Du physicalisme radical au physicalisme culturel, une alternative pour l’Afrique

Abstract

To speak of Nature is to adopt the language of science, which claims to describe with precision what it is while detaching itself from everything deemed contrary to it. But is this truly science, or merely dogmatism under the guise of a single Principle? For Feyerabend, such an approach no longer belongs to science but to theoretical indoctrination. He thus calls for a shift from a closed and reductionist method (scientism) to one that is open and plural (culture). In this work, this transition is expressed as a move from a radical physicalism, bearing the stamp of a universal and exclusive logos, to a cultural physicalism that opens a space for an African alternative. Carnap’s radical physicalism, emblematic of positivism, maintains that there can be no knowledge without a perfect correspondence between theory and observation. In this view, knowledge is reduced to the symbolic transcription of fact alone: science exists only within observable reality. It is precisely this dogmatic conservatism that Feyerabend challenges. The theory–fact correspondence is closed and reductionist; science offers but an image of Nature, incapable of fully encompassing reality. Even if history has effaced it, science retains a metaphysical substratum, traceable back to Aristotle’s theory of locomotion, where the notion of correspondence first emerged. Science, myth, and religion are all narratives, each interpreting reality through its own representations. If science appears more “rational,” it is not because it is inherently more rational, but because it succeeded in imposing itself. There is no independent subject, nor can there be neutral science: our relation to reality is always a matter of interpretation rather than principle. It is therefore vital to move beyond a scientistic and reductionist approach toward one that is cultural and plural. Only through such an alternative can Africa liberate itself from the modern theoretical frameworks imposed upon it through ideological apparatuses.