Unveiling Scientific Politics: From Enlightenment Roots to Modern Implications

1. Science & Politics

2. Science & Politics • a centrally important topic • a large and manifold topic many meanings: • science policy • academic politics • micropolitics of gender etc. • political implications of science • here: “scientific politics”

3. Science & Politics this lecture: • history of scientific politics • protests against scientific politics • critique & alternative view

4. 1. scientific politics • roots in Enlightenment • the project of Enlightenment • science and social progress • reason in public affairs

5. 1. scientific politics Montesquieu (1689-1755): • l’Esprit des Lois (1748) • climate & polity • scientific basis: • Boerhaave’s physiology • his own experiments

6. 1. scientific politics Turgot (1727-1781): • physiocrat • vs. tradition&privilege • for economic reforms, rational government • based on a science of man and of society • minister to Louis XVI

7. 1. scientific politics Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832): • utilitarianism • the greatest happiness for the greatest number

8. 1. scientific politics • later 19th and 20th century incarnations: • Marxism • positivism • Technocracy movement (Thorstein Veblen) • Scientific Management (Taylorism) • 2 less known examples

9. 1. scientific politics Pieter Eijkman (1862-1914) • physician • World Capital near The Hague • Peace Palace • scientific academies & research institutes • like social medicine

11. 1. scientific politics Pieter Eijkman (1862-1914) • physician • World Capital near The Hague • Peace Palace • scientific academies & research institutes • like social medicine

13. 1. scientific politics Pieter Eijkman (1862-1914) • physician • World Capital near The Hague • Peace Palace • scientific academies & research institutes • like social medicine

14. 1. scientific politics • Jan Burgers: • background as communist • cultural pessimism • science and values • Study Center for Social Issues (1946) • influence postwar government • Central Planning Bureau

15. 1. scientific politics • H.G. Wells: • SF author • influence • World State • science/ scientists experts

16. 2. protests • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1817) • background • story • Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

17. 2. protests • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) • background • story (incubators, classes, soma, stability, happiness, science) • ambiguity? • anti-Wells

18. 2. protests • Jurgen Habermas: • decisionistic society • experts no longer ‘on tap’ but ‘on top’ • depolitization • technocracy

19. 3. critique • common elements advocates and critics: • science as one best way • presumed one way traffic: science  politics • objections: • history scientisms: various political orientations • as much politics inside as outside science • two historical examples

20. 3. critique Example 1: • Royal Society program of experimental science around 1650 vs • Thomas Hobbes

21. 3. critique • competing understandings of natural philosophy (aim, place of experiment, certainty, publicness) • opinion/fact • context of Restoration England

23. 3. critique • competing understandings of natural philosophy (aim, place of experiment, certainty, publicness) • opinion/fact • context of Restoration England

24. 3. critique Example 2: • Lavoisier’s ‘new’ chemistry around 1780 vs • Phlogiston chemistry

25. 1. critique • new table of elements • new nomenclature: e.g. “oxygène de fer” • theory • single experiments • quantification

26. 3. critique • context of physiocracy & state policies • FR and Napoleon

27. 3. critique Conclusion: • expert diversity • Politics in science/science in politics • impossibility of technocracy