Some scientists, whether they put it this way or not when they are asked to reflect, still carry on as if there just exists a Reality Out There (ROT), the nature of which is independent of any consciousness of it: naïve realism. These are usually biologists; you won’t find many physicists who would think that.
We desperately need what science can tell us, and postmodern attempts to undermine it should be vigorously resisted. Two important truths, then: science cannot tell us everything; but what science can tell us is pure gold. Any attempt to suppress science (I distinguish science sharply from technology), for whatever reason, is dangerous and wrong.
“Many historians still tend to assume that the spread of an idea or an ideology is a function of its inherent content in relation to some vaguely specified context. We must now acknowledge, however, that some ideas go viral because of structural features of the network through which they spread. They are least likely to do so in a hierarchical, top-down network, where horizontal peer-to-peer links are prohibited.”
According to this conventional account—from the Enlightenment through Comte and Mill to Hempel—the aim of the social sciences is to explain specifically social phenomena by supplying law-like generalizations which do not differ in their logical form from those applicable to natural phenomena in general, precisely the kind of law-like generalizations to which the managerial expert would have to appeal.
A truly value-free openness toward ideas does not, and cannot, exist in the academy, for several reasons. One of them is theoretical: certain ideas cannot be entertained, at least not seriously, because they would of their nature “close the market.” Totalist systems, therefore—revealed religions, philosophies that proclaim an absolute truth, political systems (whether fascist or communist) that proscribe certain kinds of opinion—cannot in theory be advocated at public schools. These are not, notice, excluded because they are false but because they are exclusionary. Their fault is a methodological one, and can be detected and condemned on grounds of procedure, without value-prejudice. The only things that can be excluded are things that would exclude—things that reveal the evil of system. This value-free code of teaching—the concentration on processes for reaching a conclusion, with the taboo against actually reaching conclusions . . . . [F]acts and knowledge of the facts are handed on; the only conclusions allowed are those forced on one by the facts, the teacher having no responsibility for such conclusions. The teacher cannot even teach (only “dissect”), when it is a matter of political, social, or “sectarian” movements (the very term “religion” is too value-laden to pass the committee’s pure lips).
The end of a revolution is a new code of laws—or counter-revolution. The terror finds its end when the opposition is destroyed, when nobody dares lift a finger, or when the revolution has exhausted all reserves of strength.
I have clearly joined the ranks of those who for some time now have been attempting to dismantle metaphysics, and philosophy with all its categories, as we have known them from their beginning in Greece until today. Such dismantling is possible only on the assumption that the thread of tradition is broken and that we shall not be able to renew it. Historically speaking, what actually has broken down is the Roman trinity that for thousands of years united religion, authority, and tradition. The loss of this trinity does not destroy the past, and the dismantling process itself is not destructive; it only draws conclusions from a loss which is a fact and as such no longer a part of the “history of ideas” but of our political history, the history of our world.
In this clash between joint, participating action, without which, after all, the events to be judged would never have come into being, and reflecting, observing judgment, there is no doubt for Kant as to which should have the last word. Assuming that history is nothing but the miserable story of mankind’s eternal ups and downs, the spectacle of sound and fury “may perhaps be moving for a while; but the curtain must eventually descend. For in the long run, it becomes a farce. And even if the actors do not tire of it—for they are fools—the spectator does, for any single act will be enough for him if he can reasonably conclude from it that the never-ending play will be of eternal sameness”
