Empiricism and Irreductions
I have read Irreductions (part 2 of the Pasteurization of France) many different times and in many different pieces. Today, I was at the gym doing my max resistance 5k that I do in some vain hope that I can stave off sitting around this much and I came upon this quote,
Studies about science and society...are always met with skepticism. Critics insist that there is something else in science, something that escapes social explanation. After encountering this skepticism for years, I realized that it was not rooted in any lack of empirical studies (though this may play some role) but stemmed from much deeper philosophical arguments about knowledge and power. Knowing that empirical studies would never do more than scratch the surface of beliefs about science, I decided to shift from the empirical and, as Descartes advised us, to spend a few hours a year practicing philosophy. In doing so, I quickly unearthed what appeared to me to be a fundamental presupposition of those who reject “social” explanations of science. This is the assumption that force is different in kind to reason; right can never be reduced to might. All theories of knowledge are based on this postulate. So long as it is maintained, all social studies of science are thought to be reductionist and are held to ignore the most important features of science.
This is literally the first page of the chapter and the first paragraph. It has never hit me until today that this is really talking about the problems of empiricism in the social sciences.
Been thinking about this a lot today.