Neoliberalism was thus born out of a collision between the controversial importation of the methods and authority of the experimental sciences into politics on the one hand, and the acknowledgement of the social and political conditions for the discovery and justification of knowledge on the other. It made the pursuit of knowledge and truth a political question, and gave the question of social order an epistemological answer: what we can do depends ultimately on what we can know. Nevertheless, this proclivity for epistemological investigations did not imply a unity of views among neoliberals, nor that their conclusions were devoid of political motivations. Moreover, in their contention to reclaiming the mantle of science, neoliberals shared many premises with progressive scientists regarding the position and "function" of science in society.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 54