Scientific Knowledge as Cultural Scientific Knowledge as Cultural Icon for Modernity,Icon for Modernity, and as Public and as Public AuthorityAuthority for a Technoscientific for a Technoscientific

Age: Age: Contradiction-in-Terms? Contradiction-in-Terms?

Professor Brian WynneProfessor Brian WynneLancaster University, and TIK, University of Oslo Theory of Science Seminar, UiOslo, 27th Feb 2013

In summary… In summary… • “Science” plays multiple key roles in modern society

• Science declares its foundation in rational precision, clarity, and the banishing of ambiguity, and vigorously prosecutes these in public issues and arenas

• Yet there is rank confusion and contradiction as to which ‘science’ is playing which role(s) in current

times• This is good for neither science, nor the democratic social orders which it is supposed mutually to sustain• This predicament deserves some historical review…

What Roles is Science What Roles is Science (Supposed to Be) (Supposed to Be) Playing? Playing? • Research to ‘reveal’ Nature– religious appreciation, historically (19th C natural theology;

Latour, Gaia 21st C (Gifford lectures)– for ‘curiosity’, aesthetic ends – For instrumental control, technology (epistemic-cultural shift),

innovation (linear model, ‘science-led’, myths) • Factor of production, further to capital & labour

(Noble, 1998)• Factor of Social Fiction – political economy of

promise (genomics especially), late 20th C 21st…• Informing public policy and debate – intense

growth since mid-20th C: “Fifth Branch” (US, Jasanoff, 1990), Latour, 2002, science-research. Public authorityPublic authority

• Presumed sovereign(?) author of public meanings author of public meanings – scientism. A new take on “Risk Society”(Beck, 1986), ArendtArendt

Some current questions Some current questions • So much controversy over science in public… So much controversy over science in public… • Growing insecurities over global ‘stability’, ‘order’, Growing insecurities over global ‘stability’, ‘order’,

‘sustainability’… ‘sustainability’… • (But remember - those insecurities have existed (But remember - those insecurities have existed

already, for most fellow-humans on our planet)already, for most fellow-humans on our planet)• Science is proving ineffective for resolving eg: Science is proving ineffective for resolving eg:

climate change; biodiversity-loss (6climate change; biodiversity-loss (6thth great great extinction); sustainable development challenge; extinction); sustainable development challenge; many other controversiesmany other controversies

• Scientific response is, Scientific response is, more sciencemore science! – make policy ! – make policy advice advice more scientific more scientific (more precise, more (more precise, more comprehensive, more clear, more persuasive…) comprehensive, more clear, more persuasive…)

- In “The Knowledge Society” which we are told to celebrate, these very different roles of “science” are being routinely and repeatedly confused. - Contrary to the common claim from scientific bodies, they themselves perpetrate these confusions as much as do ‘the usual suspects’ – media, politicians, NGOs - STS asserted since ca 1990 that public concerns are about the institutional forms of control-ownership of science (‘trust’) and its imposed framings of public issues as ‘fact-questions only’ (eg, ‘risk issues’), more than about its factual claims as such. - This continues to be ignored, and instead, collective public meanings are imposed not by informed democratic processes, but by political economic interests masquerading as ‘neutral science’

Science as Research? - Does science Know its Science as Research? - Does science Know its own uncertainties? own uncertainties? (UK AEBC pubic mtg, july 2001)(UK AEBC pubic mtg, july 2001)

“[ AEBC]: Do you think people are reasonable to have concerns about possible ‘unknown unknowns’ where GM plants are concerned?

[ACRE Chair]: Which unknowns?[AEBC]: That’s precisely the point. They aren’t possible to specify in

advance. Possibly they could be surprises arising from unforeseen synergistic effects, or from unanticipated social interventions. All people have to go on is analogous experience with other technologies.…

[ACRE]: I’m afraid it’s impossible for me to respond unless you

can give me a clear indication of the unknowns you are speaking about.

[AEBC]: In that case don’t you think you should add health warnings to the advice you’re giving ministers, indicating that there may be ‘unknown unknowns’ which you can’t address?

[ACRE]: No, as scientists, we have to be specific. We can’t proceed on the basis of imaginings from some fevered brow….”

Yet for attempted public authority, under conditions of huge controversy, this framed and selected ‘science’ trades upon the contradictory representation of its ‘science’ as independent, uninhibited, free scientific research, disciplined only by nature. - Is this honest? - Is this honest?

Moreover - !Notice how this framing focuses upon only science (through ‘risk’, as defined by that policy-framed science), and controversy or dissent which is mainly about those selective frames of meaning, and their unstated normative choices being promoted as neutral science (‘only nature speaking here!’..), is instead misrepresented only as against the bare factual claims of that official science This is a reproduction of the deficit model explanation of public dissent, refuted in 1991

““The Voice of Science” (The Voice of Science” (Nature magazineNature magazine)) on science’s proper public authorityon science’s proper public authority

• The 2009 L’Aquila Italy, earthquake (29 deaths, people who would have evacuated if advised)

• In 2012, six scientists & one official sentenced for manslaughter, failing to convey risk:

““..Italy.. lacks understanding of, or respect for, ..Italy.. lacks understanding of, or respect for, science and its complexities… [By contrast] German science and its complexities… [By contrast] German politicians and their administrations are in politicians and their administrations are in appropriate awe appropriate awe of their research agency of their research agency presidents and of the scientific culture they presidents and of the scientific culture they represent” represent”

(my italics: editorial, 1 November 2012, vol 491, p.7)

An Example from ClimateAn Example from Climate• Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway (2010), Merchants of Doubt: Merchants of Doubt:

How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Climate policy advance obstructed by deliberate “manufacture of uncertainty” – doubt, paralysis• Climate change defined as “climate sensitivity”, and

Carbon defined as sole material to be controlled, for sustainable climate policies – carbon-markets, prices, etc

• Hulme (2010) and Wynne (2010; Jasanoff and Wynne 1998) have criticised the scientism of public policy definitions of the “Climate Grand Challenge”

• If public issue defined less scientistically: (i) might publics be more responsible, active? (ii) might climate policy be more resilient to manufacture of doubt?

Polanyi’s “Republic of Science” (1962): Glorifying Independence

• And confusing individual scientific curiosity, with political independence of science…

• “all scientific progress is achieved..everywhere..due to the initiative of original minds choosing their own problems and carrying out their own investigations according to their own lights… universities provide an intimate communion for the formation of scientific opinion, free from corrupting intrusions and distractions”

• “Each scientist who is a member of a group of such overlapping competences will also be a member of groups of the same kind, so that the whole of science will be covered by chains and networks of overlapping neighbourhoods. Each link..will establish agreement between valuations made by scientists overlooking the same overlapping fields, so agreement will be established across all the domains of science. Indeed through these overlapping neighbourhoods uniform standards of scientific merit will prevail over the entire range of science, all the way from astronomy to medicine” (note the marked contrast with Kuhn here!)

• “scientists ..strive towards a hidden reality, for the sake of intellectual satisfaction”

• This scientific unity is given privilege as public authority assumed completely independent of political or cultural influence: quasi-divine

Presumed Authority - not only epistemic-propositional, but also hermeneutic

• Latour, 1993: more-and-more entanglements, nature-culture, yet increasingly intense denials and purifications – the mid-late 1990s “Science Wars” reflected this.

• And the Science Wars are back (if they ever went away?) – Tautz, EMBO Reports, 13(10), 2012, “The Post-Modern Assault on Science: if all truths are equal, who cares what science has to say?”; UK chief scientist Jan 2011; President of London Royal Society, Feb 2011.

• Constructivist STS-SSK realism, which takes nature seriously, but as always interpreted – given meaning(s) by humans – is denied as ‘anti-realist’, and instead “scientific” meanings presumed sovereign

Toulmin, Cosmopolis, and Modernity• The 17th C scientific revolution (Descartes,

Newton…) was a retreat from violent social disorder and chaos, into abstraction alone

• A 16th C, Humanist Enlightenment preceded this (Montaigne, Shakespeare,…) but was snuffed out by the dogmatic religious wars in Europe

• The scientific revolution thus negated grounded realism, multiplicity and contingency in favour of reductionist control (precision), and externalisation/exclusion (denial?)

There are 20th C European consequences -

• The post-war European ‘settlement’ (Muller) • The European Coal and Steel Community• The democratic deficit and ‘The Common

Market’ • Harmonisation of standards, for trade and single

market (neglect-denial of institutional/cultural/historical differences

• Scientisation of EU policy, eg GMOs• Co-production of EU policy and ‘scientific’ order,

in image of global commercial empire

Latour, Gifford Lectures 2013: Latour, Gifford Lectures 2013: Facing Gaia: On the Political Theology of Nature

In conventional thinking, the ‘nature’ of science and the ‘God’ of religion are almost wholly homologous. Both assume an already unified universe ‘out there’, understood v an ‘epaistemological’ focus on the final objects of knowledge, (‘Nature’, or ‘God’) rather than the situated practices that give rise to them.

Latour proposes to overthrow this: ‘nature’ a la STS-ANT is not external but internal to scientific practice; is not unified but multiple; does not mechanistically de-animate, but multiplies agencies; and is not indisputable but disputable. Latour’s ‘Religion’ would be reconstructed in a similar way (particularly Christianity): concerned not with the far but the near; not as abstract dogma but as fragile extensions of Gospel message in everyday encounters; in effect, multiplying ‘God’

Latour on Gaia (continued – and continuing!) • A secular Gaia, no transcendent nor pre-existent unity? A/c

Latour, Gaia is less religious as a concept than classical nature, as it has no pre-ordained unity – everything animated, active, mobile; but no holistic design nor final cause, only ‘mess’; and no environment to which organisms adapt. Unlike science’s nature, Gaia is neither chance nor necessity, just history, or ‘geostory’ (Latour), but one not told by some transcendent being, just unfolding through multi-agent interactions.

• Within this frame, we can see how quasi-religious science and its imaginary of Nature has been in our post-Enlightenment culture. This also points to its “priesthood” inclinations or instincts with respect to publics, and its inherent tensions with democratic culture

• Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, 1990, helps us here…