144 6: Postmodern Th eory
Science is also used more casually in public administration, simply as a word
to lend importance to an idea or to cover a hypothesis or perspective with what
are presumed to be the qualities of science. Th e simple fact that science is used in
public administration in this way shows how important science is to all modern
disciplines and academic fi elds. In the postmodernist perspective, scientifi c or
positivist ideas “are privileged in the sense that, if derived in accordance with sci-
entifi c procedures, they are considered to give greater assurance of truth” (Farmer
1995, 71). Subjective fi rst-person understandings of public administration phe-
nomena are not so privileged, nor is the application of intuition, value judgment,
or imagination to public administration.
To the postmodernist, the scientifi c perspective is usually stylized, which is to
say simplifi ed and exaggerated for emphasis. For example, Farmer lists Donald
N. McCloskey’s “Ten Commandments of the Golden Rule of modernism in eco-
nomic and other sciences” (1985). Th ey are as follows:
- Prediction and control is the point of science.
- Only the observable implications (or predictions) of a theory matter to
its truth. - Observability entails objective, reproducible experiments; mere ques-
tionnaires. Interrogating human subjects is useless because humans
might lie. - If, and only if, an experimental implication of a theory proves false is
the theory proved false. - Objectivity is to be treasured; subjective “observation” (introspection)
is not scientifi c knowledge because the objective and subjective cannot
be linked. - Kelvin’s Dictum: “When you cannot express it in numbers, your
knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.” - Introspection, metaphysical belief, aesthetics, and the like may well
fi gure in the discovery of a hypothesis but cannot fi gure in its justifi -
cation; justifi cations are timeless, and the surrounding community of
science is irrelevant to their truth. - It is the business of methodology to demarcate scientifi c reasoning
from nonscientifi c, positive from normative. - A scientifi c explanation of an event brings the event under a covering
law. - Scientists—for instance, economic scientists—ought not to have any-
thing to say as scientists about the oughts of value, whether of morality
or art. (Farmer 1995, 72)
Th is characterization of science, aside from its straw man quality, has lim-
ited application to public administration primarily because the fi eld never fully
accepted scientism in the fi rst place. Virtually all the aspects of the application