Systems theory

In his systems’ theory, Luhmann attempts to redefine communication, and associates it with information. For Luhmann, communication is distinct from action (Handeln), and the rationality of the scientific system resides in the notion of Zweck, or in the ends of the sciences towards action. For the first time in the epistemological history of modernity, rationality is understood as a certain scientific purpose of action and not as the critique of scientific truth and validity of reason. The schism that Luhmann brought about between ‘traditional’ epistemology (reconsidered now as novel) and the ‘critical’ theory of science (seen by Luhmann as ‘traditional’) was irredeemable. In the following pages, I maintain that all evidence to the contrary such a divergence was inherent to modernity.Drawing on the Schützean model of multiple realities, Luhmann manages to blur the distinction between instrumentality and rationality by relativizing both within systemic complexity. According to Luhmann, complexity characterizes a multifaceted social system, such as science itself. However, I argue that where complexity, in Luhmann, interprets the systemic, it also employs presentism and partial situationalism to explain the essence and methodology of science as a system.

Introduction

Critical Theory and Epistemology is a comparison of the major epistemological concerns in the twentieth century with critical theory of the Frankfurt School. I focus on modern epistemology as a theory of and about science that also addresses the social and political aims of scientific enquiry.The critique that the book deploys on the epistemological tendencies of late modernity suggests that the main distinction between Kant and the critical theorists lies in their understanding of rationality. Such a critique can be characterized as the ‘battle’ of modern epistemology for or against the scientifically, socially and politically rational. Thus, arguments of modern epistemology, as articulated by phenomenology, structuralism, poststructuralism, modernists and postmodernists, systems’ theory and critical realism, can certainly be considered ‘modern’ in historical terms, but in essence their concerns are of a pre-modern and pre-scientific nature. In such a manner, we come closer to understanding what constitutes the scientific, philosophy, truth, and whether modern epistemology paves the way for a political epistemology in the twenty-first century.

Structuralism and poststructuralism

This chapter focuses mostly on the epistemological thought of Pierre Bourdieu and Gilles Deleuze in terms of their persistence in constructing an epistemological understanding of social practice that is free from the burdens of dialectics, reason and rationality.The main bone of contention for structuralism, and soon afterwards, if not concurrently, for poststructuralism, remains the understanding of theory as the bearer of practice or the prioritization of practice instead of theory.In this chapter, I argue that no matter how hard the structuralists and poststructuralists try to avoid dealing with scientific dialectics, or as much as they merely reject it, their thinking still remains within the confines of dialectics. This is especially the case with regard to theory and practice, or the potential of the sciences to realize truth and adopt a certain methodology that relates scientific work to truth.Following parallel lines of evolution, structuralism and poststructuralism relate to a phenomenological perspective on the sciences that intends to reveal a more rigorous science, which is achieved either a priori, as in Husserl, or a posteriori, as in ethnomethodology. Furthermore, structuralism emphasizes the relations of structural elements within a systemic formation, be that of a social, political or scientific nature.

Conclusions

This book has aimed to examine dialectics in modern epistemology and to compare it with critical theory, not ‘in order to’ but ‘because’ the latter can offer innovative means of dialectical theorizing. In this way, critical theory has the potential to advance twenty-first century epistemology.The book attempted to avoid old and traditional modes such as ‘biographies’ of scientific terms or historical elaboration or evaluation of epistemological arguments. I also challenged the de-scientification and pre-modern approaches that have returned to the epistemological fore. It is essential for a critical theory of the twenty-first century that it can articulate a political epistemology through the dialectical potential. The book attempted to present and ground the argument that a retreat to de-theorization for the sake of the partiality of empiricism, as well as the post-modern approach, signifies not a space of post-modernity, but rather the process of de-modernization that begins with the instrumentalization of the sciences and extends to the social and the political. In order to avoid social and scientific instrumentality and pre-modern positions, the construction of scientific politics has to be criticized under the perspective of a political epistemology.

Critical realism

Critical realism attempted to ground dialectics in realism.Roy Bhaskar insisted on presenting the epistemological validity of mechanisms which, as he maintains, encompass both perception and the laws that guide science towards predictability. Bhaskar’s conception of dialectics is already apparent in his A Realist Theory of Science, and it governs all his work until his Dialectic, which is probably one of his final contributions to the issue of science and epistemology. In the present chapter I argue that his idea of predictability in science through mechanisms is of a pre-critical character and that he fails to acknowledge that norms generate rationality.Although Bhaskar claims to place dialectics within reality, he fails to grasp that his claim is not enough for an ‘other’ epistemology over which he also claims jurisdiction. He grounds an epistemological ontology that renders dialectics testable but not accountable, which leads him to form more an epistemological methodology and less an ontology of science, as he initially wished. My critique focuses on the issue that while his dialectics might generate a methodological testability, it neither signifies a commitment for science to theorize and act rationally, nor renders it accountable to the consequences of science within social conditions.

Modernism and postmodernism

Foucault attempted to introduce an approach which essentially rejected the nature of rationality, modernity and dialectics. Foucault argued that if epistemology wishes to get rid of normative theory, which functions as a scientific straightjacket for free thought and uncoerced arguments, it has to discard dialectics. However, the idea explored in this chapter is that by the use of such a course of reflection, science abandons its claims for rational praxis as well. The normativity of theory provides praxis with inner constitution and external accountability criteria because normativity is not a hypothetical construction but is formed according to the social function of dialectics. Science needs dialectics in order to be accountable to society. Structures, experience and systems seem inadequate for science to render itself socially accountable. Therefore, social praxis appears as a partial scientific and social concern where the critique that theory articulates through dialectics is missing, rendering science un-critical and, thus, pre-modern. Foucault’s opposition to modernity’s theorizing on the part of his theoretical contemporaries, such as Habermas, lies in two fundamental points: a) his concept of reason; and b) his understanding of critique.

Phenomenology and hermeneutics

The aim of this chapter is to trace to what extent dialectics is an epistemological concern in Dilthey, Husserl, Simmel and Weber. Throughout the course of these thinkers’ work, it becomes clear that dialectics is not a concrete innovative element for the sciences but a peripheral method; Such concerns limit science to a. a deficit in normative theory and rational praxis, and, moreover, b. a lack of accountability criteria for science. The line of thought that begins with thinkers such as Dilthey, Husserl, Simmel and Weber, at the end of the nineteenth century and towards the beginning of the twentieth, extends to the ethnomethodology of the mid-twentieth century, and reveals itself as having had a major influence on Gadamer’s work on hermeneutics. The chapter traces the course of arguments that begin with Dilthey’s philosophy of a rigorous science, develop with Husserl’s phenomenology, Simmel’s and Weber’s interest in the scientific element within the social, and conclude with the ethnomethodological concerns on the everyday as a method of scientific advance.