J. N. Hattiangadi

The intellectual authority of science is now at a much lower ebb than at any time
since the Second World War. By the "intellectual authority of science" I mean
how its value is regarded by the intelligent reading public, and among the other
esoteric academic professions. "Intellectual authority" does not mean that every-
one takes its conclusions to be true, of course, though among the less knowledge-
able it may have this effect. In the Middle Ages, for instance, philosophy enjoyed
great intellectual authority. In more recent times, this authority has gradually
slipped. Mathematics certainly has seen its authority enhanced since the Middle
Ages. The intellectual authority of natural science has not been overtaken by an-
other subject, as that of philosophy was taken over by its precocious offspring,
physics, three hundred years ago. All the same, in recent decades, science has
seen its intellectual authority slip, which is the background for this essay. The
knowledge that it has slipped is in the evidence of the ease with which critiques
of science are being published. ¹

One part of the story of the decline in the intellectual authority of science
has to do with the writings of Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn, which have
contribu ted by their influence over the last four decades to this state of affairs. ²
The upshot of the writings of both Feyerabend and of Kuhn, in different ways
perhaps, is that their work provides us with a better understanding of the context
of scientific activity than the positivist theories that they criticized. The decline of
logical positivism has left a vacuum where a clear picture of science was once
available for all to attack. The study of intellectual contexts, which could have
provided the alternative, has not been taken up by subsequent students of science
in quite the numbers that it has deserved. Consequently, relativists have had a
rather easy time of it, ridiculing positivism, and scoring points for their own views,
which can take account of contexts.

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