Writing on Darwin’s achievement in his 2003 book In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology, Philip Kitcher advanced the concept of a scientific practice. This consists of:
a language
a set of statements that are accepted by the specific community of scientists
a set of questions that the scientists in the community accept as important
a set of schemata which specify the form of desirable answers
a set of accepted techniques and methodologies to address the questions.
For his study of Darwin he focussed on the first four – language, accepted statements, questions and schemata.
Clearly there is a great deal of common ground with Popperism, especially the idea of getting clear about important problems and his idea of metaphysical research programs which are all about “schemata”.
This links with Kitcher’s move into the situated social practice of science where he drew upon neoclassical economic theory to get a handle on the socioeconomic aspects of scientific practice. This opens up the prospect of some dialogue with Ian Jarvie and anyone else who is interested in Popper’s social turn. We have to hope that this will work out better than the non-exchange between Parsons, von Mises and Popper that could have happened when they were practically on the same page for the study of economics and sociology in the 1930s.
Rafe, is there any inkling as to why Hayek didn’t attempt to bridge the gap between Mises and Popper? What a different world we might have if he had undertaken the task.
Brian, I can only speculate about that, the correspondence between Hayek and Popper might illuminate the matter, it is published in one of the series of Hayek books. My friend Colin Simkin in Sydney could have edited the volume buthe had a row with the editors and dropped the task.
Part of the problem was that Popper was never sufficiently interested in the social sciences to really get into the primary literature, it would have been too much of a distraction from his major interests in physics and other things.
There was also the problem of the standoff between Popper and Mises, they met several times and respected each other but never came to grips on fundamental issues, partly because of the generational difference in age.
These are the questions that need to be asked while the men are alive but I had not got to the synergy and the issues that arise from it while they were still there to answer questions.
It is a question that calls for more investigation, once you start asking the question then you can look systematically for answers. And scholarship advances!
Another question is why Talcott Parsons became such a waste of space after his first book which placed him alongside von Mises and Popper.
And why Parsons never in his books referred to von Mises and Popper even though his private papers show he was well aware of them.