Eugen Rosenstock on Research vs. Knowledge – Revealing Insights into the Science Crisis

„Perhaps the following current example can best illustrate this point. We do not live in the clerical age, where lay people and clergy fought each other; nor do we live in the state-political age, when state officials and the people fought over democracy. The free growth area in the scientific age lies in a new pair of tensions, namely between research and knowledge. This pair of conflicts is still largely unclear. We scholars all disguise ourselves as researchers, just as the old clergy behaved like saints in order to hold back the division between clergy and people. This does not change the fact that today the danger of the sciences becoming ossified is looming large. Scholars are competent and therefore completely incapable of loving the overthrow of their virtue. They are science officials, and they always oppose amateurs. But since research is as much a part of science as the Holy Spirit is part of the Church, there is a great deal of pseudo-research competing with the progress of free research; and only the former is conscientiously supported by official bodies and foundations, because only this appears worthy of support to the professional officials of science. Such harmful research acts according to the principle: Wash my fur, but don't get me wet. It researches cancer according to Pasteur's outdated ideas, as if it were rabies. It examines religion according to Wellhausen's ideas, but because it bases its research on ancient authority, it is extensively funded. As long as scholars and researchers both remain poor, genuine research has prospects. That was the case until 1900. Today, the prognosis for research is deteriorating because grateful peoples are generously funding “science.” Thus, power is shifting to the side of the knowledgeable, against the researchers. Our doctor factories and Rockefeller fellows are eloquent witnesses to this.“

Eugen RosenstockEugen Rosenstock analyzes the tense relationship between research and knowledge, warning against pseudo-research and ossification in sciences.
PreviousNext

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy was a German social philosopher and historian known for his critical analysis of science and society.

This quote highlights the tensions between research and knowledge in the scientific age and warns of the dangers of pseudo-research and ossification of science when bureaucracy prevails.


Translation or original: 🇩🇪Click here

Quelle: Hier klicken

i

3.0 / 5
*Advertisement | Affiliate links | Amazon affiliate
Literature on press

Quote by Eugen Rosenstock about the tension between research and knowledge in science.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888–1973) was a German social philosopher, historian, and writer. His works include critiques of science, social analysis, and the impact of institutional structures on research and knowledge. He is regarded as a sharp critic of academic and bureaucratic systems of his time.

Quote by Matthias Burchardt about the corruption of science through third-party funding at universitiesCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
0 Comments
"Science itself is dead. The university has become a brothel of third-party funding. I mean that quite seriously — a colleague of mine once said this when her rector at a university in the Ruhr region drove away in a sports car wearing a gold chain. We each have our little room there, and we make a career if we let ourselves be used by whoever provides the funding. In other words, the agenda and the criteria for quality are outsourced. The criterion of truth becomes corrupted by the criterion of external funding. Not everyone who accepts external funding behaves this way, of course. But the metaphor of the brothel was meant to illustrate that love can be corrupted when it becomes something that can be bought — and that science can be corrupted when it becomes something that can be bought." Matthias Burchardt
Read more
Quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower about the dangers of scientific domination and technocratic elite in societyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
0 Comments
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system–ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society." Dwight D. Eisenhower
Read more
Quote by Yuval Noah Harari about the relationship between science, power, and truthCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
0 Comments
"I mean science, as an institution, is interested in gaining the power — to gain control over the world — to be able to gain control over diseases, over the human body, over the environment, over rivers and animals and forests. You have to submit a grant to somebody to fund, it all comes down to money, in many cases. It’s also an institution- If you’re a freelance scientist, you just explore the truth. Okay. But in an institution, a university, you need money to finance so you submit a research grant, and you have to convince the authority not of the truth. You have to convince the authority that what you want to do will somehow make us more powerful. Will somehow enable us to produce a new weapon. Will somehow enable us to produce more food. Will somehow enable us to gain control over previously uncontrollable, or deadly disease. And this is really what gets the money. Of course, it means to also be truth to some extent. Does it work and who wants it?" Yuval Noah Harari
Read more
Carl Sagan quote about science as a way of thinking and the decline of America's intellectual vitalityCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
0 Comments
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreshadowing of an America in the time of my children or grandchildren – when the United States is a service and information economy; when Almost all major manufacturing industries have moved to other countries; when terrible technological powers are in the hands of too few, and no one representing the public interest can understand the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agenda. Lost or deliberately questioned by those in power; when, holding our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our vital faculties decline, in distinguishing between what feels good and what is true Unable, we go back to superstition and darkness, almost without noticing. America’s downfall is most evident in the slow decay of real content in the most influential media, 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), credible presentations on lowest common denominator programming, pseudoscience and superstition, but especially From a kind of celebration of ignorance." Dr. Carl Edward Sagan
Read more
Quote by Richard Feynman explaining why science is not dogma and the importance of questioning scientific claims.Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
0 Comments
"Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation (…) When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?” It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. (…) The experts who are leading you may be wrong. (…) I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television-words, books, and so on-are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science." Richard Phillips Feynman
Read more
Carl Sagan quote about the importance of science and technology understanding in democracyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
0 Comments
"We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? ... Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along." Carl Sagan
Read more
0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Thomas Sowell Quote: The Danger of Wrong Decisions and Lack of Accountabili...Quote by Thomas Sowell about the dangers of making decisions without accountabilityCopyright © yoice.net – Quote ArtworkQuote by Jeffrey Tucker about the political system being a conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population.Copyright © yoice.net – Quote ArtworkJeffrey Tucker Reveals: The Political System as the Biggest Conspiracy – Understand...