Science, Normative and Positive
Let me suggest that the question is meaningless. Every science, insofar as it really is a science, is both positive and normative. Every science, insofar as it is a science, must be “normalized” to some criteria of truth. These truths will arise from two sources: an internal and an external source. The internal criteria involve a science’s proper subject matter and methodology. But these criteria are insufficient to found any science as a science. In addition, there must be external criteria of truth, and these truths can only come from one or more higher sciences. In the absence of such an external check, the science will merely be circular, dependent on nothing but itself and disconnected from the hierarchy of truth. Thus, for example, biology is responsible to chemistry, chemistry to physics, physics to metaphysics. No biologist can violate the laws of chemistry, and no chemist can reach a conclusion contrary to physics. Thus every science is responsible to its own methodology (and therefore “positive”) and to the higher sciences (and therefore “normative”). Every science has, therefore, both its own proper autonomy, based on its subject matter and methodology and its own proper connection to the near sciences, based on the hierarchy of truth. In speaking of the autonomy of a science, we should note that it is only a relative autonomy, not an absolute one. A scientist’s obligation to be faithful to his proper method does not relieve him of the obligation to higher truths. No science can provide its own criteria of truth without being merely circular. When a science attempts to do so, one of two things happens. The first possibility is that the science breaks up into mutually warring camps whose disputes can never be resolved because there are no accepted criteria of truth by which to resolve them. The second possibility is that the science becomes merely dogmatic, and no rational examination of its premises is permitted. In economics, both things have happened: the science is divided into warring factions with no arbiter of truth among them; the principles of the various factions have become dogmatic statements with little connection to reality.
I am puzzled by what is written here--if we were to use an Aristotelian-Thomistic account of scientific knowledge, the division would be between speculative and practical sciences, and one could make a correspondence to descriptive and normative sciences. I would deny that every science is both--theology is a science that would be both, but this does not seem to be the case with practical sciences like ethics or economics. These practical sciences may be founded upon "speculative truths," or principles that are grasped or intuited through the virtue of nous or understanding, but that does not mean that they are "speculative sciences," as St. Thomas understands the term.
Moreover, when we speak of something as normative, we are not talking about it adhering to criteria of truth. Rather, we mean that it is normative relative to us, it tells us what to do, it provides norms for our behavior.
wiki: normative science; positive science
Perhaps Dr. Médaille is trying to avoid problems associated with foundationalism, but his exposition of the criteria of truth has difficulties. What are the "criteria" for truth in scientia? Formal and material logic. (Which seem to have been combined by him into internal criteria.) I The only possible external check would be something Divinely Revealed--or Metaphysics with regards to first principles. But Metaphysics does not directly verify as "true" what we know about the physical world through nous or understanding. It can only show that an erroneous understanding of the material reality is false, and this by drawing upon what the opponent does know and concedes about the material universe. If the formal structure of the argument is valid, but an opponent does not assent to the conclusion or the premises, then our 'intuitive' knowledge of reality must be the arbiter.
Thus, for example, biology is responsible to chemistry, chemistry to physics, physics to metaphysics.
And while the dependence of the sciences that he outlines here may be laudable in so far as it accords a privileged place to metaphysics, ultimately I think it is incorrect, since there is no real distinction between the various "branches" of natural philosophy--this is not a case of subalternation. There are specialized areas of study within natural philosophy, or phusike, but they are all united in natural philosophy. Also, one needs to be careful not to be reductionistic, as if higher-level entities are completely comprehensible through lower-level entities. This would be to deny reality (the existence and behavior of higher-level entities cannot be completely explained by the lower-level entities which are their components), and thereby get rid of the formal cause. One can say that higher-level entities are partially explained by the natures of the lower-level entities (~virtual powers), but this is not all there is to them.
More thoughts later if I have time.
Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification (Stanford ...
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