The critique of science and modernity

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of a significant theme in contemporary epistemology: the critique of science within the debate on modernity. This theme has received scarce attention from Latin American epistemologists and social scientists, although there is an apparent need to clarify the reflection on the current challenges to social sciences in Latin America. In our region we are seeing a mythification of the role of natural sciences in their contribution to economic development, and an explicit project to functionalize social sciences, turning them into assistance-type social policy instruments defined by the neo-liberal socio-economic model. Both aspects correspond to an economicistic way of conceiving modernity in our societies, favoring instrumental rationality. 

The central ideas of the critique of science by Habermas, Feyerabend and Hinkelammert are set forth. They question some of the main representations of the sciences and form part of their critique of modernity: a) the existence of a single model of scientificity in social sciences, the idea that there is only one interest in knowledge in the social sciences, and the non-ideological nature of science and technology (Habermas); b) the existence of gender methods in the sciences, the acceptance of scientifism, the always-emancipating nature of science in the face of ideologies, and the idea that scientific communities are not pressure groups and that citizens cannot participate in the discussion of development policies and scientific research (Feyerabend); and c) the supposition that science is always empirical and free of transcendental, mythical and theological concepts, that science is concrete knowledge of reality and the idea that science has no responsibility for the negative effects of the use of technologies and economicistic rationality (Hinkelammert).