Rethinking science

Futures,

Pergamon

Vol. 29, No. 6, pp. 467470,

1997

0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0016-3287/97

PII:

RETHINKING

$17.00 + 0.00

SO01 6-3287(97)00023-2

SCIENCE

Jerome R Ravetz and Ziauddin

Sardar

Can science continue on its present trajectory? Is scientific progress inevitable? Is there a point on the future horizon when scientific progress simply ceases to have any real meaning? What happens when the ‘God particle’, the ultimate elementary particle, has been discovered, a theory of everything has been formulated, all the genes in the human body have been mapped and we have colonised Mars? Indeed, is all this likely? Or are there indications of cracks in the grand edifice of modern science? What if the grand project of western science collapses? Where would science, as a system of reasoned, empirical and theoretical inquiry, go next? Can we, the people, actually change the direction of science? Democratise it? Or are we fated to let science continue its own sweet way? This special issue of Futures addresses these and similar other questions. Science has defined our modern European civilisation, and it still dominates our approach to understanding its future. We believe it useful to remind students of the future that ‘science’ itself can no longer be taken for granted as a social practice or even as a body of knowledge. With these essays, we are by no means denying or denigrating ‘science’; we are exhibiting the ways in which, like any other cultural product, science depends on its context; and the context here is that of the western civilisation; we are well aware of the rich traditions, and contemporary attempts to rediscover these traditions, in non-western civilisations, particularly Islam, India and China. However, here we are concerned with showing and exploring alternatives that are conceivable and indeed viable within western science. What will happen to the great project of European scientific conquest of the whole world, is beyond our abilities to say. However, that the project is no longer unquestionable, is something of which the Futures community should be aware and informed. That is our contribution in this special issue. Our collection of essays starts off with ‘The Twilight of Science-Last of the ‘Gods”, a formidable blast from the distinguished scientist, science-policy commentator and ‘Science-Technology-Society’ pioneer, Professor Rustum Roy of Pennsylvania State University. He is a long-standing critic of the American ‘pure science’ establishment, which had capitalised on the prestige of ‘the bomb’ to obtain a ‘social contract’ enabling it to

Jerome R. Ravetz is Director of Research Methods Consultancy and may be contacted at 196 Clarence Gardens, London NW1 6AU, UK (Tel: + 44 (0) 171 224 7084; e-mail: 100105.25168compuserve.com. Ziauddin Sardar is a Consulting Editor of ‘Futures’ and Visiting Professor of Science and Technology at Middlesex University. He may be contacted at 1 Orchard Gate, London, NW9, UK (e-mail: 100275.10620compusere.com).

467

Rethinking

Science:

J R Ravetz

spend

vast amounts

career

advancement.

by the cancellation scientific research

and Z Sardar

of taxpayers’ Now

money

he welcomes

on the twin

pursuit

of ‘basic’

knowledge

the end of that mega-pork-barrel

of the Superconducting Supercollider), and with is the necessary antecedent of technological

and

era (marked

it the illusion development.

that He

denounces the corrupt practices whereby scientists have colluded with the media to produce stories of ‘breakthroughs’; the ‘life on Mars’ tale was only the most recent. With a breadth of attack reminiscent of Paul Feyerabend of yesteryear, he brings medicine into the picture, contrasting the useless and expensive scientific research of the NIH (as distinct from medical technology) with trust to the tune of a (nonrefundable) anticipating

a new ‘integrative

alternative medicine, $14 billion annually.

science’

in which

which Americans continue to He concludes optimistically,

‘basic research’

(which

anyway

has long

since lost its creativity) has withered, and new areas of experience, such as those explored by Rupert Sheldrake and in Qi-Gong, become a new common-sense. A similarly broad scope, though without quite such strident criticism, characterises Steve Fuller’s essay ‘The Secularisation of Science and a New Deal for Science Policy’. The key term recalls the earlier historical process affecting Christianity, when Church became separated from State. While this was happening, science was gaining in strength, finally becoming conscious of and for itself, notably through the propaganda efforts of the educator and clergyman, William Whewell. After a high point of prestige, quickly undermined by the likes of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, science finds the State divesting it also. The period of the Cold War, when science sold itself as the progenitor of technology, can be seen in retrospect as a temporary delay in a historical process. Now we can look forward to a period where State support is taken from the elite, and another Enlightenment, with a de-sacralized science, can occur. A similar vision is articulated in the essay by Stephen A. Healy, the perspective of ‘sustainability’, uncertainty, the present predicament and tasks of science

though

and post-normal science. to currents in contemporary

more

from

He also relates social theory,

particularly those of Giddens and Beck, and also the ‘Lancaster school’ led by Brian Wynne. The keynote here is that of reflexivity and learning; and since the ‘normal science’ described so ironically by Kuhn operated by the inhibition of awareness and reflexivity, the necessary change in the self-consciousness of science will be considerable. Since the social sciences are as much caught up in disciplinary blinkers as the natural sciences, the achievement of a unified vision will require more than mere inter-disciplinarity. The key to this necessary change is ‘reflexivity’ (as advanced by Giddens and Beck); in Beck’s terms there must be a ‘reflexive scientization’ through an ‘external critique’; this is roughly equivalent to the operation of an ‘extended peer community’ with its ‘extended facts’ for the quality-assurance

function

in post-normal

science.

Complementary to these in its scope is the speculative essay by Juan Grompone. Quantifying the common perception that the pace of change is constantly increasing, he has taken some time-series, two short-term and two long-term, and demonstrated a remarkable convergence around the middle of the next century. These cover technology, population and world domination by capitalism. Such extrapolations can easily be a game without refutations; but in this case, the series are not completely artefactual, and their agreement is impressive. If there is an acceleration that is impossible to sustain, why should the various aspects of it not approach a common critical point? The essay is, of course, suggestive and not at all conclusive; but it does provide us with some sort of target date to consider as things warm up in the decades to come.

468

Rethinking

An uncharacteristically

Science: / R Ravetz and Z Sardar

modest essay, on the ‘Science of What-if?’

Jerry Rave&. His focus is ostensibly

is contributed by

a narrow one, on the types of leading questions that

are posed in different sorts of scientific practice. Adapting Aristotle’s ‘four causes’ to his own purposes, he gives a typology starting with ‘what/how’, as in research, then ‘how/why’ as in the design fields, proposing ‘what-if?’ as a leading question, not merely in the exploratory phases of any study, but also for all inquiries into risk and environmental problems. Because such a question is necessarily open-ended, it has built-in safeguards against the sorts of doctrinal dogmatism and social exclusiveness that have afflicted so much of mainstream science when it has been involved in the world of ordinary experience. In fact, the science of ‘what-if?’ provides a stylistic resource for the ‘post-normal science’ that Jerry Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz have been advocating. He also puts this particular essay in its political context, against the background of a fragmented movement of protest and alternatives that is only beginning to recover from the demise of socialism. Early steps towards that recovery are indicated by Richard Sclove, whose Loka Institute is a pioneer in the movement for democratic control of science and technology. Building on successful examples, notably the ‘science shops’ movement in the Netherlands and community initiatives in the USA, he has already convened a conference to plan a worldwide ‘Community Research Network’. The programme is a bold one, as it raises the issue of who controls the US$145 billion annual research budget, and on whose behalf. At first it would be possible to follow the Dutch experience, and have universities sponsor centres, where the faculty could do genuine research that is oriented to local needs. However, the existing tradition, in the USA and even more strongly in the Third World, is for ‘participatory action research’, promoted by community groups and including social change in its agenda, rather than being channelled through universities. A worldwide community research network would, in the author’s words, ‘uphold the promise of transforming research from an all-too-frequent enemy of the people into an organic expression of popular concerns, creativity, and empowerment instead’. Sclove is fully aware of the importance of including indigenous knowledge into his network. However, western science has had a very hegemonic relationship with nonwestern indigenous knowledge. As the Indian science historian and activist, Claud Alvares, has noted whenever western science reaches a dead end it looks towards nonwestern cultures to recharge itself and continue on its linear, colonial trajectory ‘. This is an essential convention in European thought and utopian tradition since the fateful days when Thomas Moore cannibalised the life style of the ‘New World’ to construct his utopia. Two scholars in this issue examine non-western traditions from the perspective of western civilisation, but with the full appreciation of the limitations of the tradition within which their work may be seen; and consciously subverting that tradition in order to move it from appropriation of non-western knowledge to a dialogue with other traditions. David Turnbull advocates ‘Reframing Science and Other Local Knowledge Traditions’, and emphasises the strength and variety of alternative conceptions of knowledge. Once we are liberated from the prejudice that Western science is perfectly universal and objective, we can appreciate how it, like all others, is created in a particular sort of ‘knowledge assembly’, in which cognitive and social/cultural aspects (involving skill, trust and authority) are inseparable. For his first example, he takes a great European achievement, the medieval cathedrals, such as Chartres, and reminds us that these were created not by some scientific grand plan, but by a very local, craft knowledge. He discusses cartography in greater depth, contrasting the Micronesian navigators (who used local

Rethinking

Science:

interactions

/ R Ravetz

and Z Sardar

rather than drawing up a preconceived plan), with the early modern cartogra-

phers (suppressing local knowledge but still preeminently social). Finally, he lists successes and failures of ‘modernisation’, and concludes with the example of the Australian aboriginal people using modern technology for a complete map of their territory; this will make their own knowledge system visible in western terms, which might well have ‘transformative effects on all Australians’. In ‘Blackfoot physics and European Minds’, David Peat reminds us that there is an alternative cosmology, or vision of reality, dominant outside Europe but also with its representatives here (Goethe, for example). In this, there is no separation between knowledge, experience, art and ritual. Every effort of work is also a prayer; and ‘healing’ is a process involving patient, healer and the cosmos with which they both resonate. Within European culture, there have been signs of its essential incompleteness (as in quantum theory and now chaos theory); but attempts simply to appropriate alternative knowledge (as in ethno-pharmaceuticals) is the very opposite of the dialogue that is needed. Rather, we must do that difficult and dangerous act, of opening ourselves for the operation of the creative. In relation to essays by Turnbull and Peat, we cannot resist the temptation to relate an anecdote that displays European arrogance and its ironies most exquisitely. It is about John Wesley Powell, the great American explorer who discovered and then fought for the integrity of the open spaces of the West. It seems that he spent several months in 1872 living in the plateau country north of the Grand Canyon with the Kaibab Paiute, a people he described as ‘more nearly in their primitive condition than any others on the continent’. He collected samples of their clothes, tools, and handicrafts, compiled lists of words, listened to myths, and watched them dance. Powell admired the Kaibab Paiaute as individuals but regarded their culture as savage. Because science, he believed, was the ‘chief agency of civilization’, no society could claim to be advanced in which ‘coughs are caused by invisible winged insects, rheumatism by flesh-eating bugs to small to be seen, and the toothache by invisible worms’ 2. Thus did a really sympathetic observer condemn a people to savagery, on the basis of opinions which (unknown to him) were just then being confirmed by the leading scientists of his day. Let the irony of that encounter be a warning to us all; in classical Greek tragedy, hubris was inevitably followed by nemesis, and there is no reason why it should be different now.

Notes and references 1. 2.

470

Alvares, C., New paradigm thinking: we have been here before. In The Revenge of Athena: Science, tation and the Third World, ed. Z. Sardar. Mansell, London, 1988. Miller, P., John Wesley Powell: vision for the west. National Geographic, 1994, 185 (4), 68-l 15.

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