The Mission of the Scientist Yesterday and Today: On the Centenary of Max Weber’s Wissenschaft als Beruf

ABSTRACT

The idea of a special role of the scientist in modern society was proposed by Max Weber in his lecture ‘Science as a Vocation’. Weber saw the scientific community as an entity possessing the exclusive ability to produce ‘objective’ (and not subjective evaluative) statements about nature and society. In this sense, representatives of science (in its Pythagorean setup, which Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others used to share), viewed themselves as people endowed with the highest mission to implement the Divine Plan for the design of the universe and development of society. This century-old idea of the sovereign right of scientists to determine trends of scientific and technological development has widespread relevance in today’s situation, in which science is becoming increasingly professionalized, while the individual motivations of the scientist and his idea of his special mission are losing their significance. This article focuses on the actualization of Max Weber’s ideas on science in modern conditions. A substantiation is provided to the fact that the concept of scientific cognition in Weber’s interpretation conceptually bundles together all other basic concepts of social philosophy, primarily time (scientific), objectivity, sociality, truth, and values.

KEYWORDS:

• Max Weber
• scientific cognition
• science as a vocation
• the profession of the scientist

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See relatively recent empirical research on the structural and motivational factors of the production of scientific knowledge, see Erickson (2002, 33–55).

2. On the current academic perspectives of a young American scientist in the context of Weber’s overall understanding of science, see Hacket (1990, 241–279).

3. Today, this distinction is usually interpreted in two different, but related contexts: in the context of the discussion of how the evolution of cultural and historical values influences social sciences; and also in the framework of the ‘metanormative’ discussion of how moral and political attitudes are justified sociologically (Caffa 1998).

4. See also alternative attempts at a system-theoretical interpretation of the Weberian approach to science: (Goddard 1973, 1–22).

5. Unlike, say, politics, where the action of a certain Other causes (subordinates) the action of a certain Ego irrespective of his sensual experiences. Or, unlike art, where the action of the Other causes a ‘pure’ (activity-nonrelated) sensual experiences of a certain Ego. Or, unlike love and friendship, where the Ego, by its actions, tries to cause emotions in a certain Other.

6. According to which ‘classifications of things reproduce classifications of humans.’

7. ‘For it is extremely hazardous for a young scholar without funds to expose himself to the conditions of the academic career.’ An American scientist, on the contrary, ‘begins with a seemingly secure position, for he draws a fixed salary’ (Weber 2002).

8. ‘Every one of us knows that what he has done in science will go out of date … This is the fate; moreover, this is the essence of scientific work, … and this is exactly its specific difference from all other elements of culture’ (Weber 2017).

9. ‘The fate [of a scientific work] differs deeply from the fate of artistic endeavor. Scientific work is plaited into the movement of progress. On the contrary, in this sense, no progress exists in the field of art’ (Weber 2017).

10. ‘… almost every one of them [colleagues of political economy] will hold a different answer in readiness to the question: How does it happen that one can buy something for money? The savage knows what he does in order to get his daily food and which institutions serve him in this pursuit. The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not, therefore, indicate increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives’ (Weber 2017).

11. See an interesting attempt to consider the Weberian idea of disenchanting as a false narrative. ‘Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed,’ the author believes (Josephson-Storm 2017, 269–301).

12. 'Abraham, or some peasant of the past, died “old and satiated with life,“ because for him there remained no puzzles he might wish to solve … Whereas civilized man, placed in the midst of the continuous enrichment of culture by ideas, knowledge, and problems, may become “tired of life“ but not “satiated with life.“ … And because death is meaningless, civilized life as such is meaningless; by its very “progressiveness“ it gives death the imprint of meaninglessness. Throughout his late novels one meets with this thought as the keynote of the Tolstoian art'. (Weber 2017).

13. On the reaction of neo-Kantians of the Baden School to this speech, see Antonovski and Barash (2018).

14. We disagree with I.T. Kasavin’s opinion (see his article in this issue) that Beruf is in the first place a profession and only secondly, a vocation. In our opinion, the main connotation of this term in the report is closer to the notion of the mission of the scientist, a vocation, or, literally, a call, to which a researcher must respond one way or another. When a scientist is summoned to the rostrum, he responds to this formalized ‘call’ (Ruf). Note that Weber said quite little about profession (and only in the beginning of the article) and this part has not been translated into Russian because it seemed insignificant or, maybe, too complimentary of the United States.

15. In this regard, an interesting interpretation of Weber’s work was proposed (Gumbrecht 2012, 153–154). According to this approach, Weber fixes two weakly linked goals of science: one practical and the second fundamentally innovative. It is with the latter goal that the desired genuine motivation of the scientist is related, while the university imposes on the researcher mainly practical goals. In this sense, this Weber Manifesto turns out to be a (quite modern) call for the return of science to its true fundamental research task.

16. His rejection of trinitarianism and the divinity of the Son of God speaks in favor of this version. Newton did not know his father and lived with his stepfather; he tried to calculate the date of the Second Coming to find out whether he was the Messiah charged with communicating the Logos, the Word of God (= the laws of motion), to people.

17. True, analytic philosophy of mind speaks about a wish-maker, i.e. the producer of a wish or need, as a ‘substitute’ of the object in a value-based judgment.

18. Note that this understanding of the status of a work of art contradicts the general relativistic pathos relative to values of cultures. What some see as a work of art can be a mere black square for others. It is not quite clear why Weber abandons his universal relativism here.

19. Despite Weber’s seeming radicalism in changing his view of science, some researchers believe that this Weberian approach is a continuation of the idea of the classical German university (Oevermann 2005, 15–49), which was created by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schleiermacher (Schleiermacher 2018, 215–235).

20. On discussions about the concept of modern science in Russia, see Lektorskii (2013).

21. On such social constructivism, see Lektorskii (2008).

22. As an illustration, let us recall Feigl’s words about Weber’s-type temporal relativism, which he himself rejects in his thesis about specialization. ‘I am not impressed with such purely speculative possibilities which the opponents of empiricism indefatigably keep inventing with shockingly abstruse supersophistication! Thousands of physical or chemical constants figure in … essentially unchanged … empirical laws. The refraction indices of countless transparent substances (such as the various types of glass, quartz, water, alcohol, etc., etc.), the specific weights, specific heats, thermal and electric conductivities of myriads of substances … are all intact and are all needed for the testing of higher-level theories’ (Feigl 1974).

23. For more detail on the notion of dimensions of scientific communication, see (Antonovskiy 2017; Kasavin 2014).

24. However, below, in comparing science and theology, Weber, somewhat illogically, reproves theology this time for the same drawback, the inability to reflect on its prerequisites, distinguishing thus theology and science.

25. For more detail about the relation of scientific and political-legal normativity, see (Kasavin 2017; Barash 2017; Ascher and Roberts 2015).

26. About practical implementation, see (Antonovskiy 2017, 2017b).

27. This area of judgments can be characterized as an interactive zone of a kind (Kasavin 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation [19-18-00494].

Notes on contributors

Alexander Yu Antonovskiy

Alexander Yu Antonovskiy Graduated from Moscow State University in Philosophy. Received PhD (Doctor in Philosophy) from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2016. Implemented several international research projects on the sociology of knowledge and science as a visiting researcher of leading universities: Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Germany), University of Giessen (Germany), University of Karlsruhe (Germany), University of Bielefeld (Germany), University of Albert Ludwig (Germany), Columbia University, Department of Sociology (USA), University of Eberhard-Karl (Germany). Served as a managing secretary of the Journal ‘Epistemology & Philosophy of Science’.

As a Leading Researcher of the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, headed research projects on the sociology of science. As a Professor of Moscow State University, leads the implementation of scientific projects of the Department of Social Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Moscow State University.

Translated into Russian, and adapted classical texts on the sociology of knowledge by F.D.E. Schleiermacher, M. Weber, K. Hübner, N. Elias, N. Luhmann. Author of several books on social philosophy of science: ‘Niklas Luhmann: Epistemological Introduction to Theory of Social Systems’ (2007, in Russian), ‘Socioepistemology’ (2011, in Russian), ‘Communicative Philosophy of Knowledge’ (2015, in Russian), ‘Systemically-Communicative Theory: Science and Protest’ (2019, in Russian).

Raisa Ed Barash

Raisa Ed Barash Graduated from Moscow State University in Political Science. Received the PhD (Candidate in Political Science) from Moscow State University in 2010.

Is currently a Senior Researcher in the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Participated in several research projects of the Russian Academy of Sciences, devoted to features of mass public attitudes and perceptions in modern society.

Interested in the sociology of identity, knowledge and science. Translated and adapted foreign-language papers on the sociology of knowledge into Russian.