of any distribution almost invariably becomes that of a single individual. In fact, on the distributional model the scope of collective rationality can be no more than the distributional possibilities which a single mind could conceive. As a result, the rules which govern the distribution of collective benefits are in constant danger of collapsing into the personal tastes of those who have the opportunity to grasp hold of the power given to those who decided upon or dictate the terms of the collective plan.

Let me suggest that rather than solving any existing epistemological problem, the need of positing of a god's eye view in order to characterize collective rationality as a distributional problem leaves at least two of most important epistemological problems completely unresolved. To begin with, the notion of a god's eye view fails to solve the problem of justification without which the problem of collective rationality cannot even get off the ground. If, as I have argued, the criteria for collective rationality on the distributional model collapse to those of a single individual, then those criteria must be situated in some person. Yet the whole point of positing the idea of collective rationality is that individual actors can be mistaken about which scientific theories offer the greatest promise of scientific success or which economic plans of action offer the greatest expectation of economic success.

So who is to say which individuals are in a better epistemic position to anticipate the future development of science or the economy? Certainly philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn and and economists such as Armen Alchian and Israel Kirzner have given us ample reason to believe that those who are currently most successful may not be tomorrow. And we have no reason at all to believe that those who capture the power to 'distribute' the assignment of individual activities will be in an optimum epistemic position or will indeed desire to further collective epistemic ends.

This brings us to our second problem. Someone or some group has to be the central planner who will be in charge of dictating the new 'distribution' of resources, whether intellectual or economic, which is presumed to be a better distribution than that which would have spontaneously formed of itself. The problem is that no central planner can ever put himself fully into the shoes of of the other actors in the economic or scientific community in the sense required to take on the knowledge which those other persons make use of in their economic or scientific activities. In fact, much of this knowledge is embodied as unarticulated skills which can only be acquired through participation in a community of practice. These communities are often dominated by tacitly understood conceptual frameworks which have been instilled through the imitation of a tradition. The central planner, that is, will always know much less than the many individuals within the community can know because so much of the knowledge of the community is distributed throughout the community in the from of tacitly known traditional practices. In fact, I would argue that those who would offer a distributional solution to what is perceived as a problem of collective rationality have failed to take into consideration the greater collective knowledge which is embodied in the tacit skills and inarticulate knowledge which can only be mutually adjusted in a spontaneous order beyond central direction.

Later in this paper I will look at the form 'the problem of socialist calculation' actually takes when it is 'moved' from a goods producing context to a knowledge generating context. Here I would only like to note that by miscasting the problem of collective scientific rationality Kitcher has landed in the same misbegotten moral dilemma which welfare economics is mired in. What Kitcher's program demands in an act of altruism on the part of individual scientists to act for the common good by pursuing 'objectively' less promising research programs which it follows logically 'objectively' have less chance of promoting their own quest for knowledge. To conceive of the problem of collective rationality as a problem in which the interests of the individual are inevitably aligned against the interest of the collective and which must be overcome is to dream of a notion of collective rationality which can only be achieved by an act of metaphysical will outside of naturalistic explanation. In reality the demand of self-sacrifice for the collective good is a demand which can only be realized by destroying through coercive manipulation the only mechanisms which are actually able to generate the collective good. Among these mechanism are free competition and tradition bound cooperative association. As I shall argue such mechanisms are the basis for a selective system which is capable of spontaneously generating collective rationality without demanding a metaphysically or naturalistically problematic notion of self-sacrifice.

7. PUBLIC POLICY AND SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY

I would now like to speak of what might be called a 'constructive sociology of science'. In an earlier paper I give a process theory of scientific advance which finds essentially no place for a political dimension to the competitive struggles between individual scientists. Here I will suggest that the appropriateness of such a model is dependent on the actual socio-political institutions which are to be found in the real world. My model of science is not a model which will fit the practice of 'science' as it occured in the Soviet Union during the period of Lysenkoism which extended from the 1930's to the 1960's.

What I would like to argue is that although the unknown state of the goals of future scientific progress makes it impossible to identify a single standard of scientific advance, we can very readily identify the destruction of scientific rationality in those cases where socio-political coercion interferes with the free decisions of practicing scientists. In other words, I am claiming that the advance of science into the unknown cannot be planned and is only possible within the context of the free institutions found within liberal society.

I should be quick to point out that these same conclusions have been draw by philosophers of science working without benefit of my model of scientific advance. Michael Polanyi has borrowed arguments from the Austrian economists and developed several of his own to show that the advance of science cannot be centrally planned. Karl Popper has suggested that an appropriate sociology of science would investigate the way in which the larger social and political institutions of society make free competition in science possible as well as the way in which social and political coercion can introduce distorting effects upon the scientific practice and theory choice. There are reasons, however, to be unsatisfied with these accounts, and I believe my own approach overcomes some of these problems. I will address these issues shortly, after I have briefly discussed Michael Polanyi's justly famous attack on scientific planning and I have introduced a some of the concepts of modern economics which have been emphasized by the Austrian school.

8. POLANYI'S CASE AGAINST CENTRALLY PLANNED SCIENCE

Polanyi's first argument against scientific planning is based on two simple claims. The first of these is that the greatest part of an individual scientist's knowledge is personal knowledge which is only tacitly known or is embodied in skills which cannot be articulated. The second of these is that there is a division of knowledge among individual scientists, or in other words, that each scientist is a master of a slightly different slice of natural phenomena. Scientific knowledge is local. The planning of science is thus impossible because no central planning board could possibly gain the local and personal knowledge which is required to make informed judgments about the future promise of various research projects. The planning board could not gain the personal knowledge because this knowledge is largely non-discursive. The planning board could not gain the local knowledge because mastery of such local knowledge takes a life-time of work and the multiplicity of such local knowledge among the many thousands of scientists would make the acquisition of this knowledge be something beyond the scope of the members of any committee. Here is Polanyi's argument for the free pursuit of science:

"For a scientific community, comprising great numbers, to function, there must exist a large area of hidden and yet accessible truths, far exceeding the capacity of one man to fathom . . This is why the initiative to scientific inquiry and its pursuit must be left to the free decision of the individual scientists; the scientist must be granted independence because only his personal vision can achieve essential progress in science." Polanyi, 1969:82

"The pursuit of science can be organized, therefore, in no other manner than by granting complete independence to all mature scientists. They will then distribute themselves over the whole field of possible discoveries, each applying his own special ability to the task that appears most profitable to him." Polanyi, 1951: 89.

This argument is very similar to an argument made by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek against the possibility of central economic planning. Hayek argued that the division of economic knowledge among individuals would make rational central economic planning impossible. Because economic knowledge consists largely of particular transient local facts and skillful personal evaluations of local opportunities it would be impossible for a central planning board to collect, process and summarize all of this largely tacitly held personal knowledge of local economic factors and situations.

One problem still remains for Polanyi. He needs a theory for how scientific progress is possible or even how scientific theories are justified given the diversity of individual scientific research programs. According to Polanyi, scientific advance and scientific justification is affected through self-co-ordination by mutual adjustment based on the principle of mutual scientific authority. According to Polanyi:

"..the authority of scientific opinion is exercised by mutual control of independent scientists, far beyond the scope of any one of them." Polanyi, 1975: 192.

"It consists in the fact that scientists keep watch over each other; each scientist is both subject to criticism by others and is encouraged by their appreciation . . Thus an indirect consensus is formed between scientists [even though they may be] so far apart that they could not understand more than a small part of each other's subjects." Polanyi, 1969: 84-85.

Polanyi's second argument against scientific planning is another argument which seems in many ways to be an echo arguments offered by Austrian economists against central economic planning. According to this argument scientific advance can only be understood as advance into an unknown which cannot be modeled in advance. Yet without a prior conception of the shape of the goal toward which one is directing previously given set of elements, the whole notion of central planning is incoherent. We have already seen how on Polanyi's model there can be no such thing as a prior set of elements available for a central planner to direct or manipulate toward a pre-conceived goal. Here is Polanyi's articulation of this argument:

"The logical basis for the spontaneous co-ordination of scientists in the pursuit of science is as simple as, and in fact identical with, that which operates the self-co-ordination of a team engaged in piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. But there is something profoundly different, and also highly significant, in the way in the elements of the same logical machinery are provided in either case. For the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are bought in a shop with the certainty that they will yield a solution know to the manufacturer. But there is no similar assurance given to us by the Creator of our Universe that we shall find an intelligible ground-plan of it by continuing to piece together the elements of our experience. It is not even clear in what sense science . . can be said to have any comprehensive task at all . . Moreover, while in the case of the jigsaw puzzle a new piece either fits into a particular gap or fails to fit into it in the most obvious fashion, in science this is not so. Some new discoveries may click immediately into an indisputable position, but other claims, often more important, remain uncertain for a number of years. To every step of scientific progress there is attached an element of uncertainty regarding its scope and scientific value." Polanyi, 1951: 36-37

".. it is obvious what would happen if someone believing in the paramount effectiveness of central direction, were to intervene and try to improve matters by applying the methods of central administration. It is impossible to plan in advance the steps by which a jigsaw puzzle is to be put together." Polanyi, 1951: 35.

"To illustrate the growth of science we must imagine a statue which, while it is being pieced together, appears complete at every successive stage. And we may add that it would also appear to change its meaning on the addition of every successive fragment--to the great and ever renewed surprise of the bystanders. And here indeed emerges the decisive reason for individualism in the cultivation of science. No committee of scientists, however distinguished, could forecast the further progress of science except for the routine extension of the existing system." Polanyi, 1951: 89.

"If science really does prosper by allowing each scientist to follow his own bent, the systematic structure of science must differ fundamentally from that which underlies the structure of a house." Polanyi, 1951: 88

The existing practice of scientific life embodies the claim that freedom is an efficient form of organization. The opportunity granted to mature scientists to choose and pursue their own problems is supposed to result in the best utilization of the joint efforts of all scientists in a common task. In other words: if the scientists of the world are viewed as a team setting out to explore the existing openings for discovery, it is assumed that their efforts will be efficiently co-ordinated if only each is left to follow his own inclination. It is claimed in fact that there is no other efficient way of organizing the team, and that any attempt to co-ordinate their efforts by direction of a superior authority would inevitably destroy the effectiveness of their cooperation. (Polanyi, 1951: 34)

8. INSIGHTS FROM HAYEK AND THE AUSTRIANS

In my characterization of the role of government in the unplanned advance of science, I will appeal in part to the work of the philosopher Friedrich Hayek. Let me justify myself in advance somewhat by pointing out that I have not been the first to do so. The cognitive psychologist Walter Weimer, the economist Don Lavoie, the political scientists Ronald Curtis, and the philosopher Gerard Radnitzky have all applied Hayek's work in economics and social theory to questions within the philosophy of science concerned with the development and advance of science. The first to do so was perhaps Michael Polanyi.

Indeed, both Walter Weimer and Gerard Radnitzky have attempted to exploit Hayek's distinction between a social order which is governed by the rules of an organization, what Hayek has termed a taxis, and a social order which is governed by the rules of a great society, what Hayek has termed a cosmos, in order to help characterize and explain the development of science. Weimer has made a particularly suggestive attempt to equate a Hayekian taxis to a Kuhnian normal science paradigm and a Hayekian cosmos to a period of Kuhnian revolutionary science. Although I have reservations about the details of Weimer's analogy, I should acknowledge that it was Weimer's work which suggested to me that a selective mechanism might be as appropriate for modeling Kuhn's account of scientific change, as it was appropriate on Hayek's view for modeling the evolution of market based societies.

Importantly, the underlying mechanism which sustains both of these motivated social orders can be modeled as instances of membership selection. And just as significantly, the ultimate result of each is the differential selection of varieties of rule following behavior displayed by individual members of competing, although unplanned, communities. Finally, the action of this mechanism is dependent in each case upon of human perceptual skills which are used to recognize and imitate successful research strategies, viable theoretical models, and well-entrenched judgmental norms.

Ronald Curtis, building upon a theme out of Hayek's social theory, suggests that scientific rationality might emerge "like the collective economic rationality of neo-classical theory, as a sort of Polanyiite spontaneous order, as an unintended consequence of individual scientists choosing the course of action they consider most likely to further their aims in the scientific problem-situation as they see it." What Curtis intends in a model of science which takes into account the possibility that much of science might be explained as the result of the unintended consequences of intentional actions. On this view, "the scientist generally neither intends to promote scientific rationality, nor knows he is promoting it: he intends only to solve a more immediate problem."

The key insight found here is that the success of science might be given an invisible-hand explanation which accounts for the achievement of our epistemic goals as the product of the undesigned social coordination of individual human actions. In this regard Curtis perceptively calls attention to Hayek's important insight that "the rules of conduct, whether conscious or metaconscious, which govern the behavior of the individual members of a group must be clearly distinguished from the overall order which results when individuals act in accordance with them."

This is significant because it raises the possibility that we might identify the overall order of coordinated interpersonal behavior independently of our own particular knowledge of the rules of individual conduct which govern ourselves and others. This suggests that the relationship between our theories of about the rules which govern our individual conduct and our theories about the overall order of the community is for us an empirical rather than a conception relationship. Further development of this idea may helps us to better understand how patterns of intentional behavior can be worked into a fully selectionist mechanism capable of accounting for the undesigned nature of scientific advance and economic progress.

For their own part, Walter Weimer and Don Lavoie has been particularly appreciative of the extensive affinities which can be found in the work of Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Kuhn and Michael Polanyi. Both Weimer and Lavoie have emphasized that Hayek and Kuhn share a Polanyian concern with the tacit basis of knowledge and a Polanyian commitment to a polycentric characterization of the spontaneous coordination of human institutions. Of course, Polanyi's dominant theme, that scientific progress is dependent on a free but tradition bound environment, comes very close to capturing the spirit of Hayek's work in political economy and Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science . In a sense, both Hayek and Kuhn have helped to articulate Polanyi's vision of tradition bound change. Building upon these significantly improved characterizations of tradition bound change, I have attempted to flesh out the underlying mechanism behind this change as it occurs in science. In the process I have attempted to characterize this change as advance by modeling this change in such a way that we have every right to be confident that progress has in fact occurred.

Fall, 1991.

9: KITCHER AGAIN -- WHY SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS CANNOT BE PLANNED

(remains under construction)