The Republic of Science and Its Citizens: What Role May Humanities Play Within the Popperian Framework?

This chapter considers Ian C. Jarvie’s specific contribution to the study of some of Popper’s ideas in The Poverty of Historicism. Jarvie acknowledges the difficulty of writing about Popper’s view of the differences between the natural and the social sciences, because Popper never addresses the critique of anti-naturalistic doctrines. He offers instead a critique of methodological essentialism and an apology of a certain nominalism. Popper shares these two ideas with Friedrich A. Hayek; however, Popper minimizes Hayek’s subjectivism of the social sciences. This chapter argues that the difference in method is greater than it seems and that something akin to a Republic of Letters should be built alongside the Republic of Science, without ignoring the inherent faults in these republics that Jarvie underlines.