Science and the Quest for Meaning by Alfred I. Tauber (PDF)

Description

In this deeply thoughtful exploration, Alfred Tauber, a practicing scientist and highly regarded philosopher, eloquently traces the history of the philosophy of science, seeking in the end to place science within the humanistic context from which it originated. Avoiding the dogmatism that has defined both extremes in the recent “Science Wars” and presenting a conception of reason that lifts the discussion out of the interminable debates about objectivity and neutrality, Tauber offers a way of understanding science as an evolving relationship between facts and the values that govern their discovery and applications. This timely text presents a centrist but highly consequently view, wherein “truth” and “objectivity” can function as working ideals and serve as pragmatic tools. If the humanization of science is to reach completion, it must reveal not only the meaning it receives from its social and cultural settings but also that which it lends to them.Packed with well-chosen case studies, Science and the Quest for Meaning is a trust-worthy and engaging introduction to the history of, and the current debate surrounding, the philosophy of science.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is elegantly written erudite exploration of the history of the philosophy of science. I struggled with much of the book, but I think readers who are more into philosophical discourses will rate this book higher than I have. Professor Tauber explores the relationship between scientific facts and values. I always thought facts were facts. I didn’t realize or appreciate how facts are interpreted by the observer and, thus, influenced by factors within the environment (or cultural and political period) that science is operating in. Tauber does provide case studies to illustrate the seasawing of objectivity and truth. The reward for me in reading this book was with Chapter 5, “Science in Its Socio-political Contexts,” and the conclusion, “The Challenge of Coherence.” This is where what I was reading finally came together for me and provided an understanding why science is denied by some.

⭐I’m actually surprised that no one has left a review for Tauber’s Science and the Quest for Meaning yet, this is unquestionably an important work that deserves attention. I assume part of the problem is it being made available by a small university press (and hence the issues with distribution and marketing), and perhaps because it is a dense scholarly work beyond the reach of the more popular scholarly lit genre. It is challenging reading, but then it is a challenging (but very important) topic.I’m about a third through this work, so consider this a still somewhat tentative review. It is one of those curious books one occasionally encounters, in which one finds the narrative intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking, while at the same time frequently disagreeing with the factuality of specific statements or with the author’s formulations. I’m often finding myself reading a particular passage or section and thinking, I would have stated this differently and, in a sense, writing my own narrative in parallel with Tauber’s text. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and with Tauber’s book I’m finding it a most fruitful exercise.While belonging more generally to the literature on the so-called “Science Wars”, Tauber’s book focuses less on the political and social nature of the debate as on the underlying epistemological issues. In so doing, he reaches back to the initial unfolding of the tensions between the natural sciences and the humanities in the Romantic era of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and attempts to highlight the key issues that arose at that time and that course through to the present. For Tauber the key underlying tension is one of competing conceptions of reality, and the claims of positivistic science as the ultimate authority for deciding what is real and what isn’t in human existence.What Tauber has done is to take the key issues of the Science Wars and formulate them not in terms of the now well-known social dynamics, but rather more fundamentally in epistemological terms, as the ongoing quest for certainty in an uncertain world. This of course pits science squarely against the claims of religion, which allows Tauber to develop a highly insightful narrative that goes far in our better understanding the underlying tensions in the Science Wars. One example here is Tauber’s powerful analysis of Cardinal Schönburn’s now infamous letter he wrote for the NY Times in 2005, attempting to defend Christianity’s stance on creationism, and in which Tauber insightfully reveals Schönburn’s projecting a theological reality (divine intervention) into the natural world.At the same time, on numerous occasions I found myself disagreeing to varying degrees with Tauber’s formulations and claims. For example, he spends some time characterizing and making use of Heidegger’s critique of science and technology, but he does so through a very misleading, indeed incorrect, understanding of what Heidegger was truly getting at. Tauber quotes from Heidegger’s essay Wissenschaft und Besinnung, but problematically Tauber makes a simple correspondence between science and the German word Wissenschaft, which loosely translated means “knowledge possession (or acquisition)”. The real German word for science–Naturwissenschaft–would have had a very different meaning for Heidegger than the word he actually used–Wissenschaft, and Heidegger’s essay would have been a very different one if he had actually written about Naturwissenschaft (in juxtaposition to Kulturwissenschaft). This leads Tauber to an interpretation of Heidegger’s essay that is problematic for Tauber’s own narrative. Indeed, if Tauber had actually analyzed and made use of Heidegger’s true intent in his study of Wissenschaft, he would have structured his argument differently.Even as I encounter these occasional problems with Tauber’s narrative, I am finding it a most productive exercise to work through his text. In this, he has achieved precisely what he intended: to help us in better understanding the Science Wars by engaging us intellectually with the complex and multifaceted nature of the topic, and in provoking us to actively work towards a reconciliation between science and other competing claims to reality. The juxtaposition of the complex issues behind the Science Wars and the underlying epistemology leads to many new insights, and for this alone the book is highly recommended.

⭐Ce livre devrait intéresser les philosophes, mais est beaucoup trop difficile à suivre pour un lecteur moyen.

⭐

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