Focusing on Nicholas Maxwell’s thesis that “science, properly understood, provides us the methodological key to the salvation of humanity”, the article discusses Maxwell’s aim oriented empiricism and his conception of Wisdom Inquiry as advocated in Maxwell’s (2009b, pp.1–56) essay entitled “How Can Life of Value Best Flourish in the Real World?” (in Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell 2009, edited by Leemon McHenry) and in Maxwell (2004 & 2009a).

This paper is about the rationality of methodological variance, where changes in method and methodology of science may be warranted/triggered by the urgency of finding alternatives to the methodology currently in fashion that fails to address the relevant and pressing problems. It deals obliquely with Maxwell‘s criticisms of Pandit, offering only a bare sketch of appraisal of his methodological proposals of AOE, AOR and WI, not only as going beyond SR but as better alternatives to dominant methodologies such as that (...) of Karl R. Popper, without rehearsing or recycling Maxwell‘s well-known arguments in great detail. More importantly, how these proposals improve upon the eighteenth century Enlightenment idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social/cultural progress towards an enlightened world, i.e., a world that is sensitive to problems of living and human well-being, is discussed. Having dealt with such problems in Pandit, the present appraisal is limited to the rationality of understanding, or better of rethinking, academic inquiry within the wider contexts and reaches of wisdom inquiry, with particular reference to the pressing global problems including those problems that are traceable to ETS progress, which is itself often found to violate the principle of interconnectedness across nature. (shrink)

For a philosopher with an abiding interest in the nature of objective knowledge systems in science, what could be more important than trying to think in terms of those very subjects of such knowledge to which men like Galileo, Newton, Max Planck, Einstein and others devoted their entire lifetimes? In certain respects, these systems and their structures may not be beyond the grasp of a linguistic conception of science, and scientific change, which men of science and philosophy have advocated in (...) various forms in recent times. But certainly it is wrong-headed to think that one's conception of science can be based on an identification of its theories with languages in which they may be, my own alternatively, framed. There may be more than one place in book (1983: 87) where they may seem to get confused with each other, quite against my original intentiens. The distinction between the objec tive knowledge systems in science and the dynamic frameworks of the languages of the special individual sciences, in which their growth can be embedded in significant ways, assumes here, therefore, much impor tance. It must be recognized that the problems concerning scientific change, which these systems undergo, are not just problems concerning language change. (shrink)

Karl R. Popper was a great admirer and friend of Hans Albert. What is it exactly that connected them? Answer to this question, barely a sketch, will also answer the question why and how I came to know Hans Albert. Within the normative methodological tradition set forth in Rene Descartes’ Regulae and Discourse on the Method, Karl R. Popper and Hans Albert converged on critical rationalism, the generalized version of Popper’s deductivist-falsificationist methodology of science.

In this article I discuss the problem of how we can change our world into a _wiser world_ that is driven by a culture of wisdom inquiry (CWI), i.e., a world that frees humanity from a looming totalitarian catastrophe. How best can we interrogate the traditional wisdom of culture (TWC) that is responsible for the academic institutions of learning, among other kinds of institutions, dogmatically and solely aiming at the acquisition of knowledge and technological prowess (technologisches koennen), instead of the (...) promotion of wisdom and human well-being? What kind of strategic transformations of institutional design, policy and goals within diverse institutions, particularly academic institutions of learning, regionally and globally, are imperative? This article argues from the principle of universal interconnectedness across nature/universe and the fundamental asymmetry of human well-being interests and nature’s well-being interests. From this, the development of a _culture of wisdom inquiry_ as an overarching (allumfassend) methodology of institutional change from within at two levels of analysis is proposed, viz., (1) at the level of the ecological–economic analysis of safeguarding nature’s abundant ecosystems from human greed; and (2) at the level of the transformation of the educational, academic _and_ political–economic institutions, as well as international institutions, that must _be_ dedicated to human well-being. (shrink)