ABSTRACT
Although it certainly is the case that the traditional Science/Humanism debate has taken the thematic form of Science against Humanism, the historical reason for that fact must now be fully identified. Between the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century, science is being conflated with the positivist view of science (Manicas 1987: 7-36; Keat 1971: 3-17). This conflation then becomes institutionalized into the very fabric of the tradition of the Science and Humanism encounter (see its persistence in an eminent serious critic of traditional Science and Humanism, Lemert 1997: 131-46, especially 131-36). Thus, the traditional debate concerning the problem of freedom and determinism has not in fact been between Science and Humanism, but between Positivism and Humanism; and that is why we can now say that the theme of antagonism and defiance is an expression of Positivism against Humanism in the history of the social sciences. In light of this clarification, I can now say that Sahlins’ reply, “It’s History,” to the question as to the contemporary relevance of the “Science and Humanism” debate is right, in one sense; but that is because it is wrong in another. In view of the fact that it is wrong to presume that Humanism has been in a debate with science as it is, that is a realist practice, it thus can be said, and rightfully, that the debate that has been going on, which has been the debate with Positivism, is now “History.” However, as I think is clear at this point, that difference makes all the difference. Particularly with respect to the problem of structure and agency, and the competing solutions of the rescuing of freedom from the natural world, the Old Humanist strategy, and the recovery of freedom from the natural world and from culture, the New Humanist strategy. But now, for some of us in the social sciences who agree with Porpora that
“realism is humanism,” there is an important consequence (Porpora 2001: 264). That natural science is correctly understood to be a realist practice that is to underwrite the New Humanism and its strategy of return, changes the very terms of the “Science and Humanism” encounter. We now can regard the debate to be a conversation, not an antagonism. In this regard, such a
conversation, especially on the matter of realism and methodology, has been going on since the 1980s, for instance, in the work of Andrew Tudor (1982), Andrew Sayer (1992 [1984]), and Ray Pawson (1989). Science for Humanism hence is to be the new and proper theme defining this encounter. I thus locate the ontological problem of structure and agency at the interface of science and social science, and hence understand it to be a scientific, and therefore, a social scientific problem. This means that I am making a distinction between two kinds of freedom: the freedom of agency and the freedom of liberty, respectively. The distinction will be further discussed at the end of the chapter.
