Can Science Provide Political Answers?
This is another question I hope to tackle on this blog. In the video below, Professor Mike Hulme of the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, discusses the pitfalls of using scientific evidence to determine political policy.
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February 29th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Interesting you should post this video.
I read this about a month ago, and it strikes a chord with me:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1469
[quote]Now in similar vein, ‘post-normal’ science deconstructs scientific empiricism and rationalism and detaches science from truth. In other words, where science fails to support an ideology, the absolute and overriding imperative of putting that ideology into practice means that science has to suspend its very essence as a truth-seeking activity and instead perpetrate lies. That is the inescapable implication of Hulme’s position. To support the bogus claim that we face the imminent collapse of civilisation from global warming, science itself has to be reconceptualised as an instrument of propaganda and justified by mendacious and obfuscatory post-modernist jargon. Hulme concludes:
[indent]Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones.[/indent]
So the true battleground has now been illuminated for us. The real fight is between scientists who believe in empirical observation and the truth, and ‘post-normal’ scientists who believe in ideology and lies. It’s a battle between Enlightenment values of rationality and those who wish to return us to a pre-rational era where thought was controlled and truth was a heresy. The stakes could not have been delineated more clearly. [/quote]
February 29th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Sorry for the format. I guess php tags don’t work in wordpress… drat. :doh:
March 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Thanks for the comments! I am looking for quotes and bolds and stuff, and also trying to figure out how to embed the video right here so you don’t have to follow a link, and if I can figure those things out I’ll come back and fix these early posts.
I agree with the battleground comment — even though I have skepticism about the human causation issue, I agree this is a battle that needs to be fought, it needs to be fought right now, and it needs to be won. As you say, the stakes could not be more clear.
But I am concerned about the idea of using science as a tool of propaganda. I agree with the conclusion from Hulme that you posted, but I thought her comments about scientists misusing science to impact policy equally applied to her own position — she was being blatantly hypocritical. If the science is correct, then I don’t NEED or WANT propaganda. I want either the policy to change because people see the truth and WANT it corrected, or I do not want the policy to change at ALL — loss of freedom can save the world, but is the world then worth living in?