The Ascent of Instrumentalism in the Natural Sciences and its Consequences

We discuss instrumentalism as a component of the social changes that accompanied the second industrial revolution, following particularly the case of Germany. These changes constituted a departure from the Enlightenment tradition of natural philosophers towards a new approach to knowledge. We claim that instrumentalism cannot be separated from the disciplining of science that produced the sciences and further specialism, nor can it be separated from the intervention of the State, in representation of society, that conceived science as an economic resource, invested in it, in its teaching and use, making scientific knowledge an instrument of massive use, massively developed. But science as ``economy of thought'' (a view developed by Mach and others) has collateral casualties; ranking first among them is: free reasoning. The changes in education implemented in Prussia and the personalities displayed by the leaders of the new ethos of science produced (as expected) social conditions in which the development of critical reason was impeded. Only instrumental reason developed, thus producing technoscience, a constant development of new techniques (instruments) and a decline in the human constitution of the intellectual elite. The distance between the professional graduated from the universities and logic machines decreased by the improvement of the second and the decline in autonomous, self-controlled reasoning of the former.