Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy: Defending Reason in a Free Society

250 Pages·2018·1.98 MB·English

by  Michael J Thompson

Published 2018 by Prometheus Books
Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy: Defending Reason in a Free Society. Copyright © 2018 by
Michael J. Thompson and Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker. All rights reserved. No part of this publication
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Thompson, Michael, 1973-editor. | Smulewicz-Zucker, Gregory R., 1983-editor.
Title: Anti-science and the assault on democracy : defending reason in a free society / edited by Michael J.
Thompson and Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker.
Description: Amherst, New York : Prometheus Books, 2018. | “Defending the role that science must play in
democratic society—science defined not just in terms of technology but as a way of approaching
problems and viewing the world.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2018021012 (print) | LCCN 2018030171 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633884755 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781633884748 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Science—Political aspects. | Science—Social aspects.
Classification: LCC Q175.5 (ebook) | LCC Q175.5 .A58 2018 (print) | DDC 306.4/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018021012
Printed in the United States of America
Introduction
PART I: REFORGING THE LINK BETWEEN
SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY
1. Alan Sokal: What Is Science and Why Should We Care?
2. Michael J. Thompson: Science and the Democratic Mind
3. Joseph Chuman: The Synthesis of Science and Democracy: A
Deweyan Appraisal
4. Lee Smolin: The Philosophy of the Open Future
PART II: SCIENCE'S DEMOCRATIC
DIMENSIONS
5. Diana M. Judd: The Scientific Revolution and Individual Inquiry
6. Margaret C. Jacob: The Left, Science Studies, and Global Warming
7. Barbara Forrest: Betraying the Founders’ Legacy: Democracy as a
Weapon against Science
PART III: PERVERTED SCIENCE, DISFIGURED
DEMOCRACY
8. Kurt Jacobsen and Alba Alexander: The Return of Determinism:
Science, Power, and Sirens in Distress
9. Landon Frim and Harrison Fluss: Back to the Futurists: On
Accelerationism Left and Right
10. Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker: The Myth of the Expert as Elite:
Postmodern Theory, Right-Wing Populism, and the Assault on Truth
PART IV: THE REVENGE OF ANTI-SCIENCE
11. Philip Kitcher: Plato's Revenge: An Undemocratic Report from an
Overheated Planet
12. Michael Ruse: Democracy and the Problem of Pseudoscience
13. Thomas de Zengotita: The Freedom to Believe—Or Not
List of Contributors
Notes
A contradiction resides deep in the heart of modern society. On the one hand, we
inhabit a world increasingly dominated by science and technology, one where
the progress of scientific knowledge and technical efficiency seems without end.
On the other hand, there also exists a deep-seated opposition to scientific
knowledge and to science itself as a form of knowledge. A trend has been
gathering momentum in modern culture away from science as a means to think
about human affairs and an approach to truth. Although technology and
technological forms of rationality have transformed our world, hostility toward
science as a method and as a way of comprehending the social and natural world
has emerged as an obstacle to a more humane and more democratic society.
From religiously motivated arguments against the teaching of evolution in public
schools to the denial of climate change, new-ageist espousals of alternative
medicine, the regular distortion or dismissal of social-scientific data, outlandish
claims about the effects of vaccinations or the fluoridation of water, and
widespread basic ignorance about concepts such as “theory” or “evidence,” anti-
science viewpoints are becoming more and more manifest in our daily lives.
This trend is one that we call here “anti-science,” and it is characterized by
more than a skepticism of science as a body of knowledge about the natural
world; it is also a hostility toward the very notion that objective truth claims can
be defended. The anti-science attitude predisposes one to view science—as a
mode of inquiry—as belonging solely to educated elites, who use it to
“disenchant” the world and to control those with differing worldviews,
particularly those, for example, who find their identity in knowledge that comes
through nonscientific means. This anti-science position has its roots not only in
the populist anti-elitism of the current period, it has also expressed itself in the
halls of academe. The insidious influence of postmodern relativism equates the
methods of the natural and social sciences with regimes of “power-knowledge”
where all claims to rational, objective truth are questioned as mere masks for
social power and dominance. A hyper-cynicism with respect to the powers of
science, progress, and Enlightenment reason plagues many of those who
consider themselves critics of modern society and politics. This trend has led to a
convergence of traditionally conservative anti-science positions and Far-Left
ideas about the social construction of knowledge.
In some ways this should be of little surprise. On the one hand, consumer
society has increasingly isolated individuals from the implications and
consequences of their preferences and actions. Each now sees their own
subjective world as forming the common-sense context for their ideas about
what matters and what does not. The internet and niche media outlets that foster
the proverbial “echo chamber” have only exacerbated this social malaise.
Isolated individuals enjoy the experience of community by finding online
communities that reinforce their most outlandish beliefs and nurture even more
bizarre worldviews. In addition, the proliferation of the self-help industry has
combined the propensity for seeking irrationally grounded solutions with the
tendency to portray all problems through the lens of a hyper-individualism,
further encouraging people to withdraw into the self and away from the
democratic community.
On the other hand, as modern societies become increasingly complex and
require more technocratic management, there is an erosion of civic and
democratic practices and mind-sets as people's relations become more mediated
by technology and less by interpersonal contact. The result here is that
technological society becomes bereft of value judgments as individuals rely less
on their own ideas about what is right and wrong and more on the systems that
shape their lives. As a result, society becomes impervious to the decisions and
issues of citizens. Science as a form of objective reasoning about human affairs
and the dynamics of the natural world now comes to be seen as tool of the elite
that seeks to dislodge the individual from their place in their respective traditions
and beliefs. It seems that, more and more, science has been misused by those in
power, who seek to orient it toward profit, military power, or the efficiency of
social control, just as democracy has withered—that science has been absorbed
into technical rationality and forms of control rather than flourishing as a form of
experiment and inquiry. Bringing these two streams of science and democracy
together again is therefore no easy task, but it is essential to restate the basic
linkage between science as a form of inquiry and democracy as a form of shared
power for the common good of its members.
The relation between science and democracy has been evident since the
origins of the modern world. The break with the medieval world order began to
accelerate once skepticism toward traditional authority began to embed itself in
the western mind. This skepticism had, at various historical moments, asserted
itself in many parts of the non-Western world, such as within the Islamic world,
but were tragically silenced by both religious and political authorities. By
questioning both biblical ideas about nature and natural laws, as well as the
encrusted hierarchical ideas of Christian philosophy or Scholasticism, science as
an approach to knowledge stressed an intrinsic skepticism of any received truth
and a rejection of any truth claim that was based on tradition or some social
authority. What began in the Renaissance and continued on through the
Enlightenment and the nineteenth century was a wedding between science and
democratic attitudes. The progress of scientific reason was accompanied by
movements toward representative democracy, the rule of law, and republicanism.
But there was also a more subtle linkage formed between the attitudes of science
and the attitudes of democratic life. Although the political and the scientific
paths were distinct, each was demonstrating a new way to think about truth,
about authority, and about the power of reason. What the scientific revolution
and the age of democratic revolutions shared was a confidence in the human
capacity to know, to create, and to test and to experiment with new ideas. As the
sphere of the sacred began to shrink, the realm of the secular started to expand.
With this shift there was a new sense of freedom—traditional constraints were
cast off and a new vision of an emancipated future could be glimpsed.
Perhaps one of the most salient thinkers to wed the scientific and democratic
positions was Benedict Spinoza. For Spinoza, the critique of nonrational and
irrational beliefs was central to the cultivation of the free individual as well as a
democratic community. He advocated the thesis that the religious conception of
God was a mythical misunderstanding of nature and that science therefore has
the possibility to free us from superstition and provide us with the capacity to
make self-governing decisions about our lives, both personally and collectively.
Spinozist ideas spread throughout Europe and influenced many of the radical
and revolutionary ideas of the eighteenth century. They nourished an array of
brilliant thinkers for almost two centuries. But soon the backlash was to begin.
Movements against Enlightenment reason from forces such as the church and
feudal powers began to weave a new narrative about the destructive tendencies
of science and democracy. The reactionary Counter-Enlightenment—made up of
figures throughout Europe such as Joseph de Maistre, Edmund Burke, and J. G.
Hamann—argued that the dual influences of modern science and democratic
government were threats to the vital traditions and forms of life that gave society
its sense of structure and stability. Tradition and hierarchy, throne and altar were
now to be counterposed against the emerging forces of science, reason, and
democratic life.
The forces of reaction have been tied with the forces of Enlightenment in a
kind of Jacob-and-Angel struggle ever since. But recent years have displayed a
new kind of anti-scientific sensibility. As modern market societies dominated by
capitalism have fragmented social bonds and eroded social trust, and the
infantilization of mass-produced popular culture has been successful in
derationalizing citizens, irrational forms of meaning are sought for. Mysticism, a
return to religion, nihilism, the preponderance of self-help manuals, new-age
gurus—all are dimensions of modern culture that threaten to render democratic
life sterile and inert in the face of new forms of inequality and authority. Any
hope for a revival of democratic society must therefore be premised on a rebirth
of a kind of scientific attitude. One reason for this is that, with the collapse of
organized religious doctrines and broadly shared traditions and values, modern
society can be democratically sewn together via forms of shared norms and
institutions that root their legitimacy in our rational and reflective capacity for
consent. Science as a mode of inquiry is uniquely suited to this task. In its
emphasis on reason, evidence, and revisability, it can mold the mind into a form
appropriate for this kind of democratic life.
The problem is, however, that the concept of democracy that was informed by
Enlightenment ideas has been on the decline in modern societies. Democracy is
now becoming viewed not as a process of determining and consenting to
common, objective solutions to social problems and needs, but as a domain to
express one's emotions and where each member's belief systems are to have as
much warrant as any other. Instead of breaking down parochial belief systems,
we seem to be cast into a Babel-like clash of worldviews. It is our contention
that tendencies that defend anti-science views in the name of “democratic
pluralism”—whether invoked by the Left or the Right—are actually destructive
of a broader culture and the mind-set appropriate for a democratic society.
Rather than enhancing the capacity for rational debate and critical discourse, we
could see this as a return to premodern forms of subservience to authority and a
deeply entrenched irrational refusal to submit beliefs to rational scrutiny. In this
respect, we believe that we are witnessing a peculiarly new manifestation of
anti-science belief systems that are, in spirit, akin to a premodern worldview but
carry new consequences in contemporary society and politics.
The debate that the essays in this volume address is, in a certain respect, an
old one. Among its most recent manifestations were the so-called “science wars”
of the 1990s, which pitted defenders of scientific rationality against
postmodernists and relativists. This was coupled with the efforts on the part of
conservative evangelical Christians, whose new political self-assertiveness was a
product of Ronald Reagan's election, to remount the battle against the teaching