Max Weber's claim that scientific work becomes obsolete within 10–15 years is challenged by the enduring relevance of his lecture "Science as a Vocation" a century later. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork on the revival of psychedelic science since the 1990s, the author argues that Weber's ideal type of vocational science offers a comparative tool for understanding contemporary scientists, such as Swiss neuroscientist Franz X. Vollenweider, who blends psychedelic experiences with Hindu philosophy to view science as play. Weber also contributed to the historical sociology of science by describing scientific life in Germany and the U.S. and by arguing for the separation of facts and values.
Fieldwork in philosophy is a second-order philosophical anthropology that examines contemporary forms of the human by studying lower-level concepts and practices. Unlike Michel Foucault's historical approach, it uses anthropological fieldwork to investigate the present. The essay reconstructs Paul Rabinow's conception of this method, illustrated through case studies: the perennial philosophy of the psychedelic renaissance, neurophilosophers in a sleep laboratory, and cultural primatologists studying human nature in the African rainforest. It concludes by advocating for reimagining anthropology as fieldwork in philosophy.