The National Science Foundation and philosophy of science's withdrawal from social concerns.

At some point during the 1950s, mainstream American philosophy of science began increasingly to avoid questions about the role of non-cognitive values in science and, accordingly, increasingly to avoid active engagement with social, political and moral concerns. Such questions and engagement eventually ceased to be part of the mainstream. Here we show that the eventual dominance of 'value-free' philosophy of science can be attributed, at least in part, to the policies of the U.S. National Science Foundation's "History and Philosophy of Science" sub-program. In turn, the sub-program's policies were set by logical empiricists who espoused value-free philosophy of science; these philosophers' actions, we also point out, fit a broad pattern, one in which analytic philosophers used institutional control to marginalize rival approaches to philosophy. We go on to draw on existing knowledge of this pattern to suggest two further, similar, contributors to the withdrawal from value-laden philosophy of science, namely decisions by the editors of Philosophy of Science and by the editors of The Journal of Philosophy. Political climate was, we argue, at most an indirect contributor to the withdrawal and was neither a factor that decided whether it occurred nor one that was sufficient to bring it about. Moreover, we argue that the actions at the National Science Foundation went beyond what was required by its senior administrators and are better viewed as part of what drove, rather than as what was being driven by, the adoption of logical empiricism by the philosophy of science community. • The decline of value-laden philosophy of science during the 1950s-1960s was in part due to the funding policies of the NSF. • These funding policies were drafted and implemented by philosophers of science who espoused value-free approaches. • The policies were not the result of the political climate or professionalization. • Analytic editors' takeovers of Philosophy of Science and The Journal of Philosophy added to the documented marginalization. • The marginalization fits a broader pattern of marginalization of non-analytic approaches to philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]