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Title: Rationality/Science
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: rationalism, science
Source: Retrieved on 19th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/1995____02/
Notes: Published in Z Papers Special Issue.

Noam Chomsky

Rationality/Science

THIS DISCUSSION involves people with a large range of shared aspirations

and commitments; in some cases at least, friends who have worked and

struggled together for many years. I hope, then, that I can be quite

frank. And personal, since to be honest, I don’t see much of independent

substance to discuss.

I don’t want to mislead, and therefore should say, at once, that I am

not all sure that I am taking part in the discussion. I think I

understand some of what is said in the six papers, and agree with much

of it. What I don’t understand is the topic: the legitimacy of

“rationality,” “science,” and “logic” (perhaps modified by

“Western”)–call the amalgam “rational inquiry,” for brevity. I read the

papers hoping for some enlightenment on the matter, but, to quote one

contributor, “my eyes glaze over and thanks, but I just don’t want to

participate.” When Mike Albert asked me to comment on papers advocating

that we abandon or transcend rational inquiry, I refused, and probably

would have been wise to keep to that decision. After a good deal of

arm-twisting, I will make a few comments, but, frankly, I do not really

grasp what the issue is supposed to be.

Many interesting questions have been raised about rational inquiry.

There are problems about justification of belief, the status of

mathematical truth and of theoretical entities, the use to which

rational inquiry is put under particular social and cultural conditions

and the way such conditions influence its course, and so on. These,

however, are not the kinds of topics we are to address; rather,

something about the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. That I find

perplexing, for several reasons.

First, to take part in a discussion, one must understand the ground

rules. In this case, I don’t. In particular, I don’t know the answers to

such elementary questions as these: Are conclusions to be consistent

with premises (maybe even follow from them)? Do facts matter? Or can we

string together thoughts as we like, calling it an “argument,” and make

facts up as we please, taking one story to be as good as another? There

are certain familiar ground rules: those of rational inquiry. They are

by no means entirely clear, and there have been interesting efforts to

criticize and clarify them; but we have enough of a grasp to proceed

over a broad range. What seems to be under discussion here is whether we

should abide by these ground rules at all (trying to improve them as we

proceed). If the answer is that we are to abide by them, then the

discussion is over: we’ve implicitly accepted the legitimacy of rational

inquiry. If they are to be abandoned, then we cannot proceed until we

learn what replaces the commitment to consistency, responsibility to

fact, and other outdated notions. Short of some instruction on this

matter, we are reduced to primal screams. I see no hint in the papers

here of any new procedures or ideas to replace the old, and therefore

remain perplexed.

A second problem has to do with the allusions to “science,”

“rationality,” etc., throughout these papers. These targets are sharply

criticized, but they are not clearly identified. True, they are assigned

certain properties. But these are either irrelevant to the issue raised

or unrecognizable to me; in many cases, the properties attributed to

rational inquiry are antithetic to it, at least as I have always

understood this endeavor.

Perhaps my failure to recognize what is called here “science,” etc.,

reflects personal limitations. That could well be, but I wonder. For

some 40 years, I’ve been actively engaged in what I, and others, regard

as rational inquiry (science, mathematics); for almost all of those

years, I’ve been at the very heart of the beast, at MIT. When I attend

seminars, read technical papers in my own or other fields, and work with

students and colleagues, I have no problem in recognizing what is before

me as rational inquiry. In contrast, the descriptions presented here

scarcely resemble anything in my experience in these areas, or

understanding of them. So, there is a second problem.

With regard to the first problem, I’m afraid I see only one way to

proceed: by assuming the legitimacy of rational inquiry. Suppose that

such properties as consistency and responsibility to fact are

old-fashioned misconceptions, to be replaced by something

different–something to be grasped, perhaps, by intuition that I seem to

lack. Then I can only confess my inadequacies, and inform the reader in

advance of the irrelevance of what follows. I recognize that by

accepting the legitimacy of rational inquiry and its canons, I am

begging the question; the discussion is over before it starts. That is

unfair, no doubt, but the alternative escapes me.

With regard to the second problem, since what is called “science,” etc.,

is largely unfamiliar to me, let me replace it by “X,” and see if I

understand the argument against X. Let’s consider several kinds of

properties attributed to X, then turning to the proposals for a new

direction; quotes below are from the papers criticizing X.

First category. X is dominated by “the white male gender.” It is

“limited by cultural, racial and gender biases,” and “establishes and

perpetuates social organization [with] hidden political, social and

economic purposes.” “The majority in the South has waited for the last

four hundred years for compassionate humane uses of X,” which is

“outside and above the democratic process.” X is “thoroughly embedded in

capitalist colonialism,” and doesn’t “end racism or disrupt the

patriarchy.” X has been invoked by Soviet commissars to bring people to

“embrace regimentation, murderous collectivization, and worse”; though

no one mentions it, X has been used by Nazi ideologists for the same

ends. X’s dominance “has gone unchallenged.” It has been “used to create

new forms of control mediated through political and economic power.”

Ludicrous claims about X have been made by “state systems” which “used X

for astoundingly destructive purposes…to create new forms of control

mediated through political and economic power as it emerged in each

system.”

Conclusion: there is “something inherently wrong” with X. We must reject

or transcend it, replacing it by something else; and we must instruct

poor and suffering people to do so likewise. It follows that we must

abandon literacy and the arts, which surely satisfy the conditions on X

as well as science. More generally, we must take a vow of silence and

induce the world’s victims to do so likewise since language and its use

typically have all these properties, facts too well-known to discuss.

Even more obviously, the crafts and technology should be utterly

abolished. It is surprising that several of these critiques appear to be

lauding the “practical logical thinking” of “technologists” who

concentrate on “the mechanics of things,” the “T-knowledge” that is

“embedded in practice” and rooted in “experience”; that is, the kind of

thinking and practice which, notoriously, have been used for millenia to

construct tools of destruction and oppression, under the control of the

white males who dominate them (I say “appear to be,” because the intent

is not entirely clear). The inconsistency is startling, though

admittedly, if consistency is to be abandoned or transcended, there is

no problem.

Plainly, what I’ve reviewed can’t be the argument; these cannot be the

properties of rational inquiry that lead us to abandon (or transcend)

it. So let us turn to a second category of properties attributed to X.

X is “E-knowledge,” “obtained by logical deduction from firmly

established first principles.” The statements in X must be “provable”; X

demands “absolute proofs.” The “most distinctive component of Western

E-knowledge” may be its “elaborate procedures for arriving at acceptable

first principles.” These are among the few attempts here to define or

identify the villain.

Furthermore, X “claims to a monopoly of knowledge.” It thus denies, say,

that I know how to tie my shoes, or know that the sky is dark at night

or that walking in the woods is enjoyable, or know the names of my

children and something about their concerns, etc.; all such aspects of

my (intuitive) knowledge are far beyond what can be “obtained by logical

deduction from firmly established first principles,” indeed well beyond

the reach of rational inquiry now and perhaps ever, and is therefore

mere “superstition, belief, prejudice,” according to advocates of X. Or

if not denying such knowledge outright, X “marginalizes and denigrates”

it. X postulates dogmatically that “a predictable end point can be known

in advance as an expression of X-achieved truth,” and insists upon

“grounding values in [this] objective truth.” It denies the “provisional

and subjective foundations” of agreement in human life and action, and

considers itself “the ultimate organizing principle and source of

legitimacy in the modern society,” a doctrine to which X assigns

“axiomatic status.” X is “arrogant” and “absolutist.” What doesn’t fall

“within the terms of its hegemony…–anger, desire, pleasure, and pain,

for example–becomes a site for disciplinary action.” The varieties of X

are presented as “charms to get us through the dark of a complex world,”

providing a “resting place” that offers a “sure way of ‘knowing’ the

world or one’s position in it.” The practitioner of X “screens out

feeling, recreating the Other as object to be manipulated,” a procedure

“made easier because the subjective is described as irrelevant or un-X.”

“To feel was to be anti-X.” “By mid twentieth century the phrase ‘it

works’ came to be enough for X-ists,” who no longer care “why it

worked,” and lost interest in “what its implications” are. And so on.

I quite agree that X should be consigned to the flames. But what that

has to do with our topic escapes me, given that these attributions

scarcely rise to the level of a caricature of rational inquiry (science,

etc.), at least as I’m familiar with it.

Take the notion of “E-knowledge,” the sole definition of science

presented here. Not even set theory (hence conventional mathematics)

satisfies the definition offered. Nothing in the sciences even resembles

it. As for “provability,” or “absolute proofs,” the notions are foreign

to the natural sciences. They appear in the study of abstract models,

which are part of pure mathematics until they are applied in the

empirical sciences, at which point we no longer have “proof.” If

“elaborate procedures,” or any general procedures, exist “for arriving

at acceptable first principles,” they have been kept a dark mystery.

Science is tentative, exploratory, questioning, largely learned by

doing. One of the world’s leading physicists was famous for opening his

introductory classes by saying that it doesn’t matter what we cover, but

what we discover, maybe something that will challenge prevailing beliefs

if we are fortunate. More advanced work is to a large extent a common

enterprise in which students are expected to come up with new ideas, to

question and often undermine what they read and are taught, and to

somehow pick up, by experience and cooperative inquiry, the trick (which

no one begins to comprehend) of discerning important problems and

possible solutions to them. Furthermore, even in the simplest cases,

proposed solutions (theories, large or small) “outrun empiricism,” if by

“empiricism” we mean what can be derived from experience by some

procedure; one hardly has to move to Einstein to exhibit that universal

trait of rational inquiry.

As for the cited properties of X, they do hold of some aspects of human

thought and action: elements of organized religion, areas of the

humanities and “social sciences” where understanding and insight are

thin and it is therefore easier to get away with dogmatism and

falsification, perhaps others. But the sciences, at least as I am

familiar with them, are as remote from these descriptions as anything in

human life. It is not that scientists are inherently more honest, open,

or questioning. It is simply that nature and logic impose a harsh

discipline: in many domains, one can spin fanciful tales with impunity

or keep to the most boring clerical work (sometimes called

“scholarship”); in the sciences, your tales will be refuted and you will

be left behind by students who want to understand something about the

world, not satisfied to let such matters be “someone else’s concern.”

Furthermore, all of this seems to be the merest truism.

Other properties are attributed to X, including some that are presumably

intended as caricature: e.g., that practitioners of X claim “that

seventeenth-century Europe answered all the basic questions of humankind

for all times to come…” I’ve tried to select a fair sample, and

apologize if I’ve failed. As far as I can see, the properties assigned

to rational inquiry by the critics fall into two categories. Some hold

of human endeavor rather generally and are thus irrelevant to the issue

(unless we mean to abandon language, the arts, etc., as well); they

clearly reflect the social and cultural conditions that lead to the

outcome that is properly deplored. Others do not hold of rational

inquiry, indeed are flatly rejected by it; where detected, they would

elicit internal critique.

Several writers appear to regard Leninist-Stalinist tyranny as an

embodiment of science and rationality. Thus “the belief in a universal

narrative grounded in truth has been undermined by the collapse of

political systems that were supposed to [have] produced the New

Socialist Man and the New Postcolonial Man.” And the “state systems”

that “used positive rationality for astoundingly destructive purposes”

were guided by “socialist and capitalist ideologies”–a reference, it

appears, to radically anti-socialist (Leninist) and anti-capitalist

(state-capitalist) ideologies. Since “scientific and technological

progress were the watchword of socialist and capitalist ideologies,” we

see that their error and perversity is deep, and we must abandon them,

along with any concern for freedom, justice, human rights, democracy,

and other “watchwords” of the secular priesthood who have perverted

Enlightenment ideals in the interests of the masters.

Some of the commentary is more familiar to me. One contributor calls for

“plural involvement and clear integration in which everyone sits at the

table sharing a common consciousness,” inspired by “a moral concept

which is linked to social trust and affection in which people tell what

they think they see and do and allow the basic data and conclusions to

be cross examined by peers and non-peers alike”–not a bad description of

many seminars and working groups that I’ve been fortunate enough to be

part of over the years. In these, furthermore, it is taken for granted

that “knowledge is produced, not found, fought for–not given,” a

sentiment that will be applauded by anyone who has been engaged in the

struggle to understand hard questions, as much as to the activists to

whom it is addressed.

There is also at least an element of truth in the statement that the

natural sciences are “disembedded from the body, from metaphorical

thought, from ethical thought and from the world”–to their credit.

Though rational inquiry is rife with metaphor and (uncontroversially)

embedded in the world, its intent is to understand, not to construct

doctrine that accords with some ethical or other preferences, or that is

confused by metaphor. Though scientists are human, and cannot get out of

their skins, they certainly, if honest, try to overcome the distortions

imposed by “body” (in particular, human cognitive structures, with their

specific properties) as much as possible. Surface appearances and

“natural categories,” however central to human life, can mislead, again

uncontroversially; we “see” the sun set and the moon illusion, but we

have learned that there is more to it than that.

It is also true that “Reason separates the ‘real’ or knowable…and the

‘not real’,” or at least tries to (without identifying “real” with

“knowable”)–again, to its credit. At least, I know that I try to make

this distinction, whether studying questions that are hard, like the

origins of human knowledge, or relatively easy, like the sources and

character of U.S. foreign policy. In the latter case, for example, I

would try, and urge others to try, to separate the real operative

factors from the various tales that are spun in the interests of power

and privilege. If that is a fault, I plead guilty, and will compound my

guilt by urging others to err in the same way.

Keeping to the personal level, I have spent a lot of my life working on

questions such as these, using the only methods I know of–those

condemned here as “science,” “rationality,” “logic,” and so on. I

therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me

“transcend” these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different

course. I’m afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own

limitation. Quite regularly, “my eyes glaze over” when I read

polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and

postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is

only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other

things I don’t understand: the articles in the current issues of math

and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the

latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in

cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these

fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain

what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be

able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most

part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to

proceed. Perhaps the explanation lies in some personal inadequacy, like

tone-deafness. Or there may be other reasons. The question is not

strictly relevant here, and I won’t pursue it.

Continuing with my personal quest for help in dealing with problems to

which I have devoted a large part of my life, I read here that I should

recognize that “there are limits to what we know” (something I’ve been

arguing, in accord with an ancient rationalist tradition, for many

years). I should advance beyond “panopticized rationality” (which I

might happily do, if I knew what it was), and should not be

“transferring God into knowable nature” (thanks). Since “it is now

obvious” that its “very narrow and surface idea of rationality and

rationalism” has undermined “the canon of Western thought,” I should

adopt “a new notation system which laid out moral and historical

propositions” in a “rationality [that is] deepened” (thanks again). I

should keep to “rebuttable axioms,” which means, I take it, hypotheses

that are taken to be open to question–the practice adopted without a

second thought in all scientific work, unless the intent is that I

should drop Modus Ponens and the axioms of arithmetic; apparently so,

since I am also to abandon “absolutism or absolute proofs,” which are

unknown in science but, admittedly, sometimes assumed with regard to the

most elementary parts of logic and arithmetic (a matter also subject to

much internal controversy in foundational inquiries).

I should also follow the lead of those who “assert that there is a

common consciousness of all thought and matter,” from human to

“vegetable or mineral,” a proposal that should impinge directly on my

own attempts for many years to understand what Hume called “the secret

springs and origins, by which the human mind is actuated in its

operations”–or might, if I had the slightest idea what it means. I am

also enjoined to reject the idea that “numbers are outside of human

history” and to regard Goedel’s incompleteness theorem as “a situation

of inability” of the 20^(th) century, which to my old-fashioned ear,

sounds like saying that the irrationality of the square root of two–a

disturbing discovery at the time–was “a situation of inability” of

classical Greece. How human history or the way rationality “is presently

defined” impinge on these truths (or so I thought them to be), I again

fail to see.

I should regard “Truth” not “as an essence” but “as a social heuristic,”

one “predicated on intersubjective trust and story telling whether

through narrative or numbers and signs.” I should recognize that

“scientific endeavor is also in the world of story and myth creation,”

no better or worse than other “stories and myths”; modern physics may

“have more funding and better PR” than astrology, but is otherwise on a

par. That suggestion does in fact help solve my problems. If I can just

tell stories about the questions that I’ve been struggling with for many

years, life will indeed be easier; the proposal “has all the advantages

of theft over honest toil,” as Bertrand Russell once said in a similar

connection.

I should also “favor particular directions in scientific and social

inquiry because of their likely positive social outcomes, “thus joining

the overwhelming mass of scientists and engineers–though we commonly

differ on what are “positive social outcomes,” and no hints are given

here as to how that issue is to be resolved. The implication also seems

to be that we should abandon “theories or experiments” favored “because

of their supposed beauty and elegance,” which amounts to saying that we

should abandon the effort to understand the mysteries of the world; and

by the same logic, presumably, should no longer be deluded by

literature, music, and the visual arts.

I’m afraid I didn’t learn much from these injunctions. And it is hard

for me to see how friends and colleagues in the “non white world” will

learn more from the advice given by “a handful of scientists” who inform

then that they should not “move on the tracks of western science and

technology,” but should prefer other “stories” and “myths”–which ones,

we are not told, though astrology is mentioned. They’ll find that advice

a great help with their problems, and those of the “non white world”

generally. I confess that my personal sympathies lie with the volunteers

of Tecnica.

In fact, the entire idea of “white male science” reminds me, I’m afraid,

of “Jewish physics.” Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when

I read a scientific paper, I can’t tell whether the author is white or

is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or

somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students,

friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with

the doctrine that their thinking and understanding differ from “white

male science” because of their “culture or gender and race.” I suspect

that “surprise” would not be quite the proper word for their reaction.

I find it depressing, frankly, to read learned left discourse on science

and technology as a white male preserve, and then to walk through the

corridors at MIT and see the significant results of the efforts to

change that traditional pattern on the part of scientists and engineers,

many of them very remote from the understanding of “positive social

outcomes” that we largely share. They have dedicated serious and often

successful efforts to overcome traditional exclusiveness and privilege

because they tend to agree with Descartes (as I do) that the capacity

for understanding in the “profoundest sciences” and “high feeling” are a

common human attribute, and that those who lack the opportunity to

exercise the capacity to inquire, create, and understand are missing out

on some of life’s most wonderful experiences. One contributor condemns

this humane belief for labelling others as “defective.” By the same

logic, we should condemn the idea that the capacity to walk is a common

human possession over a very broad range.

Acting on the same belief, many scientists, not too long ago, took an

active part in the lively working class culture of the day, seeking to

compensate for the class character of the cultural institutions through

programs of workers’ education, or by writing books on mathematics,

science, and other topics for the general public. Nor have left

intellectuals been alone in such work, by any means. It strikes me as

remarkable that their left counterparts today should seek to deprive

oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but

also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the “project of the

Enlightenment” is dead, that we must abandon the “illusions” of science

and rationality–a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful,

delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use. They will

be no less delighted to hear that science (E-knowledge) is intrinsically

a “knowledge system that legitimates the authority of the boss,” so that

any challenge to such authority is a violation of rationality itself–a

radical change from the days when workers’ education was considered a

means of emancipation and liberation. One recalls the days when the

evangelical church taught not-dissimilar lessons to the unruly masses as

part of what E. P. Thompson called “the psychic processes of

counter-revolution,” as their heirs do today in peasant societies of

Central America.

I’m sorry if the conclusion sounds harsh; the question we should

consider is whether it is correct. I think it is.

It is particularly striking that these self-destructive tendencies

should appear at a time when the overwhelming majority of the population

regard the economic system as “inherently unfair” and want to change it.

Through the Reagan years, the public continued its drift towards social

democratic ideas, while the shreds of what existed were torn away.

Furthermore, belief in the basic moral principles of traditional

socialism is surprisingly high: to mention merely one example, almost

half the population consider the phrase “from each according to his

ability, to each according to his need” to be such an obvious truth that

they attribute it to the U.S. Constitution, a text taken to be akin to

Holy Writ. What is more, with Soviet tyranny finally overthrown, one

long-standing impediment to the realization of these ideals is now

removed. With limited contribution by left intellectuals, large segments

of the population have involved themselves in urgent and pressing

problems: repression, environmental concerns, and much else. The Central

America solidarity movements of the 1980s are a dramatic example, with

the direct involvement in the lives of the victims that was a novel and

remarkable feature of protest and activism. These popular efforts have

also led to a good deal of understanding of how the world works, again,

with very limited contributions from left intellectuals, if we are to be

honest.

Particularly noteworthy is the divergence of popular attitudes from

mainstream ideology. After 25 years of unremitting propaganda, including

ten years of Reaganism, over 70 percent of the population still regard

the Vietnam war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” not a “mistake.”

Days before the U.S.-UK bombing began in the Gulf, the population, by

two-to-one, favored a negotiated settlement with “linkage” rather than

war. In these and numerous other cases, including domestic affairs and

problems, the thoughts are individual and private; people have rarely if

ever heard them publicly expressed. In part, that reflects the

effectiveness of the system of cultural management; in part, the choices

of left intellectuals.

Quite generally, there is a popular basis for addressing the human

concerns that have long been part of “the Enlightenment project.” One

element that is lacking is the participation of left intellectuals.

However meritorious motives may be, the abandonment of these endeavors,

in my opinion, reflects yet another triumph for the culture of power and

privilege, and contributes to it. The same abandonment makes a notable

contribution to the endless project of creating a version of history

that will serve the reigning institutions. During periods of popular

activism, many people are able to discern truths that are concealed by

the cultural managers, and to learn a good deal about the world;

Indochina and Central America are two striking recent examples. When

activism declines, the commissar class, which never falters in its task,

regains command. As left intellectuals abandon the field, truths that

were once understood fade into individual memories, history is reshaped

into an instrument of power, and the ground is laid for the enterprises

to come.

The critique of “science” and “rationality” has many merits, which I

haven’t discussed. But as far as I can see, where valid and useful the

critique is largely devoted to the perversion of the values of rational

inquiry as they are “wrongly used” in a particular institutional

setting. What is presented here as a deeper critique of their nature

seems to me based on beliefs about the enterprise and its guiding values

that have little basis. No coherent alternative is suggested, as far as

I can discern; the reason, perhaps, is that there is none. What is

suggested is a path that leads directly to disaster for people who need

help–which means everyone, before too long.