The republic of science and its citizens: what role may humanities play within the popperian framework?

Abstract

This essay aims at underlining Ian Jarvie’s specific contribution to the study of some of Karl Popper’s ideas in The Poverty of Historicism. It will also show how he goes further than Popper. Jarvie acknowledges the difficulty of writing about Popper’s view of the differences between the natural and the social sciences because Popper never addresses the critique of anti-naturalistic doctrines. He offers instead a critique of methodological essentialism and an apology of a certain nominalism. Popper shares these two ideas with Friedrich A. Hayek; however, Popper minimizes Hayek’s subjectivism of the social sciences. Looking through Hayek’s subjectivism, this chapter argues that the difference in method is greater than it seems, and that something akin to a Republic of Letters should be built alongside the Republic of Science, without ignoring the inherent faults in these republics that Jarvie underlines.