What is good science anyway?
In metascience, the reflexive answer to this question relies on the by-now standard Progress Studies playbook. We flip open the history books and review the annals of innovations that lifted societies out of poverty, eliminated sources of illness and decay, and made previously fantastical feats ordinary and accessible to all. For Progress Studies, science is good because it is the fuel of progress, because it provides for the “relief of man’s estate,” to quote Francis Bacon.
These are doubtless powerful and persuasive narratives, but ones rooted fundamentally in material outcomes. The message is this: science seems to provide overwhelming benefits relative to the resources invested in it, so we should seek to reverse the decline in the speed of scientific progress.
But the utilitarian calculus is not the only way to justify the importance of science. What if we were not quite so pragmatic about what science has to offer society? What if we instead rooted our desire to promote science in the inherent good of science itself?
