ABSTRACT
The need for autonomy arises in a world where people feel that they are already under a good deal of metaphysical or social control, which leads them to look for an area of free play. To suspect a claim to autonomy as being a disguised instance of what Jon Elster calls an "adaptive preference formation" is to suggest some major rewritings of the history of science. Although autonomy is taken to be the cornerstone of any principled action, either in morality or methodology, this is largely an eighteenth century innovation, grounded in the possibility of a self-legislated microcosm of the greater universe governed by the Creator. Successful scientists come to provide "epistemic" reasons for preferring to do the sort of research that just so happens to be the sort most likely funded, whereas unsuccessful scientists chide the successful ones for allowing their research trajectories to be diverted by "external" matters as money.
