Psychedelic science as cosmic play, psychedelic humanities as perennial polemics? Or why we are still fighting over Max Weber’s Science as a Vocation
Journal of Classical Sociology May 23, 2019 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1177/1468795x19851405 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Max Weber predicted scientific work would become obsolete within 10-15 years, yet his lecture 'Science as a Vocation' remains relevant a century later. Drawing on fieldwork on the revival of psychedelic science, the author argues that Weber provided a historically situated ideal type of vocational science for comparison with contemporary scientists, such as Swiss neuroscientist Franz X. Vollenweider, who conceived science as play. Weber also contributed to the historical sociology of science and polemicized against confusing facts and values. The article concludes by urging scholars, especially in psychedelic humanities, to cultivate value freedom as part of an epistemic virtue ethics.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Weber's 'Science as a Vocation' remains relevant for comparing early twenty-first-century scientific ethos, exemplified by psychedelic scientists who view science as play, and for its polemic on value freedom. |
Abstract
If it was indeed the fate of scientific work to become obsolete within 10–15 years, as Max Weber contended in Science as a Vocation, why does the Journal of Classical Sociology publish this article a century after publication of his famous lecture? Departing from anthropological fieldwork on the revival of psychedelic science since the 1990s, the author gives two answers. First, Weber provided a historically and culturally situated ideal type of vocational science with which we can compare and contrast the ethos of early twenty-first century scientists. The Swiss neuroscientist Franz X. Vollenweider, for example, defied the stern Protestantism of Weber’s vocational humanity and inferred from an amalgamation of psychedelic experiences and Hindu philosophemes a conception of science as play. Second, Weber not only contributed to the historical sociology of science an empirical description and conceptual analysis of turn-of-the-century scientific life in Germany and the United States but also unleashed a polemic against the confusion of facts and values. At a time when science studies and cognate fields of social research have formed a widespread consensus regarding the inseparability of description and prescription, Science as a Vocation has become a classic that offers orientation to opponents and supporters of value freedom alike. The article concludes with a plea to scholars in the nascent psychedelic humanities, which could easily be extended to anyone working between the two cultures of the sciences and the humanities, to cultivate value freedom as part of an epistemic virtue ethics.