Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the “technical sphere,” the specialized arenas where experts exchange ideas,
but rather science in the “public sphere” where it is mediated to the broader
communities in which scientists operate.
45
When scientists step into the
public sphere, they certainly do bring much expert knowledge with them,
but its treatment is no longer constrained by the same sense of professional
etiquette. What I am talking about here is not merely the relaxation of
standards that is needed to get difficult ideas across to lay audiences. My
concern, rather, is with the competing purposes that are at work in public
science. Because the scientific livelihood depends so vitally on the sanction
of public patrons, scientists are forever inclined to promote science as a
worldview or ideology even as they undertake to inform the public in more
straightforward ways. The problem is that one of the most attractive ways to
do this is by seeming to give such ideologies a scientific standing.
Because science's public actors are also the architects of its public image,
I will insist that their messages have considerable importance. These could
never be mere efforts of “popularization”; they carry on the serious work of
representing what science is and knows to the world at large. Having become
the voice of science for its patrons, these actors are also inclined to assume
the responsibility of constructing ideologies or worldviews that advance sci-
ence's standing in the world. Public actors of all sorts do this, but, as Karl
Mannheim pointed out long ago, they will be inclined to do so in some
manner reflecting their own unique way of experiencing the world, since
collective identities or ideologies are likely to be “associated with a given his-
torical and social situation, and the
Welt an sch auung
” and “style of thought”
bound up with their situation.
46
For a scientific culture this means that its
own methods, assumptions, and even discoveries are likely to provide the
symbols from which its ideological systems are built. More specifically, in
light of the perennial challenges of sustaining public patronage, we would
expect a scientific culture to broaden as much as possible the scope of exper-
tise that makes it attractive to potential patrons. It might be expected to do
so by accentuating one or more of the following three interrelated ideas: (1)
naturalism
, the supposition that inquiry cannot reach beyond the bounds of
materiality; (2)
scientism
, the assumption that only the techniques of inquiry
used within the natural sciences have epistemic worth; and (3)
evolutionism
,
the belief that concepts arising from evolutionary science apply to all human
affairs. Because each of these ideas at least gives the appearance of arising
from scientific inquiry itself, and because each is suggestive of an epistemic
hierarchy that gives science the highest position, a society attracted to any
one of these three notions may be strongly disposed to patronize science.
