SUSAN HAACK
647
Mendel"-he will be less interested in the merits of capitalism than in
how the metaphor is cashed out (sorry!) in literal terms, and how well
the resulting account stands up.
"How well" implies, as it is meant to, that a metaphor may be a
good guide, or a poor one. Unlike the radical rhetoric of science that
Perutz protests, a reasonable rhetoric of science would acknowledge
that rationality can work through epistemically efficient transmission
of information,
or
be hampered by epistemically inefficient transmis–
sion; that scientific terms may take on information,
or
misinformation,
and sometimes-most often in the social sciences, but not only there–
evaluative coloration; and so on. For science is neither sacred nor a
confidence trick, but a thoroughly human enterprise: ragged and
uneven, fallible and imperfect, but for all that, remarkably successful,
as human enterprises go.
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