Even revolutionary science has a conservative, stabilizing institutional function.

Evidence

With respect to the institutionalized forms of life, science (pure as well as applied) would thus have a stabilizing, static, conservative function. Even its most revolutionary achievements would only be construction and destruction in line with a specific experience and organization of reality. The continuous self-correction of science—the revolution of its hypotheses which is built into its method—itself propels and extends the same historical universe, the same basic experience. It retains the same formal a priori, which makes for a very material, practical content. Far from minimizing the fundamental change which occurred with the establishment of Galilean science, Husserl’s interpretation points up the radical break with the pre-Galilean tradition; the instrumentalist horizon of thought was indeed a new horizon. It created a new world of theoretical and practical Reason, but it has remained committed to a specific historical world which has its evident limits—in theory as well as in practice, in its pure as well as applied methods. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 612

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The deeply counterintuitive claim that science’s built-in self-correction — its perpetual hypothesis-revolution — only ever propels the same historical universe, making radical methods socially conservative.
• XREF: Maps onto the attention-economy parallel: constant technical ‘revolution’ and disruption that never changes the underlying controlling structure. — connects to: Established science rationalizes the prevailing world without altering its existential structure. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 611

Broader Connections

• Established science rationalizes the prevailing world without altering its existential structure. #corroborates (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 611