GIUSEPPE GANGEMI

Operazionismo, democrazia e valori

N. 150

Summary — Francis Bacon elaborated the project of an ideal science, completely expressed in operations, to be realized when inductive rules should be discovered. Before him, "modern" medieval logicians had adopted operationism in order to elaborate the idea of a fallible science and to construct an ideal world in which no one were completely in truth and no ore completely in heresy. The modernity of medieval logicians consists in the fallibilism (of the operative science they proposed) which has been accepted, and developed, by Vico, Peirce, Dewey, Weber, etc..

In the author’s opinion, there are two ontological knots which prevent the realization of a science completely expressed in operations, i.e. of a science completely under control: the problem of what is the nature of concept and the problem of what is the nature of logic.

These knots need decisions which cannot be expressed in operations. Because of this, three different operative strategies have been proposed: a gnosiological, a logical and a methodological one.

In this century, Weber has shown that the operative ideal of science cannot be realized because the more the knowledge of a context, the more the necessity of new definitions of concepts and Wittgenstein has demonstrated that a completely operative science (based on a completely formal language) is of no help in the aim to communicate about the real problems of mankind. In the author’s opinion, this means that gnosiological and logical operations are tied to the poverty of sense. Richness of sense requires methodological operations, i.e. a fallible strategy to express in operations the whole context.