6 - The Formal Institutions of Science

Summary

Scientific activities are conducted in territories that are controlled by states which have the power to enforce specific rules for all agents, individuals and organizations, using violence. It has taken many forms in the course of history depending on the kind and extent of resources that the rulers have had in their command and on a great array of historical contingencies. The state is the enforcement agency of the formal institutions of a society and the chapter focuses specifically on the formal institutions that regulate science. There is a natural interest by all rulers to control the production of belief systems that are useful for attaining their primary aim which is to establish their rule in the territory that they control. The arena of science is never entirely autonomous in the sense that it can be regulated entirely by the rules that scientists themselves may impose upon their own epistemic problem-solving activities, but always heteronomous, since those who control the exertion of force in a society have the final word about whether and to what extent such activities are permitted.