(Long snip)
> I think that it is important to realize what it means to
> invest oneself in something. It is unlikely that a scientist would spend a
> lifetime in this, or any area of research without being invested in it. It
> is also unlikely that one would easily give up that in which he has heavily
> invested. If we are honest, we admit that we all invest ourselves in
> certain things, whether politics, philosophy, or theology that tend to leave
> us with the belief that our views are correct and the views of others are
> wrong. in reality, this says nothing about truth, and is simply a
> reflection of the extent of one's investment. This is the human condition,
> from which scientists and philosophical naturalists are not immune. Why
> would we expect more from them, then from ourselves?
Actually, there may be even mre to this fact ofpersonal investment than
you intimate. If Michael Polanyi was right in <personal Knowledge> -- and
I think that he deserves a great deal more attention from philosophers of
science than he got -- scientific objectivity is gotten through
subjectivity and personal commitment. in Polanyi's view, knowing is much
like a skill and it requires the active participation of the knower, along
with certain personal aspects that the knower brings to the
accomplishment. Knowing is not just the reception or the having or the
passive apprehension of something, but it is an accomplishment which the
knower makes. Furthermore, this knowing is objective because it
establishes "contact with a hidden reality; a contact that is defined as
the condition for anticipating an indeerminate range of yet unknown (and
perhaps inconceivable) true implications" (<Personal Knowledge>, vii,
viii). In Polanyi's view, the personal participation and commitment of
the knower in theprocess of knowing does not make knowing purely
subjecive. In fact, it is the feature of subjective commitment that gives
rise to objectivity.
According to Polanyi, when we claim objectivity for a theory we are
claiming that the theory is such that everyone ought to accept it. Tghis
"ought" is at once a claim that people should accept it for logical,
intellectual, practical, and even moral reasons. We make such an "ought"
claim not on the basis of personal whim or other personal idiosyncrasy,
but on the basis of personal conviction that the theory satisfies certain
intellectual demands or criteria. We do this because we are convinced
that those intellectual qualities are such that other similarly
rational persons should assent to them.
I recommend Polanyi's <Personal Knowledge> highly. It should be
read in connection with his (much shorter) <The Tacit Dimension>. Polanyi
produced a non-positivistic theory of science, and he did it at the
height of positivism's influence in the 1950s and early 1960s. For
whatever reasons, his work got attention from theologians, artists, and
others, but little from philosophers of science.
Lloyd Eby
leby@nova.umuc.edu