Dados is one of the most widely-read social sciences journals in Latin America. Created in 1966, it publishes innovative works, originating from academic research, by Brazilian and foreign authors. Edited by IESP-UERJ, it aims to reconcile scientific rigor and academic excellence with an emphasis on public debate based on the analysis of substantive issues of society and politics.
Dados vol. 30 n. 1 Rio de Janeiro 1987
Abstract
The prevailing view is that science is the embodiment of modem rationality and manages not only to increase our understanding of the world, but also to introduce rational order into non-scientific areas of human culture, thus influencing the totality of human conduct. This view has been seriously questioned recently by Paul Feyerabend and Theodore Rosmk: among others, i.e. counterculturallyminded critics of the technics which serve the implementation of scientific knowledge in everyday life, and by historians of science who point out numerous examples of deceit and irrational partiality in favor of cherished paradigms, theories and data (Broad, Wade, Joravsky). The criticism in question is increasingly difficult to counter since modem post Popperian philosophy of science (as exemplified in the development of two pupils of Popper - Lakatos and F'eyerabend) virtually abandons the classical concept of truth and allows for a plurality of paradigms without providing an instrument for discerning the superior ones from those that are cognitively less fortunate. Moreover, there are increasing amounts of historical evidence that any progress or rapid change classified as development is due, at least in part, to an illusion caused by an epistemological, organized amnesia, which makes the followers of the new paradigm heap abuse on the old, rejected one. Two consequences merit attention: one is the enormous interplay of social and cognitive factors which contributed to the growth of the linked sociocognitive constellation of capitalism and modem science with mutually reinforcing results; the other is that the ethical basis of any reductionist strategy in modem culture, be it humanist or not, must appeal to the transcendental values or at least to supraindividual, supra-empirical ones (exemplified in the quasi transcendental status of intersubjectivity, as is the case with the Habermasian ideal of a coercion-free dialogue) which means practically that every new, radical movement in any sphere of life and culture is at least partly a matter of belief and conviction, where as the purely objective basis for its acceptance is mostly an engineered illusion.
Ciência: Um Capricho Dispendioso
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