“The use of method as the criterion of science abolishes theoretical relevance. As a consequence, all propositions concerning facts will be promoted to the dignity of science, regardless of their relevance, as long as they result from a correct use of method. Since the ocean of facts is infinite, a prodigious expansion of science in the sociological sense becomes possible, giving employment to scientistic technicians and leading to the fantastic accumulation of irrelevant knowledge through huge “research projects” whose most interesting features is the quantifiable expense that has gone into their production.”

— Eric Voegelin

Source: The New Science of Politics: An Introduction

Last update March 16, 2022. History

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Eric Voegelin 13

American philosopher 1901–1985

Alan Chalmers book What Is This Thing Called Science?

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 3, Experiment, p. 27.

“Sociology is the science which has the most methods and the least results.”

Henri Poincaré book Science and Method

La sociologie est la science qui possède le plus de méthodes et le moins de résultats.
Part I. Ch. 1 : The Selection of Facts, p. 19
Science and Method (1908)

“Since many propositions in the Great Conversation have not been arrived at by experiment … or empirical verification, we often hear that the Conversation, though perhaps interesting to the antiquarian as setting forth the bizarre superstitions entertained by "thinkers" before the dawn of experimental science, can have no relevance to us now, when experimental science and its methods have at least revealed these superstitions for what they are.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

“Science has a huge advantage over “other ways of knowing”: built-in methods of self-correction.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 223

“Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Against Method

is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale. Primitive tribes has more detailed classifications of animals and plant than contemporary scientific zoology and botany, they know remedies whose effectiveness astounds physicians (while the pharmaceutical industry already smells here a new source of income), they have means of influencing their fellow men which science for a long time regarded as non-existent (voodoo), they solve difficult problems in ways which are still not quite understood (building of the pyramids; Polynesian travels), there existed a highly developed and internationally known astronomy in the old Stone Age, this astronomy was factually adequate as well as emotionally satisfying, it solved both physical and social problems (one cannot say the same about modern astronomy) and it was tested in very simple and ingenious ways (stone observatories in England and in the South Pacific; astronomical schools in Polynesia - for a more details treatment an references concerning all these assertions cf. my Einfuhrung in die Naturphilosophie). There was the domestication of animals, the invention of rotating agriculture, new types of plants were bred and kept pure by careful avoidance of cross fertilization, we have chemical inventions, we have a most amazing art that can compare with the best achievement of the present. True, there were no collective excursions to the moon, but single individuals, disregarding great dangers to their soul and their sanity, rose from sphere to sphere to sphere until they finally faced God himself in all His splendor while others changed into animals and back into humans again. At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas.
Pg. 306-307
Against Method (1975)

“This example illustrates the differences in the effects which may be produced by research in pure or applied science. A research on the lines of applied science would doubtless have led to improvement and development of the older methods—the research in pure science has given us an entirely new and much more powerful method. In fact, research in applied science leads to reforms, research in pure science leads to revolutions, and revolutions, whether political or industrial, are exceedingly profitable things if you are on the winning side.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Cited from Lord Rayleigh, The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson (1943), p. 199.
Attributed

“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Aliens Cause Global Warming (2003)

“The basis of science is the empirical method, which uses the senses to build up a picture of the world; but science tells us that our senses have evolved to help us get by, not to show us the world as it is. Science is only a systematic examination of our impressions, and in the end all each of us has left are our own sensations … The end-result of the empirical method, then, is that each individual is left alone with their own experiences. We can escape this solitude, Balfour suggested, only if we accept that there is a divine mind.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Cross-correspondences (p. 69-70)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

“It is obvious that the problem of human behavior with which we are dealing can not be understood in terms of psychology or any one of the social sciences alone. Is it not possible, therefore, that in attempting to follow the problem wherever it leads us, and employing whatever concepts and research techniques are relevant, we shall be able to define the problem in such a way and develop concepts and a theoretical framework of such a nature that a major contribution will be made to the foundation for an integrated social and psychological science? Whether or not this result appears possible or attractive to present scholars in these fields, we who are studying industrial relations are forced to work in this direction. It is not a case of choice alone, but of necessity, for we can not get results satisfactory to ourselves and applicable to the solution of practical problems by employing the concepts, theories, and methods of any one science.”

E. Wight Bakke (1903–1971) American sociologist and economist (1903-1971)

E. Wight Bakke "Industrial Relations Research," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 92, no. 5, p. 379, November, 1948. As cited in: Tannenbaum, Weschler, and Massarik (1961; 8)

“Our method of evangelising is in fact to promote respect for the dignity of every person.”

Peter Celestine Elampassery (1938–2015) Indian priest

Conflict and Violence Never Ending Bishop of Kashmir Says: “enough War and Terrorism, Civilians Cannot Take Any More!” (5 September 2003) Fides News Agency http://www.fides.org/en/news/634-ASIA_INDIA_CONFLICT_AND_VIOLENCE_NEVER_ENDING_BISHOP_OF_KASHMIR_SAYS_ENOUGH_WAR_AND_TERRORISM_CIVILIANS_CANNOT_TAKE_ANY_MORE

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