sociology of knowledge – Björn Östbring

26 maj 201106 mars 2014 Björn Östbring Längre text

Political theory as a subfield of political science

This essay was written in january as part of an exam in a course titled ”Social Studies of Science”.

My field of study would probably best be described as political theory, and more broadly, political science. The label of ‘political theory’, however, cover a very broad range of intellectual interests and pursuits, and one may even doubt that there exist enough commonality as to warrant one to speak of a “field” in any determinate manner. This vagueness of my field of study, and its rather insecure institutional place within academia, is actually part of what I would like to discuss in this paper.

Political theory is not science and the claims its practitioners make are rarely seen as claims to knowledge or truth. This puts me in difficulties with regard to the present exam question: much of the course material, concerned as it has been with science proper, will not be straightforwardly applicable to the field of political theory. But in this paper I will attempt an analysis of political theory as a field. By this I mean that I will not concern myself with describing prevalent theories and traditions in political theory and trying to explain them with reference to the social context. Rather, I will analyze political theory as a discipline — that is, its identity and place amongst other disciplines in academia.

This is not because I find the first set of questions unimportant. Indeed, in my view such reflections ought to be conducted by theorists themselves, so as to make the field in some sense more self-reflective. This would be the demand for what Bernard Williams calls ”reflective social understanding”:

[T]he education of political philosophers should include such epistemological materials as will help them to get some measure of the varying claims of the sociology of knowledge. As it has been said that metaphysicians and philosophers of language should not be verificationists, but should have a verificationist conscience, so political philosophers should have a readiness to be embarrassed by the possibility of reflexion on the formation and direction of their views (Williams 2006: 160).

Yet I will not pursue such reflections in the present paper. Partly because I find it difficult that to do to in as brief a space as this. Partly because very little of the course material seem relevant to such a task. Choosing instead to analyze political theory more broadly as a discipline it will be possible to keep this paper more in line with the themes, if not the specific theories, addressed in the course material.

As I said before, political theory is not a science. Yet it is currently a subfield of political science. This fact causes some tension within the discipline. It is not surprising, therefore, that calls are sometimes made for the separation of political theory from political science. I will now point to one such case of late, and make a suggestion of what kind of institutional or economic logic may account for such calls for separation.

In 2007 the political science department at Pennsylvania State University decided to no longer offer political theory as a main field of study for graduate and Phd students. The debate that this decision sparked recently reached the scholarly journals (Brown 2010; Gunnell 2010; Kasza 2010; Kaufman-Osborn 2010; Rehfeld 2010). I will draw on some of the arguments in this debate, but first I would like to pick up on some themes of the course that I think may help to explain the temptation to exclude political theory from the discipline of political science.

(1) There is within science always a struggle for economic resources, and this struggle determines what kind of research gets done. Thus there is a vital need to position and frame one’s research and discipline as highly important and useful.

(2) The prestige and status of science is unique in contemporary society.

Both these themes have often been subject for discussion in the lectures of this course, and is also discussed in the course literature (primarily Bucchi 2004; Ravetz 2006). They are of course the basic starting points that make the social study of science important and interesting. I will now try to build on these two ideas and analyse political theory’s position as a subfield of political science.

If (1) covers not only the practise of the natural sciences, but also every other kind of intellectual and academic activity, then, if we combine it with the fact (2) that science is highly esteemed, we get the formula: (3) There is an incentive for all academic disciplines to present themselves as constituting “science”.

Well then, what distinguishes political theory as a subfield in political science? Wendy Brown supplies an answer: “[P]olitical theory is the sole outpost of nonscience in an ever more scientized field” (Brown 2010: 681). While political theory cannot plausible dress itself in the robes of science, as Brown puts it, the other subfields of political science potentially can. Then, to the extent that political theory asks ‘the big questions’ about the study of politics, of its methodology and of social ontology, political theory makes itself an annoyance to its subfield neighbours. Not simply because it, through its existence, take up a proportion of the existing resources allotted to the discipline — and therefore annoys those who simply deem it a worthless practise — but because political theory may then be regarded as undermining a key factor determining the size of those resources, namely the possibility to present the discipline — to policy makers as well as the public — as a hard science. (This reaction is quite understandable, since, after all is said and done, who would wish to suffer the fate of the humanities?)

This partly explains, I think, the existence within social science of quite naïve and outdated ideas about science. If we combine the formula (3) with the fact that in the society at large “science” is still generally understood in a rather narrow positivistic fashion, then we need not be surprised that the very same conception of science is still entertained and propagated by scientists. After all, they themselves will benefit from presenting their discipline as in accordance with these conceptions of science. And hence, what Gregory Kasza describes as “the marginalization of political philosophy”, ought not to surprise us.

Make no mistake: political philosophy presents a threat to today’s mainstream political science. Contemporary research in the philosophy of science offers little justification for the neo-positivist template that still dominates empirical research in political science. To ask graduate students to probe the basic ontological, episte- mological, and normative questions of philosophy and apply what they learn to contemporary research in political science is to give away the store. The only way to stop philosophical inquiry from undermining the status quo is to exorcise it from graduate education. That is why philosophy requirements have disappeared from the curriculum. (Kasza 2010: 699)

Naturally, they are opposed to including in their discipline any intellectual enterprise asking the kind of questions Kasza sees as characteristic of political philosophy (he prefers the term ‘philosophy’ over ‘theory’ but treat them as interchangable):

What is the character of the human being and human society? What is politics and what should be the proper scope and objectives of political research? What sort of knowledge about politics is possible? What is science? What is a good society? (Kasza 2010: 697)

On the contrary, these scientists are rather happy in a state of affairs in which ”most graduate students are no longer taking courses that would problematize the correspondence between the social and natural sciences” (Kasza 2010: 699).

I will now expand on this issue of the distinctiveness of the social sciences. Kasza speaks of the ‘neo-positivists’. But let us return to the earlier proponents — or rather, to one of their critics. Isaiah Berlin was moving in the circles of British positivist philosophers, but became a staunch critic. In ‘Does Political Theory Still Exist?’ he discussed the scientistic ambitions of an even earlier age, the ambitions of those who, in the wake of Newton, had believed that the “monstrous muddle” of social and political doctrines could be cleared away “by the strong new broom of scientific method” (Berlin 1999: 162). Here is Berlin’s estimation of that project:

Nevertheless, attempts made by the philosophes of the eighteenth century to turn philosophy, and particularly moral and political philosophy, into an empirical science, into individual and social psychology, did not succeed. They failed over politics because our political notions are part of our conception of what is to be human, and this is not solely a question of fact, as facts are conceived by the natural sciences; nor the product of conscious reflection upon the specific discoveries of anthropology or sociology or psychology, although all these are relevant and indeed indispensable to an adequate notion of the nature of man in general, or of particular groups of men in particular circumstances. Our conscious idea of man – of how men differ from other entities, of what is human and what is not human or inhuman – involves the use of some among the basic categories in terms of which we perceive and order and interpret data. To analyze the concept of man is to recognize these categories for what they are. To do this is to realize that they are categories, that is, that they are not themselves subjects for scientific hypothesis about the data which they order. (Berlin 1999: 162-63)

The first part of this paragraph may simply express the thought that there are inevitably normative questions that can never be ‘solved’ by greater scientific knowledge in social and political matters. The second part, however, have more far-reaching consequences. For these concepts and categories, these models and presupposition of which Berlin speaks, are not simply something that we use to make sense of our experience, they form that experience. As Bernard Williams says, the understanding of historically and culturally different concepts and categories, and “the self-understanding of our own”, is then a prime task of philosophy (Williams 1999: xv). And since these models determine the actions and beliefs of individuals, there is a case to be made that an understanding of the social world depend on understanding such models and modes of thinking. “No amount of careful empirical observation and bold and fruitful hypothesis will explain to us what those men see who see the state as a divine institution” (Berlin 1999: 167-68). Political theory does exist, Berlin says, and its task is to bring, “by an effort of imaginative insight”, understanding of the concepts and categories that have dominated societies; insights without which these societies “will remain opaque to us” (1999: 168).

Still, it might be argued that this would be a humanistic enterprise, and that though it may supplement political science it has no place in that science. In reply to this argument, we may highlight the question of “the self-understanding of our own” concepts and categories. Then it will be seen that political theory, “the reflective dimension of political science” as Gunnell calls it (2010: 678), is integral to the discipline. For if there is no reflection on the categories and concepts “in terms of which we perceive and order and interpret data”, then we would not be able to make conscious choices about crucial methodological questions, and we would pursue our work unconscious of the presuppositions and social ontology that by necessity direct it. One does not simply by an empirical study discover what kinds of entities exist in the social world. On the contrary, a social ontology is conceptually prior to the study of that world — though the result of empirical work may then influence us to change our model and basic concepts of society. My point is: Either you try to be explicit about this ontology and try to understand the historical and sociological causes of these preconceptions, so as to make informed choices. Or you don’t.

What I am saying here could perhaps be understood as the claim that one task of political theorists is actually to conduct sociology of knowledge in relation to the field of political science. And, secondly, that the nature of political science is such that the discipline would fare less well as a science did it not make room for intellectual work of that kind. But I don’t mean to say that each and every political scientist must spend a whole lot of energy on these issues. As Bernard Williams told the philosophers: while there ought to be a sensitivity to these issues, this sensitivity may sometimes rightly take the form of simply looking the difficulty in the face “and getting on with something one actually believes in” (Williams 2006: 160). However, at the level of the whole discipline and the departments (such as Penn State), such an attitude is a different matter completely.

I have in this paper suggested that a certain amount of political theory and sociology of knowledge would make political science better off. Better off epistemologically speaking, I must stress again. For as I have also suggested, there seem to exist a kind of institutional and economical logic that threaten to make the discipline worse off in terms of resources, if it were to acknowledge precisely that view. This social analysis explains why my field of study seem to have an uncertain disciplinary home.[1] As long as the ‘distinctiveness’ of social science of which I have spoken is not broadly understood in the rest of society, then this state of affairs is likely to remain. For the existence of a profession of political science depend on the willingness of the rest of society to financially support it. And the extent of this willingness is crucially dependent on whether the profession is regarded as “science”. So, whether due to an adaption process, or to a selection effect, it is no surprise that there is tendency in the profession to propagate the same conception of science as that which is held by its financiers. This perhaps explains the prevalence of philosophically disreputed ‘neo-positivist’ views of science, and why a department of the discipline decided to give an entire subfield the boot.

Notes:

[1] The situation of course varies between different regions. Kasza complains of “America’s overspecialized academic structure”, and the “ill influence” it has had in the United Kingdom and Germany (Kasza 2010: 698). My view regarding Sweden is that Kasza would have less cause for concern in this case.

References:

Berlin, Isaiah (1999), Concepts and Categories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Brown, Wendy (2010), ‘Political Theory Is Not a Luxury: A Response to Timothy Kaufman-Osborn’s ‘Political Theory as a Profession”, Political Research Quarterly, 63 (3), 680-85.
Bucchi, Massimiano (2004), Science in Society (London & New York: Routledge).
Gunnell, John G. (2010), ‘Professing Political Theory’, Political Research Quarterly, 63 (3), 674-79.
Kasza, Gregory J. (2010), ‘The Marginalization of Political Philosophy and Its Effects on the Rest of the Discipline’, Political Research Quarterly, 63 (3), 697-701.
Kaufman-Osborn, Timothy V. (2010), ‘Political Theory as Profession and as Subfield?’, Political Research Quarterly, 63 (3), 655-73.
Ravetz, Jerome (2006), The No-Nonsense Guide to Science (Oxford: New Internationalist).
Rehfeld, Andrew (2010), ‘Offensive Political Theory’, Perspectives on Politics, 8 (02), 465-86.
Williams, Bernard (1999), ‘Introduction’, in Isaiah Berlin, Concepts and Categories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Williams, Bernard (2006), Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

09 mars 201105 mars 2014 Björn Östbring Längre text

Science is a social enterprise (A note on Karl Popper’s theory of science)

The following is an essay written in response to an exam question in a course titled ”Social Studies of Science”. The question: ”Is it necessary to employ a social scientific approach for understanding and explaining the development and content of science? If so, why?”

I will in this paper answer the question with a restricted and qualified ”yes”. The reasons for the affirmative answer, as well as the reasons for the qualifications to that answer, will be supplied from Karl Popper’s philosophy of science. My general view is that the social aspects of Popper’s theory are often neglected, and that his ideas are often presented, unfortunately, as methodological rules for heroic individual scientists but with the implication of being of limited relevance for ordinary scientists.

But Popper’s view of science is thoroughly social. Science is a social institution. Even in the highly abstract treatise The Logic of Scientific Discovery ([1935] 1959) the social aspects of science are evident (though not often explicitly discussed). And in The Open Society and its Enemies ([1945] 2003) Popper’s social or institutional view is in full display:

[W]hat we call ‘scientific objectivity’ is not a product of the individual scientist’s impartiality, but a product of the social or public character of scientific method; and the individual scientist’s impartiality is, so far as it exists, not the source but rather the result of this socially or institutionally organized objectivity of science. (2003: 243)

Popper is famous for stressing the objectivity of science. His theory of science is highly normative: scientists ought to formulate theories capable of being disproved, and they should try, to the best of their ability, to actually disprove them. Now, one important part of the field of the social studies of science is the empirical study of how scientists actually go about their business. How they formulate theories, how they conduct experiments and behave in the laboratories, how they interpret data, and so on. Such studies often show the irrationality and biases of the scientists, and the (unconscious) unwillingness to accept evidence that goes against their own theories. Knowledge of this practical reality of science ought to foster some healthy scepticism and critical attitude towards the claims of science, the claims of authority and privileged access to the truth.

Even though I agree with this general attitude, I have doubts about the theoretical (or philosophical) importance of these critical studies. I doubt, that is, whether the failures and biases of scientists, such as they are revealed by sociologists of science, entitle one to draw more general and philosophical conclusions about the (non)-objectivity of science. Since if one shares Popper’s view of science in the quote above, the conclusion to be drawn is not necessarily philosophical scepticism about the objectivity of science and its claims to discover truths. “The sociology of knowledge”, Popper wrote…

…shows an astounding failure to understand precisely its main subject, the social aspects of knowledge, or rather, of scientific method. It looks upon science or knowledge as a process in the mind or ‘consciousness’ of the individual scientist, or perhaps as the product of such a process. If considered in this way, what we call scientific objectivity must indeed become completely ununderstandable, or even impossible; and not only in the social or political sciences, where class interests and similar hidden motives may play a part, but just as much in the natural sciences. Everyone who has an inkling of the history of the natural sciences is aware of the passionate tenacity which characterizes many of its quarrels. No amount of political partiality can influence political theories more strongly than the partiality shown by some natural scientists in favour of their intellectual offspring. If scientific objectivity were founded, as the sociologistic theory of knowledge naïvely assumes, upon the individual scientist’s impartiality or objectivity, then we should have to say good-bye to it. (Popper 2003: 240; emphasis in original.)

Let us turn now to Popper’s own view of objectivity. Popper does not ground scientific objectivity on the individual scientist’s objectivity; rather it is inter-subjective criticism, and the norms that guide this “friendly-hostile co-operation” between scientists that matter (Popper 2003: 241). To further emphasize Popper’s social view of science, we may recollect his thought experiment regarding Robinson Crusoe. The upshot of this experiment is that it would have been impossible for Crusoe to conduct science: Even if we imagine Crusoe as equipped with all the equipment, technology and intelligence needed for formulating and testing theories, it remains the case that Crusoe actually doing all that still can not amount to him doing science. The impossibility of ‘Crusoenian science’ is due to the impossibility of criticism. Intersubjective criticism is simply a necessary condition for science, according to Popper. This shows, as clear as it possibly can, that in Popper’s view science is, by definition, a social enterprise.

It follows, if science has this institutional and social character, that surely science could not be properly understood without the use of social scientific theories and models. Institutions are, after all, the subject matter of social science. I will now try to sketch the various issues that, from a Popperian perspective, such a social study of science ought to concern itself with, and relate these to the themes in our course literature.

David Bloor does well to highlight that in Popper’s view ‘facts’ are theory-laden and never fully justified by experience (Bloor 1991: 60-61). I will now go into greater detail regarding this issue. According to Popper, we can have no direct and unmediated access to the world. Rather, our theories guide our observations, and on account of these observations we formulate what Popper calls ‘basic statements’. It is these statements which potentially falsifies our theory, not the observations themselves, i.e not the ‘protocol sentences’ or ‘observational reports’ describing ‘I saw an instance of x at time y and place z’ (Popper 1959: 98). The important thing is however that when we usually speak of ‘facts’ in relation to our theories, we actually speak of low-level hypothesis. Facts too are subject to inter-subjective tests before they can be accepted. Basic statements are statements about observable phenomena, ‘observable’ here having a public dimension: the phenomenon will be possible to observe by others given that a certain experiment x is repeated (cf Bucchi 2004: 50-51; Popper 1959: 102).

Basic statements are prompted by experience/observation, but accepted by decision (Popper 1959: 105). This raises questions about how and on what grounds one take the decision to accept a basic statement. That is, how are sense experiences to be related to the low-level statements, ‘statements of fact’, accepted into one’s scientific work? All this might sound a digression from the topic of this paper. But it is not, which will be apparent when now turn to the consequences of this view. In brief, what we have here is actually the most striking argument for why ‘Crusoenian science’ is impossible. The issue I have just digressed into is the key reason why science necessarily is a social enterprise. For what Crusoe never can do is to validate his own observations. That means, for instance, that there is no reliable way for him to make allowances for his reaction-time in making those observations. If we compare this, Popper writes,

…with the way [reaction-time] was found out in ‘public’ science—through the contradiction between the results of various observers—then the ‘revealed’ character of Robinson Crusoe’s science becomes manifest. (Popper 2003: 243)

Turning again to the course literature, we find in Latour the interesting story about Robert Boyle and the Air-Pump. With an apt phrase, Boyle can be described as staging “a theatre of proof” (Latour 1993: 18). This is the birth of the modern empirical and ‘public’ science. I am not going to dwell at this point, but merely point out that given Popper’s account of tests and observations — the upshot of which is that basic statements and ‘facts’ are ultimately accepted through a decision — then the kind of historical studies of the development of new instruments and technology are of great significance. Crucially, such studies ought to be concerned with how these technological developments are interpreted and discussed by scientists, and how consensus on what is to count as evidence is re-established (the re-establishment, that is, of the inter-subjective testability of their theories). To be sure, we could not ‘understand’ science without such studies.

It should also be noted that the ‘decisionist’ character of Popper’s treatment of basic statements and facts, also characterizes his main doctrine: falsificationism. This point has been well expressed by Ian Jarvie. Popper has been criticized on the grounds that falsification does not have the advantages that Popper claims, since it is always logically possible to ‘blaim’ a negative result on other factors and thus avoid falsifying the theory by the introduction of ad hoc hypothesis or by redefinition of terms. But as Jarvie notes, this is a strange point of criticism against Popper, since he is clearly aware of this possibility and his theory is actually developed to deal with it. It is this very possibility that accounts for Popper’s turn to ‘a social view’ of science (Jarvie 2001: 42, 71-72, 83-84). For even though falsifiability does have a logical advantage over induction and verifiability,[1] this is clearly not enough (since falsification can be evaded). What is needed is the decision to adopt a “meta-methodological social rule not to avoid falsification” (Jarvie 2001: 43). The demarcation between science and non-science is not in any sense natural or logical, but social: the convention or agreement of some people to engage in criticism and to let experience (results of inter-subjective tests) refute their ideas and theories (Jarvie 2001: 44). As Jarvie describes it, problems in trying to formulate a pure logic of science led Popper to emphasize instead the institutional character of science. Science is characterised by the adoption of a set of rules, a methodology, by a group of people with certain aims. This is the ‘social turn’ in Popper, according to Jarvie.

Methods are social. Popper’s repeated strategy is to reframe philosophical problems as methodological problems, to turn, that is, metaphysical issues into social decisions. (Jarvie 2001: 35)

Now then, if science is constituted by the adoption of a certain social conventions, and governed by a particular ethos, what would a sociologist of science primarily study? I have already indicated, with regard to Boyle, one such area, namely how ‘facts’ come to be recognized in this community of scientists. But I would like to point out two other broad areas of inquiry. Firstly, we may ask how such social conventions come into being, what cultural factors may underpin institutionalized criticism, and so on. In other words, we may ask about the birth and cultural history of science. Secondly, if science is an institution, we may ask the same questions as of other institutions. Do they serve their purpose? Are they degenerating? Do they need reform in any way?

These two sets of questions ought to interest a Popperian sociologist of science. Popper himself sometimes wrote about the first set, but wrote next to nothing – except briefs laments of ‘Big science’ – about the second. In texts like ‘Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition’ and ‘Back to the Presocratics’ he describes the birth of the tradition of rationalism, the tradition of critical discussion, of criticizing and reformulating theories (Popper 2002: 161-82, 183-205). In connection to Arun Bala’s book on the multicultural character of science and its historical development, it might be worth to point out how Popper viewed the birth of science. It was the result, Popper always held, of culture clash (see for instance Popper 1994: 38-43). In that sense, Popper is not Eurocentric in Bala’s definition; he does not hold that science was “autogenerated within Europe” (Bala 2006: 22). Bala speaks of the birth of modern science as ‘dialogical’. With Popper we can say that also the birth of Greek science was ‘dialogical’ at its core: it was the meeting of cultures and civilizations that provided the impetus for some thinkers to challenge the received cosmological views and explanations of their own culture. Without the contact, the dialogue, with other cultures, the critical tradition would not have been born.

The second set of questions was largely ignored by Popper. This is a great weakness, since it follows from his theory that the institutions of science must be critically studied and evaluated. If science is a ‘special kind of institution’, with a certain authority to its claims, as it certainly has according to Popper, then its institutional workings must be subjected to inspection and criticism. Ian Jarvie has argued for this with great force. It is commonly held that Popper first wrote Logic of Scientific Discovery and that his later treatise on social and political philosophy, The Open Society and Its Enemies, constitutes a kind of application or extension of his philosophy of science. Ian Jarvie present a different view. While the institutional character of science was implicit in Logic it was fully developed in The Open Society. And, crucially, The Open Society contained a philosophy that proposed a critical attitude toward the institutions of social life, and commended that they must always be subject to scrutiny and reform. But Popper then failed to apply this to science itself. Through this failure Popper can be accused of, as Jarvie puts it, ‘beautification’ of science. He thus contributed in keeping the “sacred aura” of science, an aura which, as Bucchi says, inhibited the development of sociological studies of science (Bucchi 2004: 15). Jarvie’s point though, is that by such beautification Popper is not true to his own philosophy (Jarvie 2001: 87, 213). As an institution, science may or may not function well. It may become corrupted and its authority be abused. As Jerome Ravetz says, the social organization of contemporary science is very different from the time of ‘little science’, and some of the old views of science may be obsolete (Ravetz 2006: 47-52). Issues of governance of the institutions of science thus come to the forefront. And especially so if one subscribe to Popper’s account of scientific objectivity, since on this account objectivity is generated (or not, as the case may be) by the workings of the institutions of science. Rather than inhibiting, through beatification, the sociological study of science, Popper ought to have welcomed such studies. Popper’s highly normative philosophy of science ought, for these reasons, to be conjoined with a Popperian sociology of science, so that the institutions of science can be evaluated and the need for reform be estimated. Such a combination of, on the one hand, normative methodology and on the other critical social studies of scientific practise, is in my view highly desirable.

* * * *

Notes:

[1] As Quine says, ”it would be beside the point to reply that a law is sometimes preserved by challenging the solitary contrary instance as illusory. The point is that one unblack raven, if conceded, suffices to refute the law. Obviously such laws admit no supporting evidence as conclusive as the refuting evidence” (Quine 1974: 218; emphasis in original).

References:

Bala, Arun (2006), The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
Bloor, David (1991), Knowledge and Social Imagery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press).
Bucchi, Massimiano (2004), Science in Society (London & New York: Routledge).
Jarvie, Ian (2001), The Republic of Science. The Emergence of Popper’s Social View of Science 1935-1945 (Amsterdam: Rodopi).
Latour, Bruno (1993), We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Popper, Karl (1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson & Co.).
Popper, Karl (1994), The Myth of the Framework (London & New York: Routledge).
Popper, Karl (2002), Conjectures and Refutations (London & New York: Routledge).
Popper, Karl (2003), The Open Society and Its Enemies. Volume Two: Hegel and Marx (London & New York: Routledge).
Quine, Willard V. (1974), ‘On Popper’s Negative Methodology’, in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper (The Library of Living Philosophers; La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Co.), 218-20.
Ravetz, Jerome (2006), The No-Nonsense Guide to Science (Oxford: New Internationalist).