On Richard Rorty's Cultural Philosophy Of Science

Richard Rorty is an American pragmatist philosopher with solid theoretical background in analytic philosophy. He examined science from the outside of the traditional philosophy of science, that is, from the cultural, philosophical and especially humanistic research perspectives, therefore he was often mistakenly blamed for anti-science. Aiming at harmonizing culture of science and culture of humanity on his platform of "pan-literary culture" by "degrading natural science and upgrading human science" to the positions they should be in, Rorty adopted a series of philosophical strategies, which demonstrates the characteristics of Cultural Philosophy of Science (CPS), thus makes him a representative cultural philosopher of science. To study Rorty's CPS is not only meaningful in mapping Rorty's philosophical ideas as a whole, but also significant in helping to expand and enrich the research dimensions of philosophy of science, providing a new vision in harmonizing the tradition of scientific rationality with humanistic spirit in western philosophy.The historical background of Rorty's CPS is the historical, cultural and postmodern turn of western philosophy of science, while the theoretical sources can be taken as the tradition of Anglo-American philosophy and Continental Philosophy. Since the 1950s-1960s, the historical, societal, cultural, and anthropological study of science became the new trend of philosophy of science, and thus provided the golden opportunity for Rorty to develop his CPS. In analytical philosophy, pragmatic philosophy and continental philosophy, Wittgenstein's theory of "language games" and "family resemblance", Quine's "holistic view of knowledge", James' "humanistic view" of religion and truth, Dewey's criticism of traditional philosophy, Nietzsche's "perspectivism" and Heidegger's "poetic philosophy" are the theoretical foundation of Rorty's CPS, enlightening him to uproot metaphysics, to deprive science of its superior epistemological status to other culture, and to value the equality and conversation between science and humanity.The primary content of Rorty's CPS is to change the traditional philosophical paradigm through subverting metaphysics and reconstructing "epistemological PHILOSOPHY" as "philosophy", with an aim of shaking the philosophical foundations of science as the representative of knowledge. Rorty stood against any essence beyond language in ontological sense with his "contextualism" and "pan-relations theory", foundationalism that sought eternal knowledge framework with his "behaviorism" and representationalism that believed in reality reflected by human mind in terms of epistemology, dualism in the sense of methodology with "new fuziness", sparing no effort in eradicating metaphysics. He replaced epistemology, research and systematic philosophy with hermeneutics, conversation and edifying philosophy, so as to encourage that eternal knowledge and truth gave way to the free and open hermeneutics, and to the continuous conversation and cooperation between different cultural paradigms. In this way, Rorty meant to deprive science of its epistemological dominancy on other disciplines, and to promote the diversified development of human cultures.In the new paradigm of philosophy he set up, Rorty opposed to scientism, and regarded science as a tool to achieve human wellbeing, a part of the whole culture, as well as a genre of literature, based on which he criticized the four core issues of traditional philosophy of science. By cancelling demarcation of science, abandoning correspondence theory of truth, proposing non-scientific realism, and rejecting the superiority of scientific methodology, Rorty endeavored to challenge the tradition of philosophy of science that justified science as a supreme culture, and to cancel the philosophical presupposition of science as the king of culture due to its special relations with truth, reality or its superior methodology. By substituting "rationality 3" for "rationality 2", solidarity for objectivity, Rorty redefined rationality and objectivity and endowed humanity with equal quality of being objective and rational, in order to achieve the core of his CPS-equal prosperity and harmony between scientific culture and humanistic culture. In this way, Rorty didn't mean to help literature usurp as the new king of culture. Rather, he encouraged different disciplines to be independent and equal, maintaining conversation and harmony on his platform of holistic "pan-literary culture", with the ultimate goal of achieving human happiness and wellbeing.The remarkable features of Rorty's CPS can be summarized as postmodernistic, pragmatic, humanistic and absorbing rational factors of cultural studies of science. Rorty's CPS is the standpoint for him to reform western philosophical and cultural tradition. It goes beyond the orthodox of traditional philosophy of science to provide open spaces for multi-perspective philosophical researches on science, manifesting meanwhile its limitation of relying too much on contingency and observing science from an onlooker's perspective. Enlightened by Rorty's CPS, we should take the development of humanistic culture into account when promoting our comprehensive national power scientifically, maintaining proper tension between science and humanity, attaching equal importance to knowledge, truth, reality, beauty and good.