The Scientific Method and Politics

The intimate relationship between political epistemology (theories of political knowledge) and political theory is well established throughout the history of political thought. Still, it is a striking feature of the history of the philosophy of science, how often explicitly political considerations and analogies enter the discourse. The most direct connection between a theory of scientific knowledge, and political organization can be found, of course, in Plato’s Republic of philosopher kings. In modern times, in declared opposition to Plato, Karl Popper builds his theory of the “open society” on the scientific method of falsification. While exposing a fundamentally different theory of science, Thomas Kuhn describes the changing of scientific paradigms in openly political terms, as scientific “revolutions”. Paul Feyerabend depicts science as a recognizably political activity, opening his exposition of the scientific method (or rather, a lack of it) with a lengthy discussion of Vladimir Lenin’s political writings. It seems that one of the chief motivations behind Imre Lakatos’s attempt to merge the theories of Popper and Kuhn, was to discredit the scientific claims of Marxism. Michael Polányi’s description of scientific activity as taking place in a “republic of science”, again, employs a clearly political analogy to describe the scientific community. As part of a larger project of trying to establish an epistemological basis for political theory, the paper offers to systematically examine the political implications of theories of scientific knowledge. It also proposes that the current crisis of democracy, on the most fundamental level, can be best theorized in terms of political epistemology. Understanding modern liberal democracy as a political solution to the problem of the inherently limited, uncertain and imperfectly articulated nature of human knowledge, the current crisis could be described as one of overconfidence, and unwarranted certainty on the part of political actors, both left and right (Barker et al. 2021). While claims to scientific authority, as well as the complete denial of such authority can, in different ways, both lead to unwarranted certainty in one’s political beliefs, the paper would argue that a balanced interpretation of the possibilities, and limits of scientific knowledge might serve as an epistemologically modest, but sound foundation of a liberal and democratic political order.