Experiments In Democracy

I take skeptical view of experimentalism Dorf and Sabel advocate. I discuss doubts of three kinds: Doubt about idea of best practices; doubt about their understanding of scientific experimentation; and doubt about value of Constitutional reform they envision. Their program reduces to competitive rituals and managerial predation. imperative of comparison threatens practices with destruction. Benchmarking machine to destroy divergence. To compel such comparison with force of law would be catastrophe for ecology of human practices, an enforced monoculturalism would make infinitely easier to manage at price of making it infinitely less democratic.There no such thing as democracy; there are number of more or less democratic experiments.- Walter LippmannWe are experiments: let us also want to be them!- NietzscheI am like gambler, & love wild experiment.-Charles Darwin1. Dewey's Democratic ExperimentsAccording to John Dewey, recognition that natural energy can be systematically applied, through experimental observation, to satisfaction and multiplication of concrete wants the greatest single discovery ever imported into life of man - save perhaps discovery of language.1 All our arts and technologies are built on this principle, and modem science too. Indeed, success of this science has taught us to replace value of certainty with willingness to experiment and be guided by evidence. However, disappointing fact these innovations in art of knowledge have yet to find their proper response in education, government, and morals. Nothing about experimental procedures of sciences precludes their playing role in moral and political problem-solving. We should pull down barriers isolate laboratory from life-world, and carry the experimental habit into all matter of practice. Ways of knowing are currently enshrined in scientific should be carried over to the region of values.2 Anything touching life potential experiment and may be rendered hypothetical and subjected to trials and controlled modification. That desirable thing to do because, Dewey says, the future of democracy depends on the spread of scientific attitude.3This enlarged experimentation not scientism. Science not epistemologically privileged but historically distinguished, an especially well-refined set of intellectual procedures with proven track record in problem solving. The pragmatist sees political deliberation as continuing enterprise focused on experimentally responding to problems within context in which both previous deliberative outcomes and new considerations are operative.4 justifies new experiments not merely success of modem science and technology, however. It patent irrationality of obstacles. Barriers to experimentation are barriers to intelligence itself, an enforced stupidity mindlessly follows past. What needed intelligent examination of consequences are actually effected by inherited institutions and customs, in order there may be intelligent consideration of ways in which they are to be intelligently modified in behalf of generation of different consequences. That, Dewey says, is significant meaning of transfer of experimental from technical field of physical experience to wider field of human life.5This enlarged experimental ism follows from what Dewey says a certain logic of method can be translated out of laboratory practice and universally applied.6 He explains two principles of which he thinks lend themselves to wider application. One concepts are to be regarded as tools rather than ideal forms. It more important to be useful than to be mimetic. Experimental knowledge depends on choice of operations performed, not an object's formal suitability for cognition

Certainty · Skepticism · Value (mathematics · Philosophy and History of Science · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education

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  Marlon Barbehön•Critical Policy Studies•2021

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