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An idea to help save the world

By Nicholas Maxwell - posted Wednesday, 4 October 2017


Released from the crippling constraints of standard empiricism, science would burst out into a wonderful new life, realising its full potential, responding fully both to our sense of wonder and to human suffering, becoming both more rigorous and of greater human value.  

And then, in a flash of inspiration, I had my great idea.  I could tread a path parallel to Popper’s.  Just as Popper had generalized falsificationism to form critical rationalism, so I could generalise my aim-oriented empiricist conception of scientific method to form an aim-oriented conception of rationality, potentially fruitfully applicable to all that we do, to all spheres of human life.  But the great difference would be this.  I would be starting out from a conception of science – of scientific method – that enormously improves on Popper’s notion.  In generalizing this, to form a general idea of progress-achieving rationality, I would be creating an idea of immense power and fruitfulness.

I knew already that the line of argument developed by Popper, from falsificationism to critical rationalism, was of profound importance for our whole culture and social order, and had far-reaching implications and application for science, art and art criticism, literature, music, academic inquiry quite generally, politics, law, morality, economics, psychoanalytic theory, evolution, education, history – for almost all aspects of human life and culture.  The analogous line of argument I was developing, from aim-oriented empiricism to aim-oriented rationalism, would have even more fruitful implications and applications for all these fields, starting as it did from a much improved initial conception of the progress-achieving methods of science.

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The key point is extremely simple.  It is not just in science that aims are profoundly problematic.  This is true in life as well.  Above all, it is true of the aim of creating a good world – an aim inherently problematic for all sorts of more or less obvious reasons.  It is not just in science that problematic aims are misconstrued or “repressed”; this happens all too often in life too, both at the level of individuals, and at the institutional or social level as well.  We urgently need to build into our scientific institutions and activities the aims-and-methods-improving methods of aim-oriented empiricism, so that scientific aims and methods improve as our scientific knowledge and understanding improve.  Likewise, and even more urgently, we need to build into all our other institutions, into the fabric of our personal and social lives, the aims-and-methods-improving methods of aim-oriented rationality, so that we may improve our personal, social and global aims and methods as we live.

One outcome of the 20th century is a widespread and deep-seated cynicism concerning the capacity of humanity to make real progress towards a genuinely civilized, good world.  Utopian ideals and programmes, whether of the far left or right, that have promised heaven on earth, have led to horrors.  Stalin’s and Hitler’s grandiose plans led to the murder of millions.  Even saner, more modest, more humane and rational political programmes, based on democratic socialism, liberalism, or free markets and capitalism, seem to have failed us.  Thanks largely to modern science and technology, many of us today enjoy far richer, healthier and longer lives than our grandparents or great grandparents, or those who came before. 

Nevertheless the modern world is confronted by grave global problems: the lethal character of modern war, the spread and threat of armaments, conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear, rapid population growth, severe poverty of millions in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, destruction of tropical rain forests and other natural habitats, rapid extinction of species, annihilation of languages and cultures.  And over everything hangs the menace of climate change, threatening to intensify all the other problems (apart, perhaps, from population growth). 

All these grave global problems are the almost inevitable outcome of the successful exploitation of science and technology plus the failure to build aim-oriented rationality into the fabric of our personal, social and institutional lives.  Modern science and technology make modern industry and agriculture possible, which in turn make possible population growth, modern armaments and war, destruction of natural habitats and extinction of species, and global warming.  Modern science and technology, in other words, make it possible for us to achieve the goals of more people, more industry and agriculture, more wealth, longer lives, more development, housing and roads, more travel, more cars and aeroplanes, more energy production and use, more and more lethal armaments (for defence only of course!).  These things seem inherently desirable and, in many ways, are highly desirable.  But our successes in achieving these ends also bring about global warming, war, vast inequalities across the globe, destruction of habitats and extinction of species. 

All our current global problems are the almost inevitable outcome of our long-term failure to put aim-oriented rationality into practice in life, so that we actively seek to discover problems associated with our long-term aims, actively explore ways in which problematic aims can be modified in less problematic directions, and at the same time develop the social, the political, economic and industrial muscle able to change what we do, how we live, so that our aims become less problematic, less destructive in both the short and long term. 

We have failed even to appreciate the fundamental need to improve aims and methods as the decades go by.  Conventional ideas about rationality are all about means, not about ends, and are not designed to help us improve our ends as we proceed. Implementing aim-oriented rationality is essential if we are to survive in the long term.  To repeat, the idea, if taken seriously, just might save the world. 

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Einstein put his finger on what is wrong when he said "Perfection of means and confusion of goals seems, to my opinion, to characterize our age."   This outcome is inevitable if we restrict rationality to means, and fail to demand that rationality – the authentic article – must quite essentially include the sustained critical scrutiny of ends.

Scientists, and academics more generally, have a heavy burden of responsibility for allowing our present impending state of crisis to develop.  Putting aim-oriented rationality into practice in life can be painful, difficult and counter-intuitive.  It involves calling into question some of our most cherished aspirations and ideals.  We have to learn how to live in aim-oriented rationalistic ways.  And here, academic inquiry ought to have taken a lead.  The primary task of our schools and universities, indeed, ought to have been, over the decades, to help us learn how to improve aims and methods as we live. 

Not only has academia failed miserably to take up this task, or even see it as necessary or desirable.  Even worse, perhaps, academia has failed itself to put aim-oriented rationality into practice.  Science has met with such astonishing success because it has put something like aim-oriented empiricism into scientific practice – but this has been obscured and obstructed by the conviction of scientists that science ought to proceed in accordance with standard empiricism – with its fixed aim and fixed methods.  Science has achieved success despite, and not because of, general allegiance of scientists to standard empiricism.

The pursuit of scientific knowledge dissociated from a more fundamental concern to help humanity improve aims and methods in life is, as we have seen, a recipe for disaster.  This is the crisis behind all the others.  We are in deep trouble.  We can no longer afford to blunder blindly on our way.  We must strive to peer into the future and steer a course less doomed to disaster.  Humanity must learn to take intelligent and humane responsibility for the unfolding of history.

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Karl Popper, Science and Enlightenment, the book based on these ideas is available as a paperback, and also online free at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/karl-popper-science-and-enlightenment.



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About the Author

Nicholas Maxwell is a philosopher. For nearly thirty years he taught philosophy of science at University College London where he is now Emeritus Reader. In 2003 he founded Friends of Wisdom, an international group of people sympathetic to the idea that academic inquiry should help humanity acquire more wisdom by rational means.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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