Well-Ordered Science
A Desirable Vision or an Escapist Fallacy?

In my talk, I will critically discuss Philip Kitcher’s concept of ‚Well-Ordered Science.‘ Kitcher (2011, p. 105) asks, „If contemporary Science, and the public system of knowledge in which it is embedded, is to serve the purposes of the citizens of a democratic society, what kinds of investigations should be pursued?“ Kitcher’s panacea is tutoring since he locates the trouble spot in a ‚vulgar‘ – or untutored – democracy. I will discuss two problematic aspects of Kitcher’s vision of the public-science interface. First, the concept of tutoring implicitly assumes the existence of the Scientific Knowledge (with a capital S and K); it ‚black-boxes‘ the process of knowledge production. As a consequence, Kitcher implicitly assumes that value judgments only play a role in choosing kinds of investigations. I conclude that the Scientific Knowledge does not exist. In line with feminist scholars such as Martin, Hrdy, or Douglas I argue that the process of knowledge production does and should include non-epistemic values and value judgments; in other words, the production of scientific knowledge must not exclude the demos to not fall into a state of ‚disciplined democracy.‘ Such a conception furthermore demonstrates the flawed understanding of tutoring, which represents a linear transfer of knowledge from science to society and follows an ideal of control. Secondly, I will show that the idea of a rational consensus – as proposed by Kitcher – is fundamentally misleading. A rational consensus cannot exist; moreover, even as an ideal, such a conception undermines pluralism and democracy by tendency.