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SCIENTIFIC METHOD CAN CONTEXTUALIZE TECHNOLOGY, PROTECT AGAINST EROSION OF RIGHTS, ENVIRONMENT 8 May 2006 Science is in many ways an artform, but it is specifically and most importantly, the art of knowledge. It is not philosophy, not a study of how knowledge comes about, what it is, whether it can be trusted or whether we need to adjust our thinking; it is, instead, a direct study of the natural world, its tendencies, its evidence, and its capacity to work with us, for us and around us. What can be seen, tested, deliberately known? This is the central question around which all the many styles of the scientific artform develop their variants. But science is also a rigorous mechanical examination of evidentiary fact and modes of reasoning. It can be artful, inventive, religious, ethical, doctrinaire and, at times, given to great careless leaps, inspired by the taste for knowing this world in its bewildering complexities. But science, as such, is not and does not equate to technology. That is a narrower, if equally ambiguous and expansive field. It is the study of methods, of ways of performing a given task, of tools and techniques, and so a basis for developing new tools and methods. So it is a form of science, but not equal to the whole. I make the distinction to explain why commitment to science is not in any way a giving over of the human world to technocracy, or at least that it needn't be. It's all-too-tempting to believe that those areas of life where it is most difficult to secure continued productivity, order or health and wellbeing, can be put straight with solutions achieved and sustained via technology, or its insistent application. Tempting, like any superstition that purports to filter out variables or reduce the uncertainty of nature; tempting, like any sense of l'automaticité: the feeling that an automatic resolution can be won by way of a simple triggering action. These intellectual traps, superstition and l'automaticité, both lead first of all to one great sacrifice: that of one's liberty to choose, to make sense of the world and to effect real problem solving solutions. Technology as a term reminds us it is the study of tools and methods, or an art or craft, an approach to labor, that it is not a fixed set of unbreakable laws, not an automatic efficiency. Technology, even as it offers wonderful solutions, also poses serious problems. It cannot give us guarantees and is often in itself far more complex than the more natural, more accessible, but more limited methods it replaces. We risk the extra labor entailed by that complexity, because when properly functioning, it facilitates activities that would otherwise be much more difficult or inefficient, perhaps even prohibitively time-consuming or costly. This is of primary importance in any approach to technology, because it can only really function at all, work for the benefit of the human condition, if it is allowed to function within the rigors of scientific knowledge, never ascending to the mystical heights of technocracy, or the blind faith in machinery as an implacable social virtue. Science, as a measure of knowledge and of contact with the general and evident truths of human experience, can tame the technological in order to serve democracy, or rather, a tate of affairs in which the human interest is always paramount to the petty demands of the tools we invent to serve it. Why democracy? Why mention a political system in an essay about the role of science in society? Because the question is legitimacy. And the concern is not science but technocracy, a state of affairs in which the petty demands of technology override the rights and the dignity of the human individual, where systems developed to serve people perversely outstrip the human being in importance and threaten to undermine legitimate social structures. Technocracy is a term bandied about for a number of reasons, sometimes with a glamorous overtone and a note of nostalgia for the days when modern democracies dreamed of liberating human beings from drudgery by engulfing daily life in a haze of contraptions and "smart" machines. It also applies, however, to fears about political systems too firmly in the grip of powerful interests determined to use public funds to prop up their businesses, their ambitions or their bottom lines, situations in which the rights of the individual begin to be ignored and the demos, the people, no longer rule. It is a real concern, because aversion to such a situation can lead to wariness about science as a solution in trying times, or to concern that "knowing too much" will condemn the human race to arrogance and to a species-wide hubris, which may further imperil the natural systems already so heavily burdened by human activity. People committed to finding solutions to the world's complex industrial problems will nevertheless argue that science is part of the problem and that further advances in scientific awareness of natural systems or work to promote technological applications to resolve the tensions between those systems and our own, will only further widen the gap between the human world and the real place of human beings in the fabric of the natural world. In fact, we are facing at present a situation, globally, in which human technology and industry, unchecked by hard scientific awareness and the ethical principles inherent in genuine scientific activity, have strained natural systems to the breaking point. Fisheries are collapsing, grain harvests are shrinking, drinkable water is drying up, and temperatures are rising at ever accelerated rates. What we now see before us, as we look through the lens of science and understand the implications of the landscape it makes available to us, is a world that requires that we commit ourselves to understanding more, to finding more evidence about the functioning of the world, to using science to develop cleaner technologies, to restore stability in the production of food for human societies and achieve balance in the pursuit for economic expansion without encroaching on delicate natural systems. Science can tell us what crop yields are still capable of improving, what regions are best suited for which crops, what emissions are doing the most to damage or destabilize the global climate. Even as superstitious blind faith in the technology of hybrid cropping, pesticides and modified seeds led to monoculture cropping of farmlands, science taught that diversity is a better defense against the evolution of crop-born diseases. So, Norway has decided to build a worldwide crop variety seedbank, containing seeds for every species and variety of species which has been or could be planted for agricultural uses, in the event that a species falls out of favor, is disused or is wiped out by a devastating viral or insect-born blight, or by other natural disasters or human activity. Science is telling us that wind currents around the world can potentially provide all the energy needed to power contemporary civilization, even when accounting for the increasing dependence on electronic information technologies and high-consumption appliances, military equipment, research infrastructure and electric-hybrid automobiles. Science has allowed us to understand how solar power can be captured and stored, converted to electricity and transmitted to homes and businesses, in order to benefit from a persistent, renewable resource. And now, science has brought that technology to the point where it is as affordable as fossil fuels, which carry an enormous "cleanup" or post-use polution related cost. Science can free people from certain areas of strenuous physical labor, yet limit the role of technology so that human freedom is not diminished in the process. Through it, we can find ways to expend lest waste material, to eventually burn little or nothing at all, and without having to sacrifice the civilized order and intricate communicational web of the modern world. This can be done, if people begin to distinguish at last between science and the fruits of science, between the pursuit of the truth and the fascination of new gadgetry, between knowledge and superstition. Superstition does not evolve; it constricts. Knowledge, on the other hand, evolves, and it must do so, in order to keep pace with the expanding amount of study, evidence and experimentation that science affords us. To engage science in the life of today's society, we must begin to accept that fundamental facts can evolve into more complex, even more beautiful scenarios where our understanding plays itself out, enabling a more responsible and sustainable exercise of the very freedoms we require in genuine, humanist democracies. [s] © 2006 Joseph Robertson
RELATED STORIES: The global environment is, of course, a global issue, one that touches every life on the planet, and the science about it should be open and available to all. Past government policy and existing federal law mean that such scientific evidence should be readily available to the public. But now, it appears that several agencies are laboring to silence scientists who are researching climate trends and alterations. [Full Story] OUR COLLECTIVE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSE People want to believe what their friends, neighbors, teachers, political representatives tell them. They will express skepticism, and they will be brash and indignant about public scandals or about dubious claims, but ultimately, they err on the side of credulity. The human being in society, is able to suspend disbelief to take part in and to further the ongoing project to understand the universe we inhabit... [Full Essay] NORWAY TO BUILD ARCTIC SEED BANK The Norwegian government has announced plans to create a global seed bank, to be located in the nation's arctic subsoil, to preserve all world crop varieties against extinction, should any number of natural disasters strike. The seed bank will be located inside a frozen mountain on the island of Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. [Full Story] OXFORD'S LORD MAY SAYS SCIENCE ENTERING 'DANGEROUS TIMES' Top British scientist says "Fundamentalism is hampering global efforts to tackle climate change". Lord May used his departing speech as president of the Royal Society to warn researchers, policy-makers and the public that science is under attack from fundamentalist tendencies and organizations, even as it faces "non-linear" biological, environmental and political threats. [Full Story] |
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