What Science, What Europe?

[Guest guest]

2 Jun 2005 15:11:51 -0000

 

What Science, What Europe?

press-release

 

 

The Institute of Science in Society Science Society

Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk

 

General Enquiries sam Website/Mailing List

press-release ISIS Director m.w.ho

========================================================

 

 

ISIS Press Release 02/06/05

 

What Science, What Europe?

**********************

 

Europe's foremost philosopher of science offers a

devastating indictment of contemporary European science.

 

Prof. Isabelle Stengers

 

As a philosopher, I can imagine no better keynote to strike

than: what are you doing, what are you trying to do?

Organizing a discussion on the European Research policy

matters! It matters because it is both urgently needed and

difficult.

 

How to read the seventh framework programme? The first point

to note is that this programme does not really invite

political debate. Indeed we do not dealing with choices that

could be discussed but with what presents itself as the

simple enactment of the " Lisbon agenda " , fully endorsing its

slogans, such as " knowledge society " , " economy of

knowledge " , " knowledge and its exploitation " as " the key for

economic growth " and " the competitiveness of enterprises. "

All this, leading, as we should trust, to employment, while

maintaining and strengthening the so-called " European

Model " , and also providing an improvement of welfare and

well-being, quality of life, health and the environment; for

such improvements rely, as history has shown, on the

progress of knowledge and its many applications.

 

In other words, what we are dealing with is an assemblage of

what, in French, we call " mots d'ordre " . Mots d'ordre are

not made to induce thinking and debating but to produce

agreement on consensual perception, putting on the defensive

those who feel constrained to a " yes, but… " Yes to

employment, yes to the European model, yes to all those

improvements, and certainly yes to the progress of

knowledge. But… The " but " is coming too late, after so many

agreements, and it will be easy to fall into the trap,

instead of addressing the means while ratifying the

perceived consensual goals. It is the very functioning and

aim of mots d'ordre to capture and inhibit the capacity to

think, that is also the capacity to recall or keep in mind

that there exists a world that demands thinking, that will

not submit to wishful thinking.

 

What this conference is trying to do is thus as difficult as

it is necessary both to resist the trap and to expose it as

what it is. Otherwise, the danger is that the opposition

against something everybody should agree upon will appear as

sheer ideology. But whatever the difficulty, I would insist

that this should be done. Indeed, the political point is not

only what European money should support, which kind of

scientific research it should privilege. It is also what

kind of role is assigned to scientists and scientific

research for problems that are first of all society

problems, such as welfare and well-being, quality of life,

health and the environment. And it is certainly what kind of

scientists we need in order for this role, whatever it may

be, and not to be diverted.

 

To give just an example, animal welfare has now entered

European politics. This is not a result of the progress of

scientific knowledge. On the contrary, many scientists have

seen this concern as a manifestation of the irrational

sensitivity of public opinion, and they demanded objective

demonstration that animals such as cows, pigs or hens are

able to suffer. But as soon as there is money, even

sceptical scientists become interested. One of the

propositions stemming from the researchers of the French

INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) was

indeed an achievement. If farm animals indeed do suffer, it

is because they are stressed by the kind of quality of life

imposed on them. Thus we should obtain less stressed

animals, that is select them in order to produce animals who

would accept without stress the kind of life imposed on

them. Selection, as usual, is the answer, an answer the

great rational advantage of which is that it will not

endanger the competitiveness of meat or milk production

while answering the public concern.

 

Animals should thus be modified in such a way that they

biologically fulfil not only the production criteria but

also the competitiveness criteria that define as loss any

money devoted to their well-being. They should only be

defined as meat or milk production devices.

 

Such an answer to public concern does not identify science

as intrinsically blind, calculating, and reductionist;

because such an identification would exclude as scientists

those ethologists concerned over the animal's capacity to

feel and suffer. It does reveal, however, that those INRA

researchers using European money made available because of

public pressure, were quite indifferent to the reasons why

so many people had spent their time protesting and fighting

against what they considered as a shame upon humanity. The

way those researchers provided the answer would probably

have cost them their very reputation if the public had their

right to evaluate how the scientists met their concern. The

researchers would have been found guilty on two counts: that

they both felt free to propose such a research project to

alleviate animal suffering, and also that they had nothing

but contempt for the reason the question was posed.

 

What is striking in the FP7 is the very clear signal sent to

researchers that whatever the babble around sustainable

development or public participation, they do not need to

listen and think too much. They may go on living with the

fairy dreams that if what they propose may be of interest

for the industry and its obsession with competitiveness,

they are still addressing the challenges of the future in

the best rational way. They may trust that they will be

protected against the so-called irrationality of those who,

as it has already been the case with the GMOs (genetically

modified organisms), refuse to accept and say " yes " to the

laws of the free market as the only road to progress. They

may even feel that if scientists leave Europe because some

public pressure complicate their collaboration with their

industrial partners, that would slow down or put into

question that which should really be motivating innovation

and the transition to a knowledge economy.

 

Some sociologists tell us that the mode of production of

science has been transformed from what they call an

academically centred mode 1 that values scientific autonomy

and peer evaluation, to a flexible mode 2 that deals with

uncertainty, tying multiple transdisciplinary and

participatory links, contributing to economical and social

questions and adopting new norms of adaptability,

accountability, openness and responsibility.

 

Today such a mode 2 production is but an apolitical dream-

image, and a very tranquillizing and useful one. It is an

image much beloved by European authorities, just like the

" knowledge society " , because it allows them to have the cake

and eat it too. They are free to produce a list of problems

that " flexible " scientists should be able to contribute to

and avoid asking hard questions about the relevance and

reliability of their answer, about how to enforce the so-

called norms defining an accountable, open and responsible

scientist; as that is said to be part of the contemporary

mode 2 production of science.

 

It is very striking from this point of view that

intellectual property rights are not mentioned once in the

European document, nor is the matter of conflicts of

interests or the freedom of scientists under private

contract to play the role of whistleblower. There is no

mention either of the need for the training of researchers

to include relevant means of inducing and empowering

sensitivity or a sense of responsibility in the face of

public concern. Indeed the whole message is framed to

reinforce the view that today, more than ever, lay persons

must be kept at distance, must be kept in a position of

trust and belief that this new science is the answer to

their problems, that mobilisation in the economic war for

competitiveness is the key to everything else. The public is

asked to say " yes " to a Brave New World where all European

stakeholders, as they are mobilised in this war, will

contribute to the improvement of welfare and well-being,

quality of life, health and the environment.

 

I am not sure at all that the kind of flexible scientists

required by the new economy of knowledge will be able to

fulfil their assigned role. I am personally impressed by the

sadness and resignation of a great number of researchers I

meet. When I tell them of what interests me in scientific

practices, that are indeed specialized, but may be living,

challenging and intense, they tell me it is a thing of the

past.

 

Despairing scientists feel that what is coming under the

charming features of the mode 2 production of science is a

new mode of mobilization, that is a new mode of direct

appropriation and evaluation of knowledge. They rightly feel

that the so-called economy of knowledge asks for a new type

of scientist who will accept being flexible, in the same way

that workers today are asked to be flexible. They understand

that they are told that scientific knowledge has become a

much too serious business for scientists to keep what

appears as outdated privileges; that they are told they must

accept the common fate, that competitiveness is the general

rule, even if it means relaxing the rules of sharing and

collectively verifying knowledge in the scientific community

when those rules impede the competition for and accumulation

of intellectual property rights.

 

I think, however, that the great political challenge is to

avoid any nostalgia for the famous mode 1 production, the

Golden Age so many researchers are regretting. Indeed the

so-called mode 1 was forged around 1870, a time

characterized by intense relations with industrial

production and coincided with the promotion of a new type of

scientist, the specialized professionals, thinking away

everything that does not contribute to the progress of their

discipline and identifying the progress of their discipline

with the only key to human and social progress. This is the

" golden-eggs-hen-which-should-not-be killed " model: society

should feed research and respect its autonomy in exchange

for the fruitful applications that only a disinterested

quest for knowledge will produce. This model was an

apolitical model, since the golden eggs of science, as

incubated by industry, were defined as serving humanity

progress and well-being, transcending political conflicts.

But those kinds of eggs are probably not what we need today

in relation to what is now called sustainable development.

What is such a development is still an unknown. What we

know, however, is that, if it is not to remain sheer wishful

thinking, and if science is to be able to contribute at all

to what it demands, we need thinking scientists, not

believers in the direct link between progress of knowledge

and progress of humanity. Development, as linked to the mode

1 golden eggs, is unsustainable development.

 

We should thus be able to listen and amplify scientists'

complaints but succeed in disentangling them from nostalgia,

with the aim of inducing the scientist's appetite and

imagination for what is so very interesting in the present.

In order to do so, I would propose to take seriously the

idea of a knowledge society, but turn into examples of such

a society the story of the GMO protest, the growing unrest

and opposition of NGOs against intellectual property rights,

the questioning of pesticides and the beginning concerns

about nanotechnologies.

 

In all those cases, protests gain some general public

approbation, however vague, as if, at last, good questions

were produced. But what is politically relevant is the

effective learning process that enables concerned people to

penetrate questions they were not meant to approach. And

what is remarkable is a very slow, very timid recognition by

some scientists, that maybe the questions those outsiders

have learned to ask are not so irrational, after all.

 

It seems to me that politics means constructing a position

the first quality of which is not some adequacy to matter of

facts, but the production of the sense of possibility and

the appetite required to transform matters of fact. It may

be interesting not to denounce the mot d'ordre, order-word,

that Europe has to become a knowledge society, but to affirm

as obvious that the true measure of this becoming is the

ability of all the concerned people to produce and assemble

knowledge as it is relevant for the issue which concerns

them. And to affirm as obvious as well that this dynamics,

which is the very challenge of democracy, is also the chance

for scientists to escape flexible enslavement, and enter

into new relations with people who learn to become as

interested as they are themselves, in the reliability and

relevance of their contributions. Such affirmations are a

very small half of the truth indeed, but what matters is

that it is the interesting, appetizing half, and that

arising new appetites is the only way I can think of to

escape the trap of mots d'ordre.

 

This article is an edited version of her keynote speech to

the conference, What Science - What Europe, organized by the

Greens in the European Parliament, 2 -3 May 2005, in order

to launch a debate on FP7. Prof. Stengers is a signatory to

the ISP Statement to the European Commission on FP7. Add

your name here http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ISPF7.php

 

 

 

========================================================

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/

 

If you like this original article from the Institute of

Science in Society, and would like to continue receiving

articles of this calibre, please consider making a donation

or purchase on our website

 

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/donations.

 

ISIS is an independent, not-for-profit organisation

dedicated to providing critical public information on

cutting edge science, and to promoting social accountability

and ecological sustainability in science.

 

If you would prefer to receive future mailings as HTML

please let us know. If you would like to be removed from our

mailing list at

 

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/mailinglist/.php

========================================================

CONTACT DETAILS

 

The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London

NW1 OXR

 

telephone: [44 1994 231623] [44 20 8452 2729] [44 20

7272 5636]

 

General Enquiries sam Website/Mailing List

press-release ISIS Director m.w.ho

 

MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY BE REPRODUCED FOR ANY PROFIT FREE

PURPOSES WITHOUT PERMISSION, ON CONDITION THAT IT IS

ACCREDITED ACCORDINGLY AND CONTAINS A LINK TO http://www.i-

sis.org.uk/.

ANY COMMERCIAL USE MUST BE AGREED WITH ISIS