275. Science and politics: how different are they?

If there is no ultimate, universal, fixed ground for any science, as argued in preceding items in this blog, does this mean that there is no great difference between science and politics? Richard Rorty claimed that: ‘ .. no interesting epistemological differences between the aims and procedures of scientists and that of politics’[i].

I disagree. To make a long story short, I would say that the procedure of science is to argue rigorously inside some language game, while in politics, in a democracy at least, the aim is to achieve some agreement across a variety of language games, and that cannot be rigorous and scientific. Ambiguity and shift of meaning is part of the game. It is more a matter of practical wisdom than of analytical rigor.

Hence the frequent failure of attempts to make policy making scientific, as happened in the delegation of much economic policy to economic scientists, for example.

I connect this difference to that made by Pascal between the ‘ spirit of geometry’ and the ‘spirit of finesse’[ii]. As he formulated it: the spirit of geometry is difficult, at first, since one has to switch one’s regard away from the complexity, the richness and variability of the world we are in, in the turn of abstraction. But then it becomes easy, to argue rigorously, in step with the march of logic or math. The spirit of finesse, by contrast, is easy, at first, because one keeps looking at the world in all its complexity, but then it becomes difficult to argue without error while maintaining that complexity.

In contrast with Descartes, I do not think that the spirit of geometry has access to rock-bottom foundations of truth in the form of self-evident ‘distinct ideas’. I do think it helps to clarify arguments and check their consistency. 

Take economics. It uses mathematics but the virtue of that, in my view, is not that it yields workable models, but that it allows one to detect errors of argument. But then, to work in application to policy making one needs to revert to the spirit of finesse.

Politics, more like literature than like science, needs to allow for differences and for shifts in perspective, meanings, assumptions, aims, in what people variously think, value and want.

If pragmatism means ‘anything goes that works’, then whether and how it is supposed to work is very different between science and politics.

In science, to work is to be consistent with established theoretical and methodological assumptions, and with what are accepted as facts.

In politics, to work, in a democracy, is to be feasible in the field of political forces and to appeal to a sufficient part of the electorate. Whether it is logically and factually coherent is of secondary importance, alas. In politics this may work, not in science. However, this is no reason not to try to make arguments for policy as consistent and informed as possible.

An authoritarian regime may impose a single language game, with aims, conduct, meanings and values settled centrally, and enforced on all. That is what makes it totalitarian. Some people love it.

It does not thereby become like science. In contrast with science it is not aimed at truth seeking and openness of conduct given established method, but at conformance.   

  

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[i] Richard Rorty, 1991, Essays on Heidegger and others, Cambridge University Press, p. 172.

[ii] In his Pensées.