Is science value-free?

Question

Some people, like Sam Harris, say that science has values of its own. According to him, even a statement like "Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen" is value-laden. But I don't think that it is value-laden, it is simply a factual statement. Perhaps demonstrating that statement to be true requires values, but that statement by itself is true whatever your values are. So, then, what have professional philosophers (besides Sam Harris) written or said about this matter, of whether science is value-free, and also whether even basic scientific statements are value-free?

Answer 1

I'm happy to report, that science is a human endeavor, and humans are never value-free, so neither is science. That's a feature, and not a bug. For instance, some of the most important values of science are intersubjectivity, rationality, empiricality, democracy, and fallibilism. In other words, the modern scientific methods (there are many flavors) champion the ability to build consensus from reason and observation by anyone who can follow the basic premises on how to practice science. The sciences strongly discourage any subjective conjecture that neither makes sense nor fails to be rooted in observation or physical testing and disagrees with consensus. And ironically, science always preaches its own short-comings.

Scientists are fallible, paradigms can be wrong, tests and calculations can mislead or have error, and basic scientific theory itself must be examined for theory-ladenness. Of course, this is the philosophical ideal. Not all science lives up to scientific values. Many actual scientists have little to no philosophical training and run afoul of the values that the great scientific thinkers like Bacon, Popper, Carnap, and others have advocated.

One of my favorite science history books is The Rise of Early Modern Science by Huff (GB), because it makes a great case for the interrelation of cultural values and the values of science. Specifically, it examines why modern science is a distinctly Western institution and rooted in the development of the European university system with traditional Greek democratic values. Science began to arise in other polities like the Middle and the Far East, but didn't catch on until the gaps between the West and the East were self-evident and carried real political and economic consequences.

Answer 2

When Harris cites the atomic description of water as being thoroughly value-laden, the two questions that come to mind are

1. If all those hidden, unspecified values he is talking about are removed from the description, does water then no longer consist of one atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen? If so, what IS the resulting "correct" description?

2. If all those hidden, unspecified values he is talking about are removed from the description, does water at the end of the day still consist of one atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen? If so, what difference in the real world does the asserted value-laden-ness of any description of water make, and why should anyone waste their time arguing about it?

Answer 3

This seems to be the quote with some context.

"Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, "Well, that's not how I choose to think about water."? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn't share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

The impression I get is that the Sam Harris isn't saying something post-modern. Consider the list that @causative gives of other ways of seeking knowledge: I think the Horseman means that we cannot really have a useful conversation with anyone who insists that his holy book trumps science, or who subscribes to any of the other ways on the list.

Answer 4

Yes, science has values, and specifically they are values of academic inquiry. First there is the value that we should seek knowledge with high priority (by no means a culturally universal priority); and then there are the values of how we should go about seeking knowledge.

Science proposes that we should seek knowledge through the scientific method. We should record data from the natural world, analyze the data, and discuss and criticize these findings through peer review. We should use statistics to analyze the presence or absence of regularities in the data. We should build models based on the way we think a system works, and compare the models to the data. We should set up experiments when possible to help detect causal influences. We should treat evidence and argumentation as higher forms of proof than just someone saying so, regardless of that person's status.

This can be contrasted with other modes of "seeking knowledge":

• Read what was written in a holy book
• Accept without question the word of a religious, political, or secular authority
• Rely on rumors and anecdotes
• Believe what we feel in our hearts to be true
• Accept what our friends and peers think

Science's values are that the scientific method of seeking knowledge should be preferred over these other methods.

Answer 5

Separately, I'll address this:

"Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen" is value-laden. But I don't think that it is value-laden, it is simply a factual statement.

Importantly, all language carries normativity with it. So, first, let's acknowledge that the statement is in scientific English, which is the de facto lingua franca of science. That's a value because it is both a convention and a preference. Of course, it might not always be the case. It used to be Latin. It may be Hokkien in the future. Who knows. But this is the shallow revelation of effaced value; the strong case is theory-ladeness. From WP:

Semantic theory-ladenness refers to the impact of theoretical assumptions on the meaning of observational terms, while perceptual theory-ladenness refers to their impact on the perceptual experience itself. Theory-ladenness is also relevant for measurement outcomes: the data thus acquired may be said to be theory-laden since it is meaningless by itself unless interpreted as the outcome of the measurement processes involved.

What this means is that talking about the definition of water, it prefers the atomic theory over a classical theory of elements. It also has other biases. What is water? H2O? Does that exclude or include heavy water? Is ice water? It's H2O, right? What about the properties of water? Is the specific density 1.0 an objective fact of the universe? Is the boiling point of water universal? What about outside of STP? Which scale? What sort of scientific instruments are used to measure water? Doesn't the very act of reasoning about water mean we have to introduce a logic to infer water? Is the blueness of water an objective fact or a subjective construction of the mind; atoms don't have colors, right? If "The O–H bond length is about 0.096 nm", doesn't presume a preference for using meters instead of inches or smoots? Isn't that a value? If water self-ionizes, is H2O a valid description, or shouldn't we use H3O+ + OH- to describe it since strictly speaking the molecules are constantly disassociating? In fact, isn't the use of H2O inaccurate when examining water described by its Lewis structure?

And that's just a series of what are values that affect the simplest fragment of natural language that involve using the lexemes 'water' and 'H2O'. So, when we use words, when we measure, when we prefer theories, all of those are subjective choices that express effaced values. That those subjectivities are declared "objective" is a political function of philosophical intersubjectivity.

Answer 6

This answer replies only to this part:

But I don't think that it is value-laden, it is simply a factual statement.

It's both. Given appropriate definitions of water, hydrogen, oxygen, parts, and composition, it is a fact that water is composed of one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen. The values are in the definitions.

Here's an inconclusive list of values in "Water is composed of one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen."

• It makes sense to identify individual processes at all.

• It makes sense to identify some individual processes as things.

• It makes sense to identify some things as substances according to their generalized traits, and not as individuals after all. i.e. "water" and not "that wet stuff over there."

• It makes sense to identify substances with the impossible-to-ever-actually-exist hypothetical pure substance composed of their most common constituent parts.

• It makes sense to decompose such substances into their constructive parts.

• It makes sense to refer to constructive parts as what they would be like had they not been constructed, even though they were significantly transformed by the construction and even though no spatial boundary can be drawn around any one of the supposed components which excludes the other supposed components.

• Molecules and atoms are the kind of processes that ought to be described as things at all, and not, for example, a series of locally similar events.

Answer 7

Sam Harris (sigh…)

Science is designed to be value-neutral. I mean that literally: the motivation behind trying to establish a scientific method was to separate out human desires by testing against empirical observations. Of course, people have desires — religious beliefs; career ambitions; deep-seated prejudices, fears, and biases — but all of those are expected to give way in the face of empirical results.

Humans are obviously value-laden. We would all (for the most part) prefer that splitting the atom be used to create sustainable energy, not radioactive devastation. But the science of developing atomic fission isn't influenced by how those fission products will be used by other people. It simply tells us what works and what can be done, and leaves the valuation of what should be done to other fields.

Answer 8

Science is not value free

You said it yourself. You said that water is to parts hydrogen and one part oxygen - you have made a leap of faith based on your values. You believe that a measurement of science automatically imparts some truthy or falsy properties to the world. That is not neccesarily so. It is so if you are a materialist; what you measure is what is actually there. You could step back into instrumentalism; a measurement and a theory exists solely for their own sake and makes no judgement about the world. What we know is that IF we measure, we find water to return a RESULT that corresponds 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. That this applies to actual, unmeasured water is a value based implicit assumption. But instrumentalism has its flaws also, to negate that results tell us anything about the actual world is also a value based assumption.

Now, is it possible to set up a science that completely avoids mixing human values into itself? I doubt it, but doubt never made anything impossible. I do believe as long as there are humans there to design and experiment, measure and predict, conclude and summarize - there will be values.

Answer 9

Absolutely, this is a thought-provoking question. Philosophers like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn have explored the philosophy of science, emphasizing that while scientific facts, such as the composition of water, are objective, the process of science itself involves values. These values include integrity, curiosity, and the quest for truth. Kuhn's notion of paradigm shifts suggests that scientific progress isn't just a linear accumulation of facts but also influenced by the subjective perspectives of scientists. Therefore, while basic scientific statements might seem value-free, the broader practice of science is embedded in a context of human values and societal influences.