Logic, methodology and philosophy of science VIII proceedings of the eighth international congress of logic, methodology and philosophy of science, and philosophy of science proceedings) ( PDFDrive ) 68

J.E Fenstad et al., eds., Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science VIII Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.(1989) 49-61 ETHICS AND SCIENCE EVANDRO AGAZZI Univ of Fribourg, Switzerland and Univ of Genoa, Italy The autonomy of science The modern age -historically understood as the time that followed the twilight of the Middle Ages-may be characterized as the age of the emergence of several “autonomies” in different sectors of the spiritual and practical life of man Such autonomies had in previous centuries known perhaps only one major example, when Thomas Aquinas clearly advocated the full legitimacy of investigations through “natural” reason (i.e philosophical investigations) as compared to “supernatural” revelation (that constitutes the basis of theology) In this spirit, Machiavelli vindicated the autonomy of politics, Galilei the autonomy of science, British liberals the autonomy of economics, Kant and the Romantics the autonomy of art, and so on These vindications originally expressed a particular stress laid upon the specificity of the corresponding domains, which entailed the determination of purely internal criteria for the fulfilment of their restricted and specific goals Thus, for example, Machiavelli identified politics with the art of “acquiring, maintaining and expanding the State”, Galilei conceived natural science as the “investigation of the true constitution of the world”, A Smith presented economics as “an inquiry into the nature and causes of wealth”, Kant, and especially the Romantics, elaborated a new concept of the fine arts as a pure creation of beauty, and the consequence was that criteria were explicitly o r implicitly provided for judging when an action is politically wise, a statement scientifically correct, a behaviour economically right, and a creative work artistically valid Of course it would be wrong to say that proposals for circumscribing and specifying the domain and features of certain disciplines or activities had been lacking before that time What 49