PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / December 2001ickel / POST-COMMUNIST TRANSFORMATION STUDIES Between Social Science and Social Technology Toward a Philosophical Foundation for Post-Communist Transformation Studies

This analysis examines fundamental questions at the intersection of social sci-ence and social technology as well as problems of disciplinary divisions and the challenge of cross-disciplinary cooperation. Its theoretical-empirical context is provided by post-communist transformations, a set of profound societal changes in which institutional design plays a central role. The article critically reappraises the contribution of Karl Popper’s philosophy to this problem con-text, examines neoliberalism as social science and social technology, and ex-amines the role of experts and disciplinary divisions in the reform process. Building on Mario Bunge’s social philosophy, it sketches basic elements of a cross-disciplinary approach to “social change by design.” Today it has become fashionable in the sciences to appeal to the special-ized knowledge and authority of experts, and fashionable in philoso-phy to denigrate science and rationality. Oftentimes, this denigration of science and rationality is due to a mistaken theory of science and ratio-nality—a theory which speaks of science and rationality in terms of specializations, experts, and authority. But science and rationality have really very little to do with specialization and the appeal to expert authority. On the contrary, these intellectual fashions are actually an obstacle to both. For just as the fashionable thinker is a prisoner of his fashion, the expert is a prisoner of his specialization. And it is the free-dom from intellectual fashions and specializations that makes science and rationality possible. (Popper 1994, ix