In the philosophical discussion of the last decades, the position has gained a foothold according to which there is a more or less well-identifiable, partly detached domain of values, which is not necessarily hypostatized, but which supposedly belongs to the furniture of the world. This discussion is commonly conducted using the vocabulary of “moral realism,” and it has in the meantime generated subtly nuanced formulations and argumentations. After an initial phase, the discussion has subsequently centred on the nature of normativity. The subtlety of positions and the ingenuity of argumentations is impressive – expressed in a philosophical style that ceased to be baroque, intended for outdoor use, and has taken up features of rococo, which is at home mainly indoors. This chapter suggests that empirical findings should be taken seriously and develops a novel naturalistic account of normativity informed by the deliverances of the sciences.

It should be obvious that the autonomy of science is a mirage if it is supposed to state a requirement that the agents of science, individuals and organizations are to lay the constitutional rules in order to regulate their activities by themselves and for themselves. Science will remain ipso facto fundamentally heteronomous, as long as it is conducted in a territory where the fundamental rules are laid by the agents of a state that controls violence – unless the agents and the scientists are identical, something that is largely only a theoretical possibility. The scientific conventions, the moral rules of science and the scientific techniques, can help maintain a domain where informal rules will provide decisive normative guidance to the participants to the game of science, but the right to pursue scientific activities can ultimately only be granted by the state. Science can never be entirely self-governed. The constitutional question is to determine the extent and specification of this right and the philosophical task consists in the provision of arguments to answer this question.

The scientific enterprise is embedded in the institutional framework of the society consisting of informal and formal institutions. What we call “science” is not a means toward the accomplishment of anything. It is, instead, the institutional embodiment of the processes of constructing and criticizing solutions to theoretical problems that are entered into by individuals in their several abilities and skills. What we call the Scientific Method is constituted by the informal institutions that have originally emerged and diffused during the Scientific Revolution, consisting of essentially three types of rules, the scientific conventions, the moral rules and the scientific techniques. The term should be understood as a type, with the different informal institutions of science being the tokens. The scientific method may take very different forms, but as long as it consists in the techniques of bringing the products of our theoretical imagination in contact with empirical data by scientists following the scientific conventions of their time and the moral rules necessary for this kind of epistemic problem-solving, it remains a distinctive way of grasping the structure of the world.

Scientific activities are conducted in territories that are controlled by states which have the power to enforce specific rules for all agents, individuals and organizations, using violence. It has taken many forms in the course of history depending on the kind and extent of resources that the rulers have had in their command and on a great array of historical contingencies. The state is the enforcement agency of the formal institutions of a society and the chapter focuses specifically on the formal institutions that regulate science. There is a natural interest by all rulers to control the production of belief systems that are useful for attaining their primary aim which is to establish their rule in the territory that they control. The arena of science is never entirely autonomous in the sense that it can be regulated entirely by the rules that scientists themselves may impose upon their own epistemic problem-solving activities, but always heteronomous, since those who control the exertion of force in a society have the final word about whether and to what extent such activities are permitted.

The content and enforcement mechanisms of constitutional legislation will radically differ in democratic and authoritarian regimes, whereas the informal rules will be homogenous across regimes and states. The philosophical task of this chapter is to work out some general principles that should be adopted, if science is valued positively and should be protected. These are principles for a quasi-autonomous science. Three of them are substantive and two procedural: (1) Guaranteeing freedom of expression. (2) Mutual rational control by critical discussion. (3) Appropriate steering of scientific competition. (4) Open access to the scientific community. (5) Appropriately fitting formal and informal institutions.

Protecting science means protecting the informal institutions of science, the tacit Constitution of Science written in the heart of the scientists.

Science as an arena of epistemic activities has grown organically during a long process of cultural evolution. It is a major cultural achievement that was planned by no individual mind but emerged spontaneously as the unintended outcome of interaction between individuals engaging in epistemic activities. Science is a human endeavour, permanently unfinished, a project of humanity of astonishing range and success.

This excursus provides an overview of the debate on the “Value-Free Ideal for Science” as it has been evolving since the beginning of the twentieth century in Germany, France and the Anglosphere.

Imagine that we are given the possibility of constructing a building on an island without a master plan and without a specific time horizon for its completion. Anyone of us may bring as many bricks as she can to construct the building. Some of us would start putting one or more bricks in this collective enterprise, and there would be discussions, agreements and disagreements on how to fit the bricks together so that the construction can stand on its own. For the building to take shape, scaffolds will be needed. And as the building gets taller and taller, the old scaffolds will have to get adjusted or entirely new scaffolds will have to be created using the materials of the old ones. Why are we constructing the building?

Explanation and interpretation are two core theoretical scientific activities, and this chapter suggests a way of conceptualizing them and of normatively appraising them within the premises of a comparative approach. There are many distinct activities taking place in the scientific process, but explanation is widely considered as the core theoretical activity since it is an epistemic activity in which representation and inferential reasoning are merged in a complex way in order to enlighten natural, biological and social phenomena. However, there is another core theoretical activity directed towards other goals that is equally complex: interpretation. This is the activity that deals with meaningful material. The importance of interpretation is standardly stressed in the humanities, but there is no reason to assume that this epistemic activity should be normatively appraised according to different standards than explanation. It is indeed the claim of this chapter that there is no dichotomy of science and humanities at the methodological level and that the same normative approach can be successfully applied to both areas, notwithstanding a series of important differences.

Are truth and other epistemic values such as accuracy, consistency, broad scope, simplicity and fruitfulness the most important values? This is a position that can be defended as long as one focusses on the outcomes of the scientific endeavour – mainly theories and models. If one also takes into account the social process that yields these outcomes, then a series of other values become not only important, but really constitutive of science: if one is not free to engage in scientific activity, for example, then there are no outcomes in the first place to be appraised invoking epistemic values. It seems that non-epistemic values such as freedom, honesty and integrity are also constitutive of the collective scientific endeavour. Do we possess an external criterion guaranteeing the priority of a single value or a set of values vis-à-vis the rest?