The Value of Science

Starting Point

This note asks why scientists do research. There are two answers given: Curiosity and the welfare of human beings. Kaczynski, in his book “Industrial Society and Its Future”, denied both outright. He argued that both are imaginary, and it is the desire to pass the power process that actually motivates scientists. In his argument, human beings tend to satisfy themselves by setting a goal and achieving it with effort. However, they replace the satisfaction with “surrogate activity” since modern industrial society deprives them. Moreover, scientific research is such a surrogate activity, and is nothing but a post hoc rationalization on top of that.

Values contaminated by the Power Process

This opinion can be reformulated as: The value of science was there and is contaminated by the power process. The very act of “creating value” stems from the subjective experience of the power process. Thus, it can be further refined as follows: The value of science was “originally there.” When the power process intervenes, the value of science fades into the background, and the power process comes to the forefront.

Analogy as Empty Set and Epistemological Inaccessibility

The most precise analogy to the value of science is the empty set ($\emptyset$). The empty set contains no elements, yet it exists as a set defined in itself. In addition, emptiness is not an absence, but the way in which existence is defined. The intervention of the power process is the act of adding elements to this set. When ${\emptyset}$ is filled with ${\emptyset, a, b, c, … }$, one can no longer see the value of pure science. This is because the very process of attempting to observe it is likely to be another power process.

Here, when one says that pure independence from the power process is impossible, it is an epistemological inaccessibility. “Cannot exist” and “cannot be seen” are different. The latter is a limitation of perception, not the absence of existence. Just as Kant’s Ding an sich did, the unobservable empty set does not tell us what the value of science is. It is only introduced as a boundary concept that reminds one that what one sees is not everything.

The Reason for Doing Science

Here, one arrives at the most difficult question. If the value is the empty set, purity is unobservable, and contamination is inevitable, why does one have to do science? Kaczynski’s answer is simple: There is no obligation to do it. The concept of “duty as a scientist” itself is an ideological narrative planted by the system. In addition, the moment one feels a sense of obligation indicates the evidence of the contamination. This answer is sharp as a diagnosis. However, it cannot be put into practice. Kaczynski’s own life is proof of this. The answer to the question “what to do” he showed to the world was a cabin in Montana and a mail bomb: Proclamations, show trials, intellectual confrontation with the FBI. By denying the system, he paradoxically stood at the center of the most dramatic scene the system had ever created. This is nothing but a surrogate activity when read in his framework. One can see that the pure denial of the system ultimately leads to the dead end of nihilism.

Rebelling against the contamination

One needs a different way. If one views the value as being inherent in the “process itself” when the power process is expressed in the form of research, then the obligation becomes preserving the authenticity of the process. The reason for doing science is therefore not to produce knowledge, but because it serves as one of the few remaining autonomous power processes in modern society.

This perspective is structurally similar to Camus’s Sisyphus: an attitude that does not seek to resolve the absurdity, but rather asks how to live within it. Then, only one obligation remains: the obligation to negate the addition of elements to one’s set. Not for the sake of the outcome, but for the authenticity of the process. Rebelling while acknowledging contamination is more human than pure denial. This is because it embraces the paradox rather than resolving it. To remember the pure value, the empty set, even though knowing that it has already been contaminated by power. – This is a more difficult and perhaps more honest attitude than nihilism.

An open question

However, pitfalls remain even with this attitude. When the rebellion becomes a habit, it becomes another artificial motivation. Even the will to protect the authenticity of the process can be a voice of the system that says, “One must be a good scientist.” That is, the final conclusion in this framework may be an attitude to continuous questioning itself, not a concrete answer.

To stand before the empty set is to face emptiness. However, without rushing to fill the emptiness, constantly doubting the elements that contaminate, and yet not stopping the quest – that is perhaps the most honest attitude humans can take in a contaminated modern society.