Compromising the Ideals of Science

R. Sassower

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137519412
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137519429
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Social Sciences

This books examines the conditions under which scientists compromised the ideals of science, and elucidates these with reference to the challenges of profit motives and national security concerns. The book also offers suggestions for changing the political and economic conditions under which the integrity of science and its ethos can be practiced.

1

Fallen Angels: On the Compromises of Scientists

Abstract: This chapter covers some of the ways in which science has been historically understood by the communities in which it flourished. It also explains the special ethos of science that was idealized in its modern formation and the ways in which the scientific community tried to adhere to its principles. Along the way, scientists fell short of the expectations set for them, and in time became more embroiled in the demands of the scientific enterprise. These demands brought about unseemly compromises that undermined the ideals of science.

Sassower, Raphael, Compromising the Ideals of Science, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137519429.0004.

Contemporary scientific endeavors cannot escape or be separated from legal, political, and economic spheres of influence (regimes of power in Michel Foucault’s sense). Just think about the scientific enterprise as a process that includes at the very least the production of scientific ideas and then their application; the distribution of these scientific inventions as marketable devices or gadgets; and ultimately the consumption of these same objects by the public at large. Part of the production of scientific knowledge includes the education of students, and part of its distribution includes the challenges to religious and theological beliefs, and their consumption in contemporary culture. Therefore, each one of these three-staged events – the production, distribution, and consumption of science – deserves its own separate analysis. Such an analysis would include a deeper appreciation of the legal setting of each stage, from protection to regulation, from the secrecy of military research all the way to the use of medical devices and drugs with potential health benefits and risks. Likewise, such an analysis would include all the political maneuvering that influences state funding in relation to a specific constituency. The same can be said of the financial interests that surround anything with profitable potential.

As will become clear in this chapter, the romantic ideal of science for science’s sake or the (Weberian-like) Ideal Type of science as a neutral activity the application of which remains mysterious and optimistically promises a better future has been debunked over the years. Do we still believe, as we may have years ago, that science is purely about unlocking nature’s secrets? Are scientists indeed angels whose task is to connect the human realm with a transcendent realm full of wisdom? Some have argued that the role of scientists has traditionally been to bring us closer to understanding God’s design of the universe, so that the presumed conflict of science and religion is a fiction of contemporary imagination. This line of questioning leads down a path that includes the religious dimensions of science or the realization that scientific research is at the service of a higher calling, but this path will not be examined here (Fuller 2007). Instead, this first chapter examines the alleged angelic or idealized view of scientists in order to appreciate the yardstick against which any present-day perception and behavior are measured. Whether or not we are justified in our condemnation of scientists as fallen angels, as falling short of what is expected of them, remains an open question. But it should be noted that this way of thinking rests broadly on the contestable premise that scientists were indeed like angels at some point in history or that they should aspire to be like angels in pursuing their vocation. No different from theologians who invoke the Garden of Eden with its peaceful abundance or political philosophers who postulate the “noble savage” in the State of Nature (Jean-Jacques Rousseau comes to mind in this context) in order to make recommendations for their own times, our view of science and scientists is idealized as well (no matter the reality that surrounds us).

The gentlemen of science

The shift from science to the scientific community in the 20th century and later to the scientific enterprise denotes more than a linguistic change (Greenberg 2001, 5–6). In fact, these subtle shifts in labeling express and announce a shift in the conscious self-description of what scientists do qua scientists. They belong to a community of scientists rather than being lone seekers of nature’s truths with weird instruments and incomprehensible mathematical formulas. As community members, they are certified (education), indoctrinated (socialization), and follow the rules laid out by their professional gate-keepers (politics). They learn how to get funded (economics) and remain inside the permissible lines of conduct (law); they learn how to get published (reputation) and who not to antagonize (loyalty). Surely they also become proficient at their chosen disciplines, worthy of continued membership, but this proficiency is a necessary condition for belonging to the community; they still need to fulfill the sufficient conditions to ensure their continued membership. Given this description, are the ideals of science necessarily undermined? Science can survive the realities of the 20th century, as has recently been illustrated with the landing in 2014 of an unmanned spacecraft on a comet some 300 million miles away from earth. It can retain its lofty and inspiring role in our culture, accomplishing feats regularly postulated in sci-fi books and movies.

In order to understand the realities that face 20th-century scientists, it is important to retrace their roots or at least some of their predecessors. The “gentlemen of science” who set intimate relationships among themselves in 17th-century England believed in truth-telling as a matter of honor. For them, being considered gentlemen meant a deep level of trustworthiness that was earned as much as inherited. As the empirical sciences of that period developed, reports of sightings and experimental results had the credibility of those reporting them, and these gentlemen were wary of misrepresenting their findings as a matter of honor. Of course, some sloppiness crept into the scientific corpus of the day, but it was innocent as opposed to malicious (Shapin 1994, xxi, xxvii–xxxi). Science in the most general of terms meant an honorable pursuit, where mutual trust and gentlemanly conduct was expected.

My focus here on the gentlemen of science isn’t meant to ignore the various original scientific thinkers from Galen (13–200) and Ptolemy (85–165) to Copernicus (1473–1543), Kepler (1571–1630), and Galileo (1564–1642), nor to render their practice in a nostalgic way so as to overlook the specific social preconditions of modern science in the UK. Instead, my intention is to highlight an institutional-like organization of various individuals and how their practices inform contemporary views and practices even when they are different in scope or intent. Significantly, these gentlemen of science valued trust as their common currency more than anything else, and an appreciation that the trust in knowledge was indeed dependent to a large extent on their trust in those providing the knowledge. This could be accomplished because these gentlemen’s virtue was the warrant for truthfulness. Along these cultural lines of association and communication, Steve Shapin finds five reasons that justify the truthfulness of these gentlemen of science: competence, pragmatism, Christianity, disinterestedness, and self-control (Ibid. 67–86). It is therefore fascinating to note that the kind of gentlemanly conversation appropriate and expected in their social domain was copied into another, the newly emerging scientific discourse (Ibid. 122). In cases like these, we find that the surrounding culture influences the practices of the scientific community; they don’t work in a social and moral vacuum; instead, they conform to well-established standards of behavior.

What is notable in this idealized conception of the production and distribution of science in the 17th and right into the 18th centuries, is that not only could one identify a set of criteria according to which trustworthiness can be ascertained – and penalized with ostracism when violated – but that one could even enumerate, as Shapin does, seven maxims for accepting testimony: testimony has to be plausible, multiple, consistent, immediate, it should come from knowledgeable or skilled sources, inspire justifiable confidence, and the individual sources must have earned their personal integrity and disinterestedness (Ibid. 212). This meant that one was required to fulfill these criteria in order for one’s claims and reports to be considered scientifically credible. Perhaps we still uphold these criteria subconsciously, and are therefore mortified when members of the scientific community fall short of living up to them. This is where the public and its sub-communities share something in common: an expectation of conforming to ideals in the scientific discourse.

Not only was one supposed to behave in a gentlemanly manner in order to be taken seriously: there was a moral component – truth telling in everyday life – which was crucial for this new set of activities considered nowadays as the practices of natural scientists. As such, truth telling as expected in “civil conversation” was personally guaranteed, and therefore “knowledge was secured by trusting people with whom one was familiar, and familiarity could be used to gauge the truth of what they said” (Ibid. 410). Reports were delivered personally, and one’s community was close by; it wasn’t the anonymous Internet that acted as the communication channel, but intimate and friendly (and at times unfriendly) exchanges on a routine basis. These exchanges weren’t supposed to bring about unanimity or a consensus of opinion, instead, they displayed a communicative and moral foundation that provided an intellectual safety net of some basic integrity.

Shapin reminds us that what distinguished the assent given to experts and to members within the scientific community, what he calls “members of scientific core-sets” or “modern techno-scientific knowledge-makers” was the fact that they know each other. This familiarity allows them “to hold knowledge as collective property and to focus doubt on bits of currently accepted knowledge,” because it was “founded upon a degree and a quality of trust which are arguably unparalleled elsewhere in our culture” (Ibid. 417; italics in the original). There is an added moral pressure on the core group of experts because they feel accountable to their friends, to people they know and regularly interact with; they are not strangers whose approbation can be ignored. There are those who would argue Shapin’s work is underpinned by a broader lesson, and counterintuitive finding, namely, that what we would today take to be self-evident common-sense values and organization of science were radically contravened by science at its early modern inception – so that the Mertonian “norms” of science that we may take for granted (discussed later) must also be sociologically contextualized.

Is this “premodern” British ideal a working heuristic with which to understand the critique and condemnation of contemporary practices? Can one claim that this has been true for the entire history of science with a few exceptions here and there? Or was this a unique condition where wealthy and privileged individuals could set their own agendas and fund them through family endowments, and therefore put their gentlemanly prestige ahead of personal interests or the interests of financial institutions? Was there something oddly unique about the socioeconomic conditions of the time that is fundamentally inapplicable either before or after that period?

To some extent, there was something unique about the conditions under which British science evolved from the 17th to the 19th century. We need only recall the experiences and work of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) who both subsidized his own research and who was fully aware of what reactions the results of his study would elicit. It’s not simply that his views of evolution as random mutations and natural selection would undermine the Christian view of creation, but that his insistence on the randomness of the process challenges the religious and scientific quest for an ordered universe. Without going into the details of his research and their eventual reinterpretation in modern hands (for example, Gould 1977), it’s worth emphasizing here that Darwin remains a complex figure, both as a British gentleman and as an innovative thinker who let the facts lead him to his radical conclusions. In this sense, he’s both an angel and a fallen angel: rising above the fray to transcendent conclusions that would draw the admiration of some and the ridicule of others, and yet a tragic figure who believed he could reconcile theological beliefs with empirical data. The fact that he was able to finance his research himself and retain a level of scientific independence was as relevant in his time as it was for his predecessors, insulating him from the pressures of funding bodies or individuals. And as such, he provides another symbolic exemplar of what an ideal scientists should be like.

20th-Century ideals of science: from Weber to Merton

Max Weber, at the beginning of the 20th century, recast the notion of science for science’s sake as “science as vocation.” Taking into account the greater importance of institutions of higher learning and the fact that academics working in the natural sciences find themselves as part of universities (the German ones looking more and more like their American counterparts), Weber suggested that modern science is part of the “process of intellectualization” (1946/1922, 138). This process of intellectual “rationalization” is negative insofar as it is a never-ending process that destines its practitioners’ work to always “be outdated,” and does not “indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives” (Ibid. 138–139). In addition to the specific impossible conditions under which scientists work, there is also an added sense that through their work – measuring and calculating – “the world is disenchanted,” devoid of the meanings given to it by philosophy and theology, losing the mysterious features it should embody. So, what then is the “value” of science (Ibid. 140)?

Instead of mentioning some ideals of science as understood in the 17th century in the UK, Weber takes us all the way back to Plato and his story of the cave in the Republic. There, he reminds us, men were chained and could only see the shadows on the cave’s wall rather than what really was happening behind them, outside the cave. The brave man who leaves the cave and sees the sunlight, who realizes that the world is larger than his cave, and that the images on the wall are not the real objects of nature, is, for Weber, “the philosopher”; the sun, in this retelling, is the “truth of science, which alone seizes not upon illusions and shadows but upon the true being” (Ibid.). Then Weber asks sarcastically or sadly, and of course rhetorically: “Well, who today views science in such a manner?” He answers: “Today youth feels rather the reverse: the intellectual constructions of science constitute an unreal realm of artificial abstractions, which with their bony hands seek to grasp the blood-and-the-sap of true life without ever catching up with it” (Ibid. 140–141).

The disenchantment of previous generations has come to its fullest expression in the workings of scientists who are now, under conditions of rationalization and intellectualization, detached from the reality of their lives. Just like Plato’s “cavemen,” they are lost once again in their scientific caves, their mathematical abstractions that bear no direct relations to the meaning of life which they ought to explain. Scientists’ own claims about the worthiness of their activities are understood by Weber as mere presuppositions they themselves cannot defend, as they have given up on “living in union with the divine” or searching for “ultimate meaning” (Ibid. 142–143). If science doesn’t ask anymore the difficult but fundamental questions of life, why even bother with any of its other answers?

With his critique of the value-neutrality claimed by scientific research and with his lament over the process of rationalization and abstraction that has made our world disenchanted, Weber provides yet another idealized view of what the scientific community ought to look like or be working toward. Just like the British gentlemen of science whose Christianity and class affiliation obliged them to behave in certain ways, so are 20th-century scientists supposed to seek the truth about life’s meaning and retain their integrity (Ibid. 156). Spanning some three millennia, the ideal of science for science’s sake, the ideal behavior of the seekers of truth, remains unshaken even when its impending loss is mourned.

This elevated view of the role of scientists filtered into literary circles in Europe by the end of the 19th century. We recall with fondness the internal turmoil of the country doctor who feels compelled to condemn the baths of his village as unsafe despite the economic benefits they are supposed to bring in Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People. Here stands Dr Stockman against the “people,” arguing that “The most insidious enemy of truth and freedom among us is the solid majority” (1970/1882, 191). The lone man of truth, the country doctor as a man of science, facing the empirical facts of the situation, is set against the backdrop of ignorance and popular appeal, the “herd mentality” so eloquently described by Nietzsche around the same period.

Ibsen catches the sentiment of his day when casting his play in terms of truth versus lies, the single scientist who has integrity (Plato’s courageous man who leaves the cave) versus the majority of the town (still chained in the cave) willing to overlook the truth for the sake of profit. Along the progress of the Industrial Revolution, certain problems became apparent, but only to those who were willing to address them. The problems of population migration and urbanization, environmental pollution and human suffering could escape those whose sole motive revolved around financial benefits, as Karl Marx loudly argued. But what about scientists who participated in the practical application of their research? Should they maintain their neutrality about the consequences of their rationalization and intellectualization? Or should they speak up like Dr Stockman and ruin their family’s fortunes? Aren’t they supposed to behave with greater integrity than their fellow capitalists?

Unlike Shapin’s focus on the personalities that populate science and Weber’s notion of the vocation of science that demands personal integrity and religious piety of scientists who are academics, we find, by the mid- and late 20th century, Robert Merton’s description (which is also a prescription) of the ethos of science. As far as he is concerned – and this has become an article of faith (if not practice) ever since its formulation – scientific activity displays four major characteristics that define it as much as guide those engaged in it. These four features distinguish science from all other human activities. When thinking through these as a sociologist, Merton only partially follows his fellow sociologist, Weber. He does acknowledge the institutional trappings of science as well as those who participate in it – hence the shift from science to the scientific community – but the philosopher in him sets in place a classification that is more logical and methodological than Weber’s nostalgia for the theological underpinnings of any vocation. Merton isn’t concerned with the meaning of life or personal redemption, but rather with an institutional and professional adherence to a set of rules to ensure the self-policing of science unlike any other human endeavor.

The first feature of scientific inquiry is labeled “Universalism,” which is supposed to capture four other terms associated with the workings of science, namely, that it is “impersonal, dispassionate, international, [and] democratic” (1973/1942, 270–273). With this phrasing, Merton cleverly pulls the psycho-social dimension out of science, suggesting that it ought to be impersonal and dispassionate. But, Weber could have asked him, how would you expect science to be one’s vocation if the scientist isn’t fully engaged and committed to the work? Perhaps a better question would be: what level of passionate engagement is warranted? It makes sense that science ought to be internationa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Fallen Angels: On the Compromises of Scientists
• 2  Big Science: Government Control of Science
• 3  Big Money: Setting Research Agendas
• 4  Big Pharma: Pharmaceutical Dominance of Science
• 5  Situating Technoscience
• References
• Index