Three places for “science’s legitimacy” crisis

Abstract

In this essay it is argued that there  may be three places for science’s  “legitimacy crisis”: the celestial world  to which the writings of such authors  as José Ortega y Gasset, Karl Jaspers,  Johan Huizinga and Edmund Husserl  lead us, the Dantesque world to which  the writings of science philosopher Paul Feyerabend lead us, and the  world of earthly reality to which the  writings of scientists who react to a  situation of open hostility to science  lead us. In the latter, the term “crisis”  does not express a personal  disillusionment with science (as in the  case of Ortega y Gasset, Jaspers, and Huizinga), nor the idiosyncrasies of a  philosophical system (as in the case of  Husserl), nor the dreadful  consequences of a well-intentioned  libertarian utopia (as in the case of  Feyerabend), but a redefinition of the  paths to be taken by different  scientific  disciplines, something that  happened only once, in the Germany  of the Weimar Republic, strictly  speaking, the only place where what could properly be called “crisis of the  legitimacy of science” has already existed.