Pluralism and Responsibility in Post-Modern Science

Stephen E. Toulmin

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Winter, 1985), pp. 28-37.

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Fri May 18 09:08:25 2007
Pluralism and Responsibility in
Post-Modern Science *
A seminar with Stephen E. Toulmin
Stephen Toulmin: Having been, I suppose, the
only living person to have studied at the feet of
both Dirac and Wittgenstein, I retain a strong
sense of the spirit of Aristotle's account of practical
wisdom. That is, true progress in practical wisdom
can only follow if one goes into a particular field
and analyzes the nature of the problems that arise.
Only in that way can one begin to understand
what is mysterious, what needs explaining, and
what needs investigating in the terms that are
appropriate for that particular field.
The idea that there is a single method for at-
tacking scientific problems for scientists of all
kinds does not get us much further than the notion
that there is a single set of medical principles
that will apply to all cases a physician may en-
counter, or a single set of moral principles that
can give us answers to the human problems with
which we find ourselves confronted. There is
probably no one method appropriate even to in-
quiries in a given scientific field at different stages
in its development.
The recurrence of this case approach or plur-
alistic approach to practical wisdom as a motif
in the history of philosophy is striking. Albert
Jonsen of the University of California Medical
School has pointed out that Thomas Aquinas, in
the Summa Theologica, draws a telling comparison
between the tasks that a wise confessor and a
prudent physician face when they seek to arrive
at some moral or medical diagnosis. Aquinas says
that the wise confessor, like the prudent physician,
will suspend judgment until he has satisfied him-
self that he knows all about a particular case with
which he is concerned. He will go astray if he
goes into a situation with fixed ideas about what
the case is and what he said about it.
I find the Aquinas point of view linking moral
Dr. Toulmin is Professor of Social Thought and Phi-
losophy, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
Published by rohn Wiley & Sons for the Massachusetts Institute of Tel:hnology and the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Science, Technology. d Human Values, Volume 10, Issue 1, pp. 28-37 (Winter 1985)
judgment and technical (or clinical) judgment is
still very much on the mark. In medicine, the
question of how a physician sees a case and man-
ages it, even in its technical aspects, requires that
the human implications involved in following one
course of treatment rather than another be
weighed. So the practice of medicine, even in a
technical sense, becomes a moral exercise. And
the line between its moral and technical aspects
becomes progressively blurred.
I want to explore with you today how such
considerations bear on differing concepts of sci-
entific progress, why those concepts affect the
question of social responsibility, and how they
carry over into the activities you support at the
National Science Foundation. I have been thinking
about the intellectual foundations of science policy
at least since Edward Shils commissioned and
published a seminal series of articles in Minerva
in the early 1960s.' My concerns are not simply
a by product of my interests in the philosophical
aspect of the theory of science. For the question
of scientific choice and the respective roles of the
scientist, the administration, the electorate, and
the electorates' representatives in Congress, is very
much bound up with different ideas about the
nature of scientific progress, and is therefore central
to the mission and operation of the NSF.
To understand something about how and why
concepts of scientific progress have changed over
the past 300 years, it is useful to reflect on some
of the implications of the vast expansion in the
scope of scientific inquiry since Laplace asserted
at the end of the 18th century that natural phi-
losophers could aspire to become omniscient cal-
' An edited verslon of a National Science Foundation Ex-
ecutive Roundtable on The Nature of Scientific Progress, held
on 8 March 1984 and supported in part by NSF Contract #84-
SP-0450. The views of the speaker and discussants are their
own and do not necessarily reflect the polic~esof the National
Science Foundation.
CCC 0162-24391851010028-10$04.00
 Toulmin: Pluralism and Responsibility in Post-Modern Science
culators. This expansion in the scope of scientific
inquiry has led to a transformation in how phi-
losophers look at the foundations of science and
has led in a direction very different from the view
that tried to fit all of the sciences into a classical
Newtonian framework.
I have referred elsewhere to the fruits of this
transformation as "post-modem" science.' In that
essay I argue that the "modern" science that de-
veloped during the 250 years from about 1650
onward has begun, in the course of the present
century, to be superseded by "post-modern" sci-
ence. As a result, scientists have, in certain re-
spects, broken through bonds and restrictions that
were placed on the scientific enterprise by its
original founders.
What was the character of those initial restric-
tions? The self-proclaimed new mathematical and
experimental philosophers of the 17th and 18th
centuries simplified their intellectual tasks by
adopting one very particular theoretical stance
that came to dominate the approach and worldview
of both the 18th-century classical, Newtonian
physicists, and the chemists and physiologists who
subsequently modeled their investigations on
classical physics.
Many social scientists today make the mistake
of trying to adopt that same stance. It involves a
conception of the scientist's situation vis-a-vis
his or her objects of study as being detached and
external. For the purposes of scientific investigation
and theorizing, it was the scientist's duty to place
himself and his rational speculations outside the
world of nature that was his subject matter. As
one result, the scientific worldview that was grad-
ually built up depicted nature as a self-contained,
deterministic set of mechanisms from which the
processes and forces of humanity were excluded
or exempted. The ultimate distillation of that view,
as I have already mentioned, was epitomized in
Laplace's contention that scientists could, in
principle, compile sufficient information about
the entities in the universe and the forces between
them to determine the precise past and future
course of any system. In other words, scientists
could aspire to become omniscient calculators,
and progress in science could therefore be measured
in terms of how near we were to that ideal.
During the 20th century, the momentum of
scientific change obliged scientists to change their
intellectual stance, together with their associated
attitudes, methods, and criteria of objectivity and
progress. To the extent that scientists cling to
29
the pure spectator approach, they unavoidably
narrow the range of topics and activities that can
be brought within the scope of science. If, on the
contrary, the scope of scientific understanding is
to reach beyond the limitations imposed 300 years
ago, scientists must learn to see themselves not
just as spectators looking on the world of nature
from outside, but also as participants with roles
to play from within that world. This sort of ap-
proach is already characteristic of a number of
fields such as psychology and ecology, for example.
More generally, the worldview that is in the course
of being developed as scientists recognize their
roles as participants will, I believe, be correspond-
ingly less mechanistic and deterministic. This
picture will reintegrate humanity with nature-
the human observer, as agent, with the natural
processes that he both studies and influences.
The emergence of post-modern science has sev-
eral implications for scientific activity, for our
concepts of scientific progress, and therefore, for
science policy. One is that the old positivist idea
that all the sciences have to be based on a single
set of methods is no longer viable. Another is
that since the scientist-as-spectator option is no
longer open to us, neither is the assumption that
science is value-free or that scientists bear no
responsibility for the social consequences of their
work. Post-modern science must be increasingly
bound up with social, political, and ethical con-
siderations-just as the technical and moral aspects
of medicine can no longer be disassociated.
Let me give an example of how these consid-
erations bear on the development of the social
sciences, and, to some extent, the behavioral sci-
ences. One of the great obstacles to genuine prog-
ress in these disciplines, especially in the United
States, has been the conception that, in order to
attack a set of social problems at a fundamental
level, one need only apply a single method or a
single set of procedures that can be learned else-
where. For these disciplines, the "elsewhere" from
which this method is learned has not been the
examples of scientists in other fields. Rather, social
scientists have tried to model themselves on what
they have read in philosophy books about what
science ought to be. Too often, those accounts
have been insufficiently checked against the actual
experience of working scientists, who by and large
are no longer guided by a strict classical Newtonian
approach.
As long as the human sciences continue to think
that by studying the philosophers of science they
30 Science, Technology, d Human Values-Winter
can get some general characterization of what
they ought to be doing and how they can make
themselves look respectable in the eyes of their
colleagues in the "hard" sciences, they will go
astray. Too many people in social science fields
used to believe that the only way of demonstrating
that they were respectable scientists was to post
axiomatic theories. When Thomas Kuhn relieved
them of the feeling that t h s activity was essential,
they became preoccupied with formulating par-
adigms which were appropriate for their sciences.
This sloganeering, this attempt at a priori
methodologizing erects a formidable obstacle to
a constructive confrontation between human sci-
entists and the problems that are waiting for them
to explore. But during the past 20 years or so, as
implicit faith in the inevitability of scientific
progress has weakened, some hard scientists have
also begun to succumb to making claims of a
different nature that I also think have very little
to do with scientific understanding or scientific
progress.
For example, some hard scientists-and many
more social scientists-have tried to link scientific
progress with the program to improve our capac-
ities for forecasting. One of the defects of the
Laplacian image is that it tends to perpetuate the
idea that the best measure of our scientific com-
mand is our capacity to make predictions. This
is a natural error, considering that the best selling
point of Newton's planetary astronomy was that
it gave us equations with the help of which we
could make predictions that appear to be well-
grounded. But the planetary system is a quite
exceptional system. No other system of entities
in the natural world lends itself to prediction in
the same way.
A fruitful line of inquiry that has not been suf-
ficiently explored is whether and how the demand
for prediction has damaged our conception of what
the task of the sciences should be, particularly
in the realm of the human sciences. As early as
700 B.C., even before Thales, Anaximander, and
Anaximenes were beginning to produce general-
izations about the composition of the universe,
people knew what procedures were needed to make
predictions concerning planetary motion or tidal
motion. Our ability to make predictions in actual
concrete situations did not become a scientific
issue until some time in the 18th century, when
the Newtonian account of the planetary system
failed in certain respects to do justice to a well-
established technology about how to predict pla-
1985
netary positions. In fact, the real triumph of La-
place's reworking of Newtonian planetary theory
at the very end of the 18th century was his ability
to show that Newton's theory led to predictions
that were as good as those that were then being
made without the benefit of that theory.
The lstinction between scientific understanding
and technical forecasting capacity is particularly
important to understand for the social sciences.
For instance, there is a great confusion in the
public mind-and also among many economists-
about whether economists should be able to fore-
cast or not. Should economists be able to predict
what the rate of inflation is going to be next year?
Because the rate of inflation will depend on what
a very large number of human beings do between
now and next year, there is no way in which
economists can give us a rational, well-founded
argument that would yield anything but a hy-
pothetical conclusion of the form: Unless we do
"XI1' the rate of inflation next year is going to be
"Y1' percent.
Susan Cozzens (Policy Analyst, Division of Policy
Research and Analysis, NSF): One traditional def-
inition of scientific progress has been cast in terms
of explanation, prediction, and control. If an in-
crease in predictive capacity is not an important
criterion by which we measure progress, then how
do we tell if we are progressing at all?
Stephen Toulmin: There is an ambiguity in the
word prediction as it has come to be used in
discussing the merits of scientific theory. If you
ask a working scientist who is affected with a
positivist terminology about what he means by
saying he is interested in the question of what a
particular theory predicts, his answer will be
something of the form: If I do "XI" then "Y" is
likely to happen. That is, "predict" no longer
means "forecast." It no longer means that at 8:33
tomorrow evening, there is going to be an event
of such and such a kind.
In the years following Newton, the idea grew
that what one wanted to do was to extend New-
ton's program as far as possible. The French en-
cyclopedists Saints-Simon and Laplace, for example
were seeking to develop the foundations and
methods for a social science in the late 18th cen-
tury. They competed to see which of them would
become the Newton of the social sciences. They
thought that, to do so, they had to develop a
picture of how the planetary system works. That
 Toulmin: Pluralism and Responsibility in Post-Modern Science
program was kept alive in the face of increasing
evidence of the formidable obstacles confronting
by reinterpreting the word "prediction" so that
it no longer meant "forecasting."
JosephYoung (Applied Research Coordinator, Di-
vision of Behavioral and Neural Sciences, NSF):
Your distinction between the technology of fore-
casting and scientific understanding of the basis
of those technologies has important implications
for what we do at the NSF. In economics, for
example, there are theoretical economists and there
are econometricians who, I gather, use very so-
phisticated, empirical kinds of methodologies to
make much more detailed predictions than one
can derive from basic theories. In psychology and
sociology, one can often make incredibly detailed
if/then predictions based on complex regression
models that say little about underlying process.
When we receive proposals to do that sort of thing,
we tend to classify them as "technology" and give
them a relatively low priority for funding. We are
more positively inclined toward the person who
proposes to make modest predictions based on a
theoretical underpinning that seems to promise
an advance in basic understanding. Perhaps, in
the context of your opening remarks about Ar-
istotlets definition of practical wisdom, we ought
to take more seriously the attempts to improve
forecasting capacities, even if only on an ad hoc
basis.
Toulmin: I might also argue the converse point.
One of the best pieces of evidence that we have
achieved scientific understanding in a particular
field is the ability to explain why it is so hard to
make predictions. We can say that meteorology,
for example, is a science because meteorologists
can explain what the factors are that make me-
teorological forecasting comparatively difficult.
The fact that we cannot predict the weather is
not evidence that meteorology is not a science.
On the contrary, the fact that we can explain why
it is so hard to make meteorological predictions
is evidence that meteorology is a science.
Alexander Morin (Director, Division of Research
Initiation and Improvement, NSF): I would like
to extend our discussion to consider the extent
to w h c h philosophers' loss of faith in the classical
Laplacian view of prediction has any bearing on
the way science is conducted. I contend that, in
the daily work of a chemist, an ecologist, or a
31
sociologist, questions of methodological founda-
tions and paradigm shifts simply do not arise. I
wonder whether it is realistic to proclaim a phil-
osophical revolution without pointing to what its
clear implications are. You seem to see somethng
important following from that philosophical rev-
olution, and I would like to know what it is.
Toulmin: In my ideal ethnographic playground,
the bar near the University of Chicago, one can
raise these kinds of questions and scientists are
happy to play with them over a martini. However,
I agree that they are not concerned with them
back at the lab. These questions actively arise for
working scientists at times that Kuhn would call
crises-on those occasions when questions about
the strategy of scientific inquiry become active
questions, as they did in theoretical physics at
the turn of the century. If you look at the literature
of physics between 1890 and 1910, you will find
top-notch physicists expending a great deal of en-
ergy discussing these issues. And the reason is
because at that point there were genuine doubts
about the strategic directions in which the de-
velopment of the basic ideas of the physical sci-
ences should move.
Turning to a more current example, there is
still, among professional biologists, real debate
about the intellectual place and significance of
evolutionary biology. It is similar but perhaps with
deeper roots than the controversies that used to
go on among different sects of psychology. I happen
to be passionately committed to the importance
of the kinds of historical methods that Darwin
developed, particularly their populational aspects.
But this is a contentious method among many
prominent molecular biologists. I suspect they
dismiss it because they do not really understand
the unique aspects and contributions of evolu-
tionary biology.
This reductionism, this assumption that there
is no real value to an historical, ecological ap-
proach, is a continuation of the view about the
intellectual mission of science that was born in
the heyday of the classical, Newtonian conception
of science. It also suggests that some first-rate
biologists continue to take a positivist attitude
and worry that biology can only be a respectable
science if it is modeled after physics.
Alexander Morin: Even though your examples from
physics and biology are telling in themselves, I
am still not convinced that the philosophcal issues
32 Science, Technology, et) Human Values-Winter
associated with abandoning the old Laplacian view
and accepting the theorist as a participant in the
system he is thinking about affects the conduct
of modern science very deeply.
But leaving that question, I am also not con-
vinced of the part of your thesis that insists that,
given the institutional, social, economic, political,
and moral implications of what scientists are now
doing, they will inevitably be involved with issues
of ethics, politics, and society. Why is there a
necessary connection between the philosophical
view that the scientist-as-spectator option is no
longer viable and the thesis that scientists must
henceforth be more socially responsible?
Stephen Toulmin: I admit that there is no nec-
essary entailment between any statement having
to do with the spectator-participant relationship
in the development of theoretical attitudes, and
statements about changes in the political rela-
tionship between scientists and the larger society.
There are interesting historical associations be-
tween these two developments-one internal to
the self-conception of what the task of science
is, and the other external in the relations between
the community of science and the rest of the
community. I do think that there is a good deal
of conceptual overlap between the circumstances
in which these two parallel sets of changes are
taking place. For example, it is certainly the case
that ecologists cannot go very far towards gaining
basic understanding of the environment without
considering human implications, although I sup-
pose that particle physicists and physical chemists
still can. Among the ecosystems that ecologists
must study are ecosystems into which human
action itself enters as one of the theoretically-
significant contenders. Thus, human ecology be-
comes part of ecology as a science. And questions
about the effect of introducing arable farming
techniques into high erosion, tropical forest areas,
for example, become a s i p f i c a n t part of the agenda
of ecology as a science.
Robert Wall (Head, Ocean Sciences Research Sec-
tion, Division of Ocean Sciences, NSF): You can
look at these different sciences on the basis of
how close society is, in all its aspects, to the
extremes of their basic-applied spectra. For all the
environmental sciences, even the basic end of the
spectrum is very closely tied up with social con-
cerns, certainly as compared with mathematics
and physics. Most of the problems at which en-
1985
vironmental scientists in the world community
are looking are socially important. The whole broad
spectrum is really our raison d'etre.
Stephen Toulmin: That approach can yield useful
insights, although the issue is really somewhat
more complex. Quite apart from the distinction
between "basic" and "applied" is the distinction
between "abstract" and "concrete." The historical
sciences such as the earth sciences, the ocean
sciences, and, to some extent, evolutionary biology
are concerned with the here and now in a very
concrete way. This perspective is different than
for those sciences in which the concern is with
what can be said in general, abstract terms about
phenomena of a given kind. The historically-ori-
ented fields explore phenomena for their own sake
and are concerned with rather concrete issues.
H. T. Huang (Program Director, Alternate Bio-
logical Resources, Division of Physiology, Cellular
and Molecular Biology, NSF): Regardless of
whether there is a causal or logical connection
between the philosophical basis of science and
social responsibility, it seems to me that scientists
have been acting in a more socially responsible
manner during the past 20 years than they did,
say, before World War 11. A case in point is the
1974 Asilomar conference that led to the for-
mulations of guidelines on recombinant DNA re-
search. Since the aftermath of Asilomar created
so much alarm among biologists and some mem-
bers of the public, do you think that what the
scientists did at Asilomar was the correct course
of action? Are there any alternatives to that type
of action in similar situations in the future?
Stephen Toulmin: I do not think that the public
alarm that came in the wake of Asilomar could
have been prevented, and I t h n k that the scientists
had a good sense of what type of alarm might
have risen had they not acted. The fact that they
took a responsible initiative meant that it was
easier to deal with the alarm once it was aroused.
If the recombinant DNA people had not raised
this issue on their own account, it would have
been raised in a much more irresponsible way by
other people. In that case, the public alarm would
have been much greater and harder to deal with.
Because then the molecular biologists could have
been presented as being not only dangerous sci-
entists, but mad ones. As it was, they were able
to raise the issue of potential risk in their own
 Toulmin: Pluralism and Responsibility in Post-Modern Science
terms and in a way which made clear the fact
that even though they might be dangerous sci-
entists, they certainly were not mad ones.
H. T. Huang: Do you feel that Asilomar serves
as a useful guide for similar situations?
Stephen Toulmin: When I was working with the
National Institutes of Health's National Com-
mission for the Protection of Human Subjects of
Biological and Behavioral Research, there was a
certain amount of discussion about whether con-
tinuing institutional machinery should be estab-
lished as an early warning system for issues of
potential risk. It was suggested, for instance, that
the National Academy of Sciences might take as
one of its charters the task of having a group of
people who would monitor science for develop-
ments that had a potential for public alarm and
for substantive risk. I still think that was an in-
teresting suggestion.
But let me broaden the scope of this discussion.
One of my feelings about the recombinant DNA
initiative was that it was anomalous. The research
biochemists were being harrassed at a time when
Allied Chemicals was pouring more toxic chem-
icals into the James River every week than all
the recombinant DNA biochemists in the world
could possibly produce in 100 years. The question
of priorities has to be faced. The discharge of toxic
chemicals from industry is a more active threat
to human welfare than the recombinant DNA
people are likely to pose in a long period of time.
Joseph Young: It has always struck me that there
was excessive focus after Asilomar on one side
of the set of arguments concerning risk. Insufficient
attention was paid to the consequences of the
lost research time in terms of human welfare. We
now see products resulting from recombinant DNA
research w h c h are about to be marketed and which
have considerable potential for alleviating human
suffering. In hindsight, did the Asilomar initiative
retard-unacceptably-both scientific and social
progress?
Stephen Toulmin: The ~ r o b l e mof how to intro-
duce the scientific and social costs of retarding
research into any cost-benefit calculus is impor-
tant. Here is another example in which the problem
of balancing risks against the loss of potential
benefits comes up in a way that is more acute
than the way it comes up with recombinant DNA.
33
That issue has to do with the allegations that the
procedures of the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA)for testing a new drug are too demanding,
and the consequent losses to human welfare ex-
cessive. The FDA will point to thalidomide as a
counterexample. But recognition of the risks of
thalidomide were serendipitous rather than a result
of an elaborate testing procedure. Something rang
a bell in the head of a particular FDA inspector.
It was not the fact that the testing took seven
years rather than a year and a half that led her
to spot the problem. There are people who argue
that, thalidomide apart, Europeans have not been
damaged by the fact that their drug-testing pro-
cedures are often more expeditious than the drug-
testing procedures of the FDA.
H. T. Huang: In the thalidomide case, problems
arose because the drug companies were not forth-
right in coming out with evidence of risk. They
had the information, but they were not releasing
it. Unfortunately, this situation seems to happen
time and time again.
Joseph Young: Perhaps this example points to a
similar and significant facet of the recombinant
DNA case. Once the results of scientific research
reach the marketplace, a different set of forces
operate than at the research stage. In the Asilomar
case, the research scientists were involved early
in the discussions of implications. By so doing,
they reserved for themselves a place in the de-
cisionmaking process. Whereas more often in the
applications of scientific results, the research sci-
entists abrogate their decisionmaking power be-
cause the bomb does not burst until it's on the
market and things are happening that scientists
cannot control. In the Asilomar case, the scientists
were controlling their own ethcal destiny, whereas
in the James River case, a different set of forces
were acting.
Paul Chapin (Director, Linguistics Program): I am
concerned about the scenario that unfolded after
Asilomar. Many scientists were so embittered by
the results that they swore they would not will-
ingly take such an open, responsible position again.
William Blanpied (International Policy Specialist,
STIA Directorate, NSF): Some of the prime mov-
ers-Maxine Singer, for example-said she would
not touch another public policy issue for 100 years.
34 Science, Technology, et) Human Values-Winter
David Baltimore and James Watson have also been
very negative about the aftermath of A ~ i l o m a r . ~
Stephen Toulmin: I think those among the Asi-
lomar prime movers who say "never again" are
wrong. I think they should still feel happy about
what they did. Hopefully, there will always be
some who feel that their responsibility for the
larger commonwealth transcends their responsi-
bility to science.
This affords a nice illustration of a point I like
to make about the value of exploring the psy-
chology of scientists. Many people enter science
for a quiet life; so they can do the things they
passionately care about and will not have to be
involved in the messy world of politics, public
affairs, public opinion, or dispute. In an important
sense, science is a consensus-building activity.
For those who have lived in a consensus world,
dealing with the messy world of headlines and
imputed motives is very disagreeable.
Otto Larsen (Senior Associate, Social and Behav-
ioral Sciences, NSF): May I return to a more in-
ternalist question stimulated by your opening re-
marks? While post-modern science as you define
it is pluralistic, it seems to me also to entail larger
and larger units of scientific concern. Post-modem
science seems to be anti-disciplinary. Is that a
reasonable conclusion?
Stephen Toulmin: I suspect your question is con-
nected with the fact that we find ourselves more
and more concerned with enlarging rather than
localizing the boundaries of inquiry. It seems to
me that, in the study of systems, one must ring
in theoretical conceptions from a whole range of
disciplines. One cannot really be a good geologist
without knowing a good deal of physics and
chemistry, for example, and one may have to know
many other things outside of science as well.
We can tie this up historically with the whole
Bacon-Newton dichotomy. Bacon said that if only
we pursue certain lines of inquiry in natural phi-
losophy, we shall eventually be in a position to
promote human welfare. I do not know how long
he thought it was going to take, but in fact it
took 300 years. The Professor of Natural Philos-
ophy at Edinburgh, John Playfair, writing in the
Encyclopedia Britannica in about 1816, bewailed
the fact that, even after 200 years, Bacon's worthy
prophecy still had not paid off.
During the 300 years or so between Bacon and
the late 19th century-when science really did
1985
begin to show some signs of paying off-progress
was made toward laying the basis for fulfilling
the Baconian program. It was made by abstracting
out and creating a division of labor for dealing
with those theoretical issues on which progress
had to be made before science, as Bacon conceived
of it, would be in a position to attack concrete
problems concerning human welfare.
One of the things that is happening now is that,
in fields like fundamental physics, basic chemistry,
general physiology, and cell biology, we have
reached the point at which-however imperfect
our understanding of these different systems-we
possess sufficient knowledge to be able to start
cashing in some of those promissory notes that
Bacon issued in the late 16th century. But to do
so, we must move away from a view of science
in which each of the abstract disciplines created
in the earlier process of the division of intellectual
labor remains self-sufficient. We must look more
at the concrete issues that arise when we really
want to deal with problems within which the
Baconian payoff can actually take place and be
prepared to use ideas from whatever theoretical
disciplines have something to contribute to the
solution of those problems.
George Brosseau (Project Manager, Office of In-
terdisciplinary Research, Engineering Directorate,
NSF): You cannot give predominance either to
disciplinary science or to the problem-oriented
approaches because each is incomplete in itself.
Disciplinary and problem-oriented approaches have
to coexist. What you are talking about in mul-
tidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches are
studies that look backward from the need and
bring the necessary intellectual resources to bear
on the solution of specific problems.
But the perception of need is a function of what
we already know. It is a result of knowledge that
is most often accumulated from research in dis-
ciplinary fields. When we know enough, then that
accumulated knowledge allows us to perceive a
social need that we may be able to do something
about. By "need" I mean an externally perceived
need: the need to build better automation, the
need to cure a certain kind of disease. Those needs
may not be perceived as such until we know
enough about a system to recognize them as needs.
If you do not know anything about bacteria, then
you do not perceive cures for infectious disease
as a need that can be addressed by scientific
knowledge. But dealing with such needs does not
add significantly to our knowledge base. For that
 Toulmin: Pluralism and Responsibility in Post-Modern Science
reason, we may not be able to perceive the next
set of problems after we have solved the last ones.
That is why we must build the knowledge base
concurrently.
Otto Larsen: Let me ask you to address the unity-
of-science issue. Do you contend that when the
post-modern sciences finally emerge they will be
very pluralistic, will not involve a unifylng theory,
will not have a great deal of commonality in
methodology, and that the agenda of the sciences
will be very diverse?
Stephen Toulmin: That may well be a legitimate
inference to draw from the argument I have pre-
sented. Part of my stance about where science is
going is that it will be more pluralistic-not cha-
otic, but pluralistic. In that future, an understand-
ing of the mutual relevance of the different parts
of science will have to consist not in understanding
how they all should succeed in approximating
more or less a common ideal (which was part of
the classical view) but in understanding how each
of them has come to develop in a way that is
appropriate to a particular set of problems that
are relevant to it. The question of relevance would
be one of topical relevance rather than of analytical
relationships.
Otto Larsen: Is there anything in the knowledge
game itself that can help make choices in the
allocation of resources among the several sciences?
Can science address the question of priorities, or
must that be based on an external set of factors?
Stephen Toulmin: The more narrowly you define
the priorities question, the more powerful the
professional authority of the people who have
technical command of the field becomes. The
larger the scope of the question, the less profes-
sional monopoly the scientist has in the decision.
Between mathematics, physics, chemistry,
oceanography, and the social sciences, for example,
the priorities question seems to be a straightfor-
ward political question. The National Academy
of Sciences can provide indispensable material for
public discussion of issues related to priorities
among various disciplines, but the issues them-
selves probably have to be resolved on political
grounds.
Michael Polanyi wrote a particularly good paper
called "The Republic of Science" as one of a series
on scientific priorities that Edward Shls published
in Minerva in the early 1960sS4Polanyi argued
35
that the structure of science was a bit like the
structure of Switzerland. He likened each indi-
vidual science to a Swiss canton. Then he asserted
that, as in Switzerland, the amount of authority
each canton surrenders to any kind of c,entral
authority should be minimal.
Alvin Weinberg, in another article in ~ i n e r v a , "
described Polanyi's metaphor as a bit too crude.
He argued that what one finds is that people in
neighboring disciplines do have something useful
to contribute to judging priorities within a given
discipline insofar as some parts of organic chem-
istry, for example, are more likely to have im-
portant implications for biochemistry than others.
They are therefore more likely to have implications
for genetics. So that to some extent, acccording
to Weinberg's argument, one has to allow people
other than those who are narrowly concerned with
a particular discipline to have a say in determining
resource allocation priorities.
I agree with Weinberg that the broader the range
within which the judgment of value has to be
made, the larger the community of people who
have to be allowed to have a say within it. But
of course both the Weinberg and the Polanyi ar-
guments take government support of science for
granted. I find myself talking to a lot of people
nowadays who really seem to believe that science
exists only by virtue of the fact that public funds
are made available to it. But I grew up in a period
when all good scientists knew that if they took
public money for their research, then their fellow
scientists would not trust the results. I always
feel a little sad when I hear questions about in-
tellectual priorities in science (or, indeed, about
the possibility of doing science at all) sliding over
into questions of resource allocation.
Otto Larsen: In your scheme, are there different
kinds of money? Is the National Science Foun-
dation's money different, perhaps, than other Fed-
eral money?
Stephen Toulmin: I am prepared to answer that
question in either of two contexts. One context
is that there should be government agencies pre-
pared to fund science that is not mission-oriented.
A second, stronger context is that it is an excellent
thing that the government should recognize that
the advancement of knowledge for its own sake
is a legitimate mission. I would rather see it put
the latter way. I still cleave to the argument Van-
nevar Bush advanced when he maintained that
the improvement of human understanding should
36 Science, Technology, 4 Human Values-Winter
be to the late 20th century what the building of
a cathedral was in the Middle Ages.
Otto Larsen: George Keyworth says something
like that today when he refers to the support of
basic research as a national trust.
And that thought brings me back to a question
that Alex Morin raised: If scientists are unaffected
philosophically, how else are they affected and
how will the agenda of research be altered by a
post-modern science that involves more inter-
action? What would the NSF do differently from
what it is now doing? What are the implications
for our procedures?
Stephen Toulmin: One way in which these ques-
tions become of active importance to the NSF is
in those areas in w h c h there really is a continuing
dispute about the relative levels of fundamental-
ness of different kinds of inquiries within a larger
field. As I noted earlier, there are still biologists
who believe that if you really understand molecular
biochemistry, you do not need all this anecdotal
stuff about fossils. Therefore, by implication, a
government that seeks to support pure science
will give a lot of money to molecular biochemistry,
and will leave the ecologists and evolutionary
biologists to scratch around for a few pence from
private foundations that are run by millionaires
who have a taste for that kind of eccentricity.
Otto Larsen: But if the people who are in charge
at the NSF are the ones who maintain the classical
conception, those of us who opt for pluralism are
going to have problems. Progress in our fields will
be deterred by a lack of resources.
William Blanpied: The idea that methodologies
in different scientific fields do not have to be
related to some central norm could have severe
implications for some fields at the NSF. Debates
in the late 1940s over the issue of whether the
social sciences should be explicitly written into
the National Science Foundation Act turned in
large measure on the question of how "scientific"
those disciplines were. That question is still largely
unsettled in the minds of many "hard" scientists,
as is evidenced by the priorities and budgets for
the social and behavioral sciences within the NSF.
The fact that the NSF has been able to support
a wide variety of science and engineering disci-
plines has often been justified on the basis of the
implicit premise that there is some commonality
among those disciplines. If we now proclaim loudly
1985
and publicly that the social sciences are "scientific"
but not in the same way as physics, the problems
of the social sciences within the NSF might grow
even more severe.
Stephen Toulmin: The distinction between plu-
ralism and chaos is centrally important here. Some
strict logical positivists have argued that pluralism
really does imply chaos. In essence, they argue
that if one accepts what Thomas Kuhn says about
the character of scientific revolutions, then we
will not be able to exclude the astrologers. That
is just not true. The crucial point, as far as your
procedures at the NSF are concerned, comes at
the point of interaction between the program of-
ficer and the peer review panel. The task of acting
as some kind of holder of the balance of equity
between the different groups who enter into this
competition for funds is a very important one.
William Blanpied: In your post-modern world,
what do you suggest should be criteria for dif-
ferentiating between "real" science of the kind
we support at the NSF and other, nonlegitimate
claimants to scientific status?
Stephen Toulmin: Ultimately one has to agree
that those decisions come down to political de-
cisions in the broadest sense. I remember going
to a meeting in Vienna of the European govern-
ments to discuss science policy. There, even prob-
lems of the sheer translation of the word "science"
created problems because, for instance, in Ger-
many, the public funding of seminaries was in-
cluded under the heading of Wissenschaftpolitik.
As far as German politics is concerned, you cannot
rule out the questions of what seminaries are to
be supported. But the question of whether, having
a general policy that gave financial support to
seminaries, any government would feel it would
therefore have to fund the Reverend Moon's Uni-
fication Church as well would immediately arouse
acute political controversy.
This is the point in making a distinction between
pluralism and chaos. Politically speaking, a lot of
people are unhappy about pluralism because they
see it as a slippery slope, an invitation to use tax
money to finance some types of extreme, way-
out things. They feel so horrid that they have got
to go back to nanny. One cannot be completely
logical about the problem of separating "real" sci-
ence from other systems. One simply must have
some confidence that pluralism need not imply
chaos in the public mind.
 Toulmin: Pluralism and Responsibility in Post-Modern Science
And that point brings me back to my opening
remarks about why trying to understand the dif-
fering conceptions of scientific progress has such
an important bearing on the intellectual foun-
dations of science policy, and why I believe such
an understanding is so central to what you are
trying to accomplish at the National Science
Foundation.
Notes
1. Stephen Toulmin, "The Complexity of Scientific
Choice: A Stocktaking," Minerva, Volume 2, Number
37
3 (Spring 1964): 343-359; and "The Complexity of
Scientific Choice: Culture, Overhead, or Tertiary
I n d ~ s t r y ? ,Minerva,
~' Volume 4, Number 2 (Winter
1966): 155-169.
2. Stephen Toulmin, "The Emergence of Post-Modern
Science," in The Great Ideas Today-1981 (New York:
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1981 ), pp. 69-1 14.
3. avid Baltimore, "Limiting Science: A Biologist's
D
Perspective," Daedalus, Volume 107, Number 2
(Spring 1978): 37-46.
4. Michael Polanyi, "The Republic of Science: Its Po-
litical and Economic Theory," Minerva, Volume l ,
Number 1 (Autumn 1962): 54-73.
5. Alvin Weinberg, "Criteria for Scientific Choice,"
Minerva, Volume 1 , Number 2 (Winter 1963): 159-
171.