Abstract
We have seen why the moral responsibility of science is inevitable. However, society taken as a whole collaborates with science: scientists and ordinary citizens are members of a single community of inquiry, whose aim is the truth. After examining the features of a ‘perfectionist’ democracy, I will clarify why it does not represent a utopian ideal by examining the role and characteristics of both experts and public opinion. We will appreciate how science and society are both fragmented and subject to variable alliances. Finally, we will see the differences between this and other conceptions of the relationship between science and democracy. In this context, the essential role of the concept of truth will be confirmed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
It is perhaps worth noting that in moral philosophy perfectionism is not usually associated with pragmatism. The European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy has devoted an entire issue on the subject, cf. Laugier and Donatelli (2010). Here, as I have just pointed out, the contrast is between proceduralist democracy, where citizens’ preferences and desires are given, and a certain kind of perfectionist democracy in which all citizens evaluate their preferences and desires in view of the scientific mentality.
- 2.
It is perhaps worth adding to this that Talisse harshly criticises the kind of democracy defended by Dewey, contrasting it to his Peircean conception of democracy. However, at least implicitly, Talisse also accepts Dewey’s position, unlike Peirce, when he maintains that moral discourse falls within the logic of inquiry. And this is the point that interests me here.
- 3.
See, for example, Jansen (2008) for an overview of studies on Lippmann, whose philosophical position was certainly more sophisticated than it may seem here.
- 4.
For example, he writes: “the experts will remain human beings. They will enjoy power, and their temptation will be to appoint themselves censors, and so absorb the real function of decision. Unless their function is correctly defined they will tend to pass on the facts they think appropriate, and to pass down the decisions they approve. […] The only institutional safeguard is to separate as absolutely as it is possible to do so the staff which executes from the staff which investigates.” Lippmann (1922: 206). And also: “the power of the expert depends upon separating himself from those who make the decisions, upon not caring, in his expert self, what decision is made” (ibid.: 204).
- 5.
The correspondence between Einstein and Velikovsky is available at www.varchive.org/org/einstein/
- 6.
It should be noted, however, that this argument was used by Carl Sagan when, addressing the general public, he denied any credibility to Velikovsky’s theory. Cf. Sagan (1979, Chap. 7).
- 7.
See Goldman (2006: 21), where the reader will find the enunciation of all five methods.
- 8.
As we have read since the preface: “the philosophy stated in this book connects the growth of democracy with the development of the experimental method in the sciences”, cf. Dewey (1916: 3).
- 9.
This is the essay The Public and its Problems, which I will refer to in the next section.
- 10.
This is a ballet based on the music of Romualdo Marenco, which was first performed at the Teatro della Scala in Milan at the end of the nineteenth century. The idea of the ballet was to represent the triumph of science and technology over obscurantism and prejudices. Ignorance was attacked and beat in retreat, until the final stage, where the triumphal music marked the victory of science.
- 11.
As Russell (1954: 211) writes: “Every increase of skill demands, if it is to produce an increase and not a diminution of human happiness, a correlative increase of wisdom. There has been during the last hundred and fifty years an unprecedented increase of skill, and there is no sign that the pace of this increase is slackening. But there has not been even the slightest increase of wisdom”.
- 12.
On these issues, see also the ideas of Michael Oakeshott, an author who has been curiously ignored by the literature on the philosophy of expertise, perhaps because the field he was primarily interested in was political philosophy, not philosophy of science. On Oakeshott, see in particular Oakeshott (1991).
- 13.
For regulatory science, see also Jasanoff (1990), where she shows how the limits of peer review systems are particularly apparent in this very case.
- 14.
See Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993: 744): “To characterize an issue involving risk and the environment, in what we call ‘post-normal science’, we can think of it as one where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent. In such a case, the term ‘problem’, with its connotations of an exercise where a defined methodology is likely to lead to a clear solution, is less appropriate. We would be misled if we retained the image of a process where true scientific facts simply determine the correct policy conclusions”. When moving into fields where there is uncertainty and values, every reference to the truth ceases to exist.
- 15.
In reality, Barnes and Bloor assume without any argument that the introduction of social categories is necessary to explain the theoretical choice between possible alternatives coherent with empirical evidence. Both Slezak (1991) and Laudan (1984a) point out that the presence of social factors must be independently proven. In general, the attempt to derive from the underdetermination the thesis of the irrelevance of epistemic factors is like biting off more than can be chewed. On this, see Laudan (1984a, b). For a detailed analysis, refer to Barrotta (1998).
- 16.
The supporters of Wave Two have, with good reason, protested that in this way Collins and Evans have lumped together very different authors under the same label (see, for example, Jasanoff 2003). However, we must consider that the way in which Collins and Evans characterise Wave Two serves their theses, which mainly concern Wave Three. I find nothing rhetorically wrong in this strategy. Furthermore, Collins and Evans explicitly admit that in this way they introduced a remarkable historical simplification: “Our historical version of the Second Wave was painted with a broad brush and we acknowledge its deficiencies” (Collins and Evans 2002: 449).
- 17.
See, for example, Fisher (2009, Chap. 5). Fisher raises many interesting problems when he examines the position of Collins and Evans. For example, he looks at the crucial problem of the connection between scientific and technological progress and social progress. It is certainly not the job of the scientific expert to decide what kind of technology humankind needs. However, we must consider that Collins and Evans’s position intentionally does not address this kind of issue (Cf. Collins and Evans 2017: 74–6). The accusation of going back to the thesis of Wave One is one that is frequently launched by the critics of Collins and Evans. See also Jasanoff (2003) and Wynne (2003).
- 18.
As Hachoen writes (2000: 486): “When the cold-war coalition and the welfare state faced difficulties, Popper remained quiet. […] Hayek managed to corrupt his socialism”.
- 19.
Popper (1994: 121): “One may say that the problem [concerning the moral responsibility of the scientist] has lately become more general, due to the fact that lately all science, and indeed all learning, has tended to become potentially applicable. Formerly, the pure scientist or the pure scholar had only one responsibility beyond those which everyone else has – that is, the search for truth. […] For all I know, Maxwell had little reason to worry about the possible applications of his equations. And perhaps even Hertz did not worry about Hertzian waves. This happy situation belongs to the past”.
- 20.
This affirmation is found almost everywhere in The Open Society. For example, he writes: “I suggest […] to replace the utilitarian maxim ‘Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number’, or briefly, ‘Maximize happiness’, by the formula ‘The least amount of avoidable suffering for all’, or briefly, ‘Minimize suffering’. […] We should realize that from the moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering” Popper (1966, vol. 1: 235). Among commentators, Bryan Magee (1973) particularly highlighted the analogy between the asymmetry on which the principle of falsification is based and the one on which negative utilitarianism is based.
- 21.
Feyerabend devotes many pages of Against Method to Galileo, see Feyerabend (1975).
- 22.
See Feyerabend (1975: 49–50): “Voodoo […] is a case in point. Nobody knows it, everybody uses it as a paradigm of backwardness and confusion. And yet Voodoo has a firm though still not sufficiently understood material basis, and a study of its manifestations can be used to enrich, and perhaps even to revise, our knowledge of physiology”. In Feyerabend (1978: 91–6), Feyerabend does not hesitate to defend astrology as well.
- 23.
This is clearly an exaggeration by Feyerabend. On this, see Selinger (2011, Chap. 5).
- 24.
The issue raised is linked to a tension within the same philosophy of science as Feyerabend’s. Two theories are mutually incommensurable when they do not share any observational statements. If this is the case, the two theories cannot even be defined as rival, and therefore it is not comprehensible how their existence allows mutual criticism. On the other hand, if two theories are rival then criticism is definitely possible, but this requires that they are commensurable. This problem has been raised continually by Feyerabend’s critics. More recently it was also raised by John Preston (1997: 111).
References
Barnes, B. (1982). T.S. Kuhn and social science. New York: Columbia University Press.
Barnes, B., & Shapin, S. (Eds.). (1979). Natural order. Historical studies of scientific culture. Beverly Hills/London: Sage.
Barrotta, P. (1998). La dialettica scientifica. Per un nuovo razionalismo critico. Turin: UTET-libreria.
Bloor, D. (1983). Wittgenstein. A social theory of knowledge. London: Macmillan.
Bloor, D. (1991). Knowledge and social imagery (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Callon, M., et al. (2011). Acting in an uncertain world. An essay on technical democracy (G. Burchell, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Collins, H. (2010). Tacit and explicit knowledge. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Collins, H., & Evans, R. (2002). The third wave of science studies: Studies of expertise and experience. Reprinted in Selinger, E. & Crease R. P. (Eds.). (2006). The philosophy of expertise (pp. 39–110). New York: Columbia University Press.
Collins, H., & Evans, R. (2007). Rethinking expertise. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Collins, H., & Evans, R. (2017). Why democracies need science. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Commager, H. S. (1950). The American mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.
De Grazia, A. (1978). The Velikovsky affair (1st ed., 1966). London: Sphere.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works (J. A. Boydstone Ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (The middle works, Vol. 9).
Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 2, pp. 235–372).
Ellenberger, L. (1986). A lesson from Velikowsky. http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/vlesson.html
Epstein, S. (1996). Impure science. AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Feyerabend, P. (1975). Against method. London: Verso.
Feyerabend, P. (1978). Science in a free society. London: NBL.
Fisher, F. (2009). Democracy and expertise. Reorienting policy inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. New York: Free Press.
Fuller, S. (2000). The governance of science: Ideology and the future of the open society. Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Funtowicz, S. O., & Ravetz, J. (1992). Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of post-normal science. In S. Krimsky & D. Golding (Eds.), Social theory of risk (pp. 251–273). London: Praeger.
Funtowicz, S. O., & Ravetz, J. (1993). Science for post-normal age. Futures, 25(7), 739–755.
Gelwick, R. (1977). The way of discovery. An introduction to the thought of Michael Polanyi. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goldman, A. J. (2006). Experts: Which ones should you trust? Reprinted in Selinger E. & Crease R. P. (Eds.). (2006). The philosophy of expertise (pp. 14–38). New York: Columbia University Press.
Hacohen, M. H. (2000). Karl Popper. The formative years, 1902–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jansen, S. C. (2008). Walter Lippmann, Straw Man of communication research. In D. D. Park & J. Pooley (Eds.), History of media and communication research. Contested Memories (pp. 71–112). New York: Peter Lang.
Jasanoff, S. (1990). The fifth branch: Science advisers as policymakers. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Jasanoff, S. (2003). Breaking the waves in science studies: Comments on H.M. Collins and Robert Evans. Social Studies of Science, 33(3), 389–400.
Jasanoff, S. (2005). Design on nature. Science and democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Juergens, R. E. (1978). Minds in Chaos. In de Grazia (Ed.). (1978). The Velikovsky affair (1st ed., 1966, pp. 20–55). London: Sphere.
Koertge, N. (Ed.). (2005). Scientific values and civic virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latour, B. (2005). Un monde pluriel mais commun. Entretiens avec F. Ewald. La Tour d’Aigues: Édition de l’Aube.
Laudan, L. (1984a). The pseudo-science of science? In J. E. Brown (Ed.), Scientific rationality: The sociological turn (pp. 41–73). Dordrecht: Reidel.
Laudan, L. (1984b). Science and values. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Laugier, S., & Donatelli, P. (Eds.). (2010). Perfectionism and pragmatism. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 2, 2.
Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. Mineola: Dover, 2004
Lippmann, W. (1925). The phantom public. New Brunswick: Transaction Publisher, 1993
Magee, B. (1973). Karl Popper. New York: Viking.
Oakeshott, M. (1991), Rational conduct. In Rationalism in politics and other essays (pp. 99–131). New and expanded edition (1st ed., 1961). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of doubt. How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from Tobacco smoke to global warming. London: Bloomsbury.
Peirce, C. S. (1877). The fixation of belief. In Peirce (1931–1935). Collected papers (C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. (Vol. V, pp. 223–247).
Polanyi, M. (1946). Science, faith, and society. London: Oxford University Press.
Polanyi, M. (1962a). Personal knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Polanyi, M. (1962b). The republic of science: Its political and economic theory. Minerva, 38(2000), 1–32.
Polanyi, M. (1963). Science and religion: Separate dimensions or common ground? Philosophy Today, 7, 4–14.
Popper, K. (1956). Three views concerning human knowledge. In Conjectures and refutations (1969, pp. 130–160). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Popper, K. (1966). The open society and its enemies (5th ed.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Popper, K. (1994), The moral responsibility of the scientist. In The myth of the framework. In defence of science and rationality (pp. 121–129). London: Routledge.
Preston, J. (1997). Feyerabend. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Russell, B. (1954). Human society in ethics and politics. London: Allen and Unwin.
Sagan, C. (1979). Broca’s brain: Reflections on the romance of science. New York: Random House.
Sartori, G. (1957). Democrazia e definizioni. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Selinger, E. (2011). Expertise. Philosophical reflections. New York/London: Automatic Press.
Shapin, S., & Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Shearmur, J. (1996). The political thought of Karl Popper. London: Routledge.
Slezak, P. (1991). Bloor’s bluff: Behaviourism and the strong programme. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 5(3), 241–256.
Talisse, R. (2007). A pragmatist philosophy of democracy. New York: Routledge.
Velikovsky, I. (1950). Worlds in collision. New York: Macmillan.
Wynne, B. (2003). Seasick on the third wave? Subverting the egemony of propositionalism: Responses to Collins and Evans (2002). Social Studies of Science, 33(3), 401–417.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barrotta, P. (2018). Science and Democracy. In: Scientists, Democracy and Society. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74937-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74938-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)