Anything Goes – David Stove

Science studies as a discipline, or field of inter-related disciplines, arose shortly after the Second World War. Not a hard science in itself, science studies explores cultural aspects of the hard sciences, and was designed to: impart an understanding of the sciences to arts students, and to encourage science students to think about the cultural aspects of their work.
The social science perspective is that, though scientists think of themselves as wholly driven by rationality, in reality what causes the majority of scientists to shift paradigms is more complex.
Philosopher David Stove, who died in 1994, counters the dominant discourse in science studies by examining the writings of the most influential academics in the field – Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos. In Anything Goes (subtitled Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism) he first disassembles their arguments and points out the way their positions are made credible – utilising tricks to neutralise the meaning of words (by, for example, enclosing them in quotations), and failing to use consistent and logical arguments (in the philosophical sense). Stove then goes back to the source of the discipline, identifies and discusses the underlying premise on which all work in the field is based (David Hume’s scepticism about inductive arguments, one of the cornerstones of science).
At least I think that’s what he does, but I may have it all completely inverted. Rarely have I felt as stupid as I did trying to work my way through Anything Goes – I think the last time was when I slogged my way through Mouse or Rat. In this case it was particularly disappointing because, as it deals with some of my favourite topics (social science, popular science, irrationalism and philosophy), I was looking forward to reading it.
The introduction, by Keith Windshuttle, was readable, accessible and interesting. In it he lays out the broad structure of Stove’s book, as well as providing the useful background of the origins of science studies. Though I did not agree with everything he wrote, I was interested. However, shortly after beginning the section by Stove I became mired in a dense morass of prose. Opening at random, I give you this example:

In fact, of course, as is obvious, nothing could be more trivial. That the premises of an argument entail the conclusion is not enough to make them a reason to believe it. And if the premises of the arguments are to succeed in being a reason to believe the conclusion, not every validator R of the argument from P to Q is available to every arguer as an additional premise. Such an R, to be available to an arguer as an additional premise must at least be such that it can be part of a reason to believe Q.

And that’s not even from a tricky bit.
I have a background in philosophy and a smattering of social science – I am well aware of the wankiness of parts of academia, and Stove illustrates aspects of this well (at least up to the point I stopped reading). However, he is clearly writing for an audience with a strong philosophical background, and an audience who are already well aware of the divide – there is little in the way of introduction or explanation, and he launches straight into the arguments section (which, for those of you unfamiliar with the structure of philosophical arguments, looks a lot like algebra).
I believe that there are faults on both sides – from what Stove (and Windshuttle) write, some of the science studies academics cited make ludicrous claims that deny science any objective truth, that deny any kind of progress, and argue as though the scientific paradigms that replace their predecessors are any better or more valid than those they replace.
On the other hand, scientists are mistaken if they believe that objective truth is the only basis for accepting or rejecting new theories – from Copernicus revolutionising astronomy, through Semmelweis’ theory that microbes not miasmas caused childbed fever, to the rejection of Marshall and Robin's idea that gastric ulcers are caused by bacteria not stress, every field of science has examples where valid theories were denied by the majority despite their truth. While some scientists may indeed be open to new theories that overthrow everything that comes before them, relinquishing a position occupied for ones’ entire academic life, the foundations of ones’ prestige, is not easily done.
It is also true that culture affects the direction science takes, the mindset of the scientists themselves, and the kind of information that can be released – very few of us are truly capable of being objective, and instead view the world through the filter of our preconceptions and beliefs, and this influences the theories, experiments and proofs produced. These cultural blinders are not recognised at the time, but in hindsight their influence is obvious – all the work ‘proving’ non-white races were inferior to white, or that women had less intellectual capacity than men, for example. It is presumptuous and delusional to believe that any of us today are more independent of these ideas and ideologies than our forebears, but that is what the objective concept of science incorporates unspoken.
And somehow I have strayed far from the book. In summary – interesting, valuable, biased, dense, unfinished. - Alex