The Social Disengagement of Scientific Empiricism in Ideological Perspective

Why did scientific empiricism go through the social disengagement in the middle of the 20th century and transform scientific philosophy into a professional discipline? First, anticommunist attacked against universities and intellectuals in the socio-cultural context, which resulted in a climate of fear that made many intellectuals nervous and cautious. R. Carnap and P. Frank directly experienced the pressures in the form of anticommunist investigations undertaken by Federal Bureau of Investigation. Second, in academic circles the values and methods embedded in the Unity of Science Movement were questioned and accused as totalitarian by the philosopher H. Kallen. In addition, Frank and his philosophy of science were publicly criticized in the journal of Philosophy of Science in 1959, and even claimed Frank had converted to neo-Thomist. Under this circumstance, the attitude of the main representatives of scientific empiricism began to change, the external funding became unsustainable, and there was a serious division within the discipline, which eventually led to the social disengagement of scientific empiricism.