The Western world, especially the neoliberal, English-speaking bits of it, puts a premium on science as a way of knowing.
In some ways, the high status positioning of science is justified. Science underpins the discoveries related to new medicines, or new ways of growing food or perhaps even that new e-bike you (or your dad) can’t stop talking about. Conversely, and almost without saying, science has also left a permanent asterisk next to its ‘progressive credentials’ by also playing a central role in the development of such technologies as nuclear weapons, biological warfare and everything not so good about artificial intelligence.
Despite the ‘mixed’ ethical CV of science, a ‘scientific’ approach to ‘pretty much everything’ still plays out in the dominant statements—or power structures—of mainstream/Western ways of knowing. We see this, for example, in the field of psychology, where psychologists have no trouble telling us that we need to ‘think like a scientist’ if we want to develop more ‘resilience’ or develop science-backed ways to find ‘wellbeing’. Similarly, neoclassical economics draws some sort of arguable claim for scientific objectivity through the supposedly rigorous application of questionable assumptions about human nature alongside a predilection for reducing everything else to a series of abstract calculations.
Despite the mainstream tendency towards ‘scientific’ approaches, there are also plenty of people who doubt that ‘science’ is a reliable and objective arbiter of ‘truth’. Some ‘scientific doubters’ become epistemologically tangled, dismissing all that is labelled scientific and becoming conspiratorially lost ‘in their own research’ online. Others might ‘pick and choose’ which scientific views to accept, not so much on the basis of a competing internet conspiracy, but perhaps because something ‘feels off’ with the so-called science, or perhaps it clashes with their own core-beliefs. It may also be that the media presentation of the scientific claim in question is just not plausible, perhaps because the media itself has cherry-picked particular ‘scientific’ findings for maximum outrage.
In the either/or dualism of the Western world, the power games played with science make it hard for us to navigate the limits (or potentials) of scientific knowledge. On the one hand we can get drawn into science as the ultimate way of knowing—and at other times, there is a risk that science is set aside almost completely for something not at all authoritative. In between the questions about knowledge, doubt and scientific approaches to everything, I can see three rules that help cut through the ‘mess’ and help clarify what science can actually do when it comes to understanding life, the universe and wellbeing.
Thumbsy 1: Science is never ‘value-free’
Despite the protestations of many, it is important to remember that science is enmeshed with human value-systems. Using a slightly different framework, science is always mediated by a range of power relationships that, for example, provide overarching rationales for which projects get funded, and which types of world-views get to have their experiments carried out. Observe the recent coverage of the Artemis Mission which was less focused on ensuring malaria is stamped out in sub-Saharan Africa, and more about preliminary efforts to colonise space-lands outside planet Earth.
Moving from the overarching rationales for science, to its specific methods, the methodological defence of ‘objectivity’ itself also needs dismantling, given that it tends to operate as a hiding place for the actual values of a project that might otherwise be described as neutral or even ‘evidence-based’. This is most obviously observed in the value-laden activity of neoclassical economists whose paper-thin mathematical methods should never be allowed to camouflage a world-view that posits each of us as selfish individuals, maximising individual profit, and paying scant regard to the negative ‘externalities’ associated with breaching planetary boundaries.
Thumbsy 2: Science can’t transcend the political (or cultural, or spiritual, or social…)
And while science does still provide really valuable information about the world, the point that science is always value-laden, speaks to how science is always somehow interconnected with wider political, cultural, psychological, spiritual and/or social ways of understanding the world. In this regard, rather than finding an ‘authoritative’ high ground, science’s value-laden nature means that—for all its empirical good work—it still exists alongside and within ideological structures and rather than being ‘the’ best and only way of approaching the complex realities—down on the ground—that most of us actually face everyday. Science is always political as well as value-laden.
Bruno Latour has reminded climate scientists of this point in relation to how they might approach climate-deniers. Essentially, Latour suggests that in attempting to cut through climate denial a more empirical, evidence-based or ‘scientific’ point of view needs to make way for the explicitly political. Latour makes this point in relation to the political move by climate-deniers to use science’s ‘methodological doubt’ to characterise that the facts of climate change are still ‘under dispute’. The media itself has typically played into such a moronic dualism too—in the name of objective attempts at audience provocations perhaps. Instead of applying ‘more evidence’ to such a context, what Latour suggests is needed is an understanding of the political nature of all climate debate and a more explicit focus on confronting the cutesy political power play of those for whom no amount of ‘evidence’ will ever ‘trump’ [pun intended] those who just want to enrich themselves and their connections.
Thumbsy 3: The best way to understand the world is to critically evaluate our ‘ecologies’
The last rule of thumb comes back to the importance of a pragmatic and non-dualist approach to science, knowledge and values. Science is not generally just ‘made up’ information (except perhaps in the case of neoclassical economics where that stuff is typically ludicrous) but neither is science ‘the’ best or only way to start to understand the world. If we want to best understand the world, science needs to be critically evaluated as part of critical and philosophical reflections on the values, world-views, empirical findings and the power structures. We need to see science as part of an ‘ecological approach’ to knowing or understanding—where science is interconnected with other ways of knowing.
Ultimately, this should be a comfort to those wishing to dethrone science as the pre-eminent ‘mode of being’ or way of understanding the world. It should also rattle the cages of those who too easily dismiss the significance of science—especially science done well, by good people and for good reasons.
Perhaps most importantly, as we face down a world of meta-crisis, the three rules of thumb provide a basis for both making the most of science, while also recognising that building a meaningful life needs much more than science. Indeed, for anyone, sitting around the campfire with their friends; or reading a poem in an off the grid bach; or contemplating how to find purpose in the absurd existence in which we find ourselves; then the idea that we need critical, philosophical, cultural and spiritual considerations—interconnected with science—suggests that there is far more to find out about living well on a finite planet than any one form of science could ever provide.
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