“anti science” in sustainability and resilience · knowledge and governance the key component...
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“Anti-science” in sustainability and resilience Absolute relativism in the aftermath of nihilism LUIZ OOSTERBEEK – [email protected]
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR THE PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SCIENCES
IPT – CGEO – ITM – UISPP
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Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish St. Thomas Aquinas
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A threefold trend
The growing specialization of science and technology provided everstronger solutions for human needs, but there is a feeling of failure in face of global challenges.
Science is about making small steps in face of specific problems, but adaptation is about making choices in face of dilemas, based on values.
The decrease of participation of people in the production of science and technology paved the room for a renewed magical understanding of S&T results, diminishing resilience of societies.
“Anti-science” is an expression of such alienation process
It offers na alternative vision of the future
The road of alienation
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Main issues to consider THEORY: The epistemological mistakes of positivism and post-modernism
MAKING SENSE: The difference between facts and perceptions and the growth of anxiety
PRAXIS : The role of tangibility in the learning process
METHOD: Clues for a programme of transition
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Theory The epistemological mistakes of positivism and post-modernism
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First question
If science was born from the belief in imanent logical causality, through the valorisation of reason, observation and experiment, to what extent is it compatible with nihilism and post-modern relativism?
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Decay epistemologies Once post-war optimism started to face trouble, faith in science led to anti-science.
Positivism, attempting to assign all relevant rigorous knowledge the same nature, opened room for skepticism
The critique os positivism, instead of building into a compreehensive integrated dialectic dimension, moved towards relativism, thus reinforcing anti-science
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The context of the current debate A long cycle of change, topped by the 21st century depression ◦ Global changes (environment, knowledge,
geostrategy,…)
◦ Contradiction between employment and technology
A restriction of financial resources due to the exhaustion of the inflation cycle ◦ Pressure of short term demands
◦ Failure of oprtimism short term narratives
200 years of growing clash of values ◦ Rights and duties
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Knowledge and governance
The key component of governance is knowledge ◦ Abstract knowledge reasoning on causality
(awareness and science)
◦ Applied knowledge connecting needs and resources (logistics and technology)
(Cultural) knowledge (k) is a time (t) product between gesture (m) and technology (y)
K=t(my)
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A framework of reference
UNDERSTANDING DILEMMAS
FORESIGHT
KNOWLEDGE CENTERS
GOVERNANCE
KNOWLEDGE
LOGISTICS
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Making sense The difference between facts and perceptions and the growth of anxiety
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Second question
How do human rights and ethical considerations on the access to territories and heritage impact on the retreat of science?
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The crisis of science fordism
Current science management values primarily quantity, short term deliveries and knowledge fragmentation
Universities produce skilled workers with limited inetgrative knowledge, unable to make sense of their work
People perceive this loss of sense, and look for alternative narratives that might make sense
Sustainability cannot be fostered as a new version of unique thought
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How does anti-science reveal itself?
Anti-science is not merely, or even mainly, a discourse of negation (creationist or other). It’s root is not the belief in non-scientific explanatory modes, but the decay of beliefs and the absolute relativism.
Society is unable to understand the complexity of the debates on global changes. For this reason it oscillates between negationism and catastrophism.
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Praxis The role of tangibility in the learning process
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Third question
Is useful technical knowledge a process restricted to science researchers? What may be the role of traditional knowledge in a sustainable science programme=
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Examples of anti-science progress Segregation of the Humanities
Divide between fundamental and applied sciences
Focus of funding on short term deliveries: technologies (problems) and training (competences)
Strict alienation and its cognitive implications
Xenophobic questioning of the existence of Human epistemologies (instead of regional, racial, gender divides)
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Three case studies and one project The search for Human origins put into question (the racist appropriation of the past)
The misunderstandings about climate change implications (the weakness of the positivist narrative of global warming)
The public interest in archaeology or astronomy and the praxis dimension in those domains ◦ Cognition (learning through doing)
◦ Economy (understanding social use of knowledge)
◦ Sense (powerful narratives related to identity)
The project:
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Method Clues for a programme of transition
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Fourth question
Can the interlinkages between adaptability, vulnerability and resilience be understood by society based on programmatic disputed goals (e.g. sustainability), or do we need alternative methods of engagement?
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Overall considerations It will not be through publicity that perceptions will change
Science is about reason, awareness, critical reasoning
Alienation is the key problem, seating in the root of anti-science but also of other disruptive behaviour, such as culturalist radicalism. To understand this link is crucial for sustainable science
The explanation of science relevance requires a strategy of participation, and in this process knowledge and governance are interlinked
Traditional knowledge is a mix of contextual sense and tested efficiency: studying and valuing such knowledge, explaining this process bridges the gap between science and people
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The Apheleia approach
Human, social and natural sciences
Fostering contradiction
Dilemmas
Sociocultural matrices
Education
Applied projects
100 words of sustainability
www.apheleiaproject.org
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Summing-up RECOMMENDATIONS
Sustainable science strategies should be buit as part of governance strategies
Education, participative experiments, science based narratives and dilemas debates should be promoted as comprehensive “packages”
Sustainable science should be based on an integrated framework involving mid-long term humanities dilemmas and short term natural and social problems
PROPOSALS
RESOURCES: A list of exemples of transferable projects should be made available (WHC)
EDUCATION: At school level, at least one discipline or area of studies in all pre-University education should bring together human, social, natural and hard sciences, discussing dilemas
RESEARCH: Funding of science and society projects should consider projects focused in involving people in the making of science (participative science)