A contradiction resides deep in the heart of modern society. On the one hand, we inhabit a world increasingly dominated by science and technology, one where the progress of scientific knowledge and technical efficiency seems without end. On the other hand, there also exists a deep-seated opposition to scientific knowledge and to science itself as a form of knowledge. A trend has been gathering momentum in modern culture away from science as a means to think about human affairs and an approach to truth. Although technology and technological forms of rationality have transformed our world, hostility toward science as a method and as a way of comprehending the social and natural world has emerged as an obstacle to a more humane and more democratic society. From religiously motivated arguments against the teaching of evolution in public schools to the denial of climate change, new-ageist espousals of alternative medicine, the regular distortion or dismissal of social-scientific data, outlandish claims about the effects of vaccinations or the fluoridation of water, and widespread basic ignorance about concepts such as “theory” or “evidence,” anti-science viewpoints are becoming more and more manifest in our daily lives.
This trend is one that we call here “anti-science,” and it is characterized by more than a skepticism of science as a body of knowledge about the natural world; it is also a hostility toward the very notion that objective truth claims can be defended. The anti-science attitude predisposes one to view science—as a mode of inquiry—as belonging solely to educated elites, who use it to “disenchant” the world and to control those with differing worldviews, particularly those, for example, who find their identity in knowledge that comes through nonscientific means. This anti-science position has its roots not only in the populist anti-elitism of the current period, it has also expressed itself in the halls of academe. The insidious influence of postmodern relativism equates the methods of the natural and social sciences with regimes of “power-knowledge” where all claims to rational, objective truth are questioned as mere masks for social power and dominance. A hyper-cynicism with respect to the powers of science, progress, and Enlightenment reason plagues many of those who consider themselves critics of modern society and politics. This trend has led to a convergence of traditionally conservative anti-science positions and Far-Left ideas about the social construction of knowledge.
In some ways this should be of little surprise. On the one hand, consumer society has increasingly isolated individuals from the implications and consequences of their preferences and actions. Each now sees their own subjective world as forming the common-sense context for their ideas about what matters and what does not. The internet and niche media outlets that foster the proverbial “echo chamber” have only exacerbated this social malaise. Isolated individuals enjoy the experience of community by finding online communities that reinforce their most outlandish beliefs and nurture even more bizarre worldviews. In addition, the proliferation of the self-help industry has combined the propensity for seeking irrationally grounded solutions with the tendency to portray all problems through the lens of a hyper-individualism, further encouraging people to withdraw into the self and away from the democratic community.
On the other hand, as modern societies become increasingly complex and require more technocratic management, there is an erosion of civic and democratic practices and mind-sets as people's relations become more mediated by technology and less by interpersonal contact. The result here is that technological society becomes bereft of value judgments as individuals rely less on their own ideas about what is right and wrong and more on the systems that shape their lives. As a result, society becomes impervious to the decisions and issues of citizens. Science as a form of objective reasoning about human affairs and the dynamics of the natural world now comes to be seen as tool of the elite that seeks to dislodge the individual from their place in their respective traditions and beliefs. It seems that, more and more, science has been misused by those in power, who seek to orient it toward profit, military power, or the efficiency of social control, just as democracy has withered—that science has been absorbed into technical rationality and forms of control rather than flourishing as a form of experiment and inquiry. Bringing these two streams of science and democracy together again is therefore no easy task, but it is essential to restate the basic linkage between science as a form of inquiry and democracy as a form of shared power for the common good of its members.
The relation between science and democracy has been evident since the origins of the modern world. The break with the medieval world order began to accelerate once skepticism toward traditional authority began to embed itself in the western mind. This skepticism had, at various historical moments, asserted itself in many parts of the non-Western world, such as within the Islamic world, but were tragically silenced by both religious and political authorities. By questioning both biblical ideas about nature and natural laws, as well as the encrusted hierarchical ideas of Christian philosophy or Scholasticism, science as an approach to knowledge stressed an intrinsic skepticism of any received truth and a rejection of any truth claim that was based on tradition or some social authority. What began in the Renaissance and continued on through the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century was a wedding between science and democratic attitudes. The progress of scientific reason was accompanied by movements toward representative democracy, the rule of law, and republicanism. But there was also a more subtle linkage formed between the attitudes of science and the attitudes of democratic life. Although the political and the scientific paths were distinct, each was demonstrating a new way to think about truth, about authority, and about the power of reason. What the scientific revolution and the age of democratic revolutions shared was a confidence in the human capacity to know, to create, and to test and to experiment with new ideas. As the sphere of the sacred began to shrink, the realm of the secular started to expand. With this shift there was a new sense of freedom—traditional constraints were cast off and a new vision of an emancipated future could be glimpsed.
Perhaps one of the most salient thinkers to wed the scientific and democratic positions was Benedict Spinoza. For Spinoza, the critique of nonrational and irrational beliefs was central to the cultivation of the free individual as well as a democratic community. He advocated the thesis that the religious conception of God was a mythical misunderstanding of nature and that science therefore has the possibility to free us from superstition and provide us with the capacity to make self-governing decisions about our lives, both personally and collectively. Spinozist ideas spread throughout Europe and influenced many of the radical and revolutionary ideas of the eighteenth century. They nourished an array of brilliant thinkers for almost two centuries. But soon the backlash was to begin. Movements against Enlightenment reason from forces such as the church and feudal powers began to weave a new narrative about the destructive tendencies of science and democracy. The reactionary Counter-Enlightenment—made up of figures throughout Europe such as Joseph de Maistre, Edmund Burke, and J. G. Hamann—argued that the dual influences of modern science and democratic government were threats to the vital traditions and forms of life that gave society its sense of structure and stability. Tradition and hierarchy, throne and altar were now to be counterposed against the emerging forces of science, reason, and democratic life.
The forces of reaction have been tied with the forces of Enlightenment in a kind of Jacob-and-Angel struggle ever since. But recent years have displayed a new kind of anti-scientific sensibility. As modern market societies dominated by capitalism have fragmented social bonds and eroded social trust, and the infantilization of mass-produced popular culture has been successful in derationalizing citizens, irrational forms of meaning are sought for. Mysticism, a return to religion, nihilism, the preponderance of self-help manuals, new-age gurus—all are dimensions of modern culture that threaten to render democratic life sterile and inert in the face of new forms of inequality and authority. Any hope for a revival of democratic society must therefore be premised on a rebirth of a kind of scientific attitude. One reason for this is that, with the collapse of organized religious doctrines and broadly shared traditions and values, modern society can be democratically sewn together via forms of shared norms and institutions that root their legitimacy in our rational and reflective capacity for consent. Science as a mode of inquiry is uniquely suited to this task. In its emphasis on reason, evidence, and revisability, it can mold the mind into a form appropriate for this kind of democratic life.
The problem is, however, that the concept of democracy that was informed by Enlightenment ideas has been on the decline in modern societies. Democracy is now becoming viewed not as a process of determining and consenting to common, objective solutions to social problems and needs, but as a domain to express one's emotions and where each member's belief systems are to have as much warrant as any other. Instead of breaking down parochial belief systems, we seem to be cast into a Babel-like clash of worldviews. It is our contention that tendencies that defend anti-science views in the name of “democratic pluralism”—whether invoked by the Left or the Right—are actually destructive of a broader culture and the mind-set appropriate for a democratic society. Rather than enhancing the capacity for rational debate and critical discourse, we could see this as a return to premodern forms of subservience to authority and a deeply entrenched irrational refusal to submit beliefs to rational scrutiny. In this respect, we believe that we are witnessing a peculiarly new manifestation of anti-science belief systems that are, in spirit, akin to a premodern worldview but carry new consequences in contemporary society and politics.
The debate that the essays in this volume address is, in a certain respect, an old one. Among its most recent manifestations were the so-called “science wars” of the 1990s, which pitted defenders of scientific rationality against postmodernists and relativists. This was coupled with the efforts on the part of conservative evangelical Christians, whose new political self-assertiveness was a product of Ronald Reagan's election, to remount the battle against the teaching of evolution. The book therefore picks up on these older debates insofar as a certain brand of postmodern thinking remains prevalent in academia and the pseudo debate over the teaching of evolution persists and is now joined by climate-change denial. However, we believe that current manifestations of anti-science views have helped to forge a political crisis. Not only have the anti-science views of postmodernists come to inform democratic political theory, but also these more academic concerns complement a broader political climate in which a resistance to science shapes public opinion and a more general hostility to scientific reason.
The defense of creationism and resistance to the realities of climate change, for example, threaten both the capacity of the next generation to comprehend and employ rational arguments as well as its ability to confront the ways anti-science worldviews prevent us from dealing with environmental crises. In effect, postmodern theories on the Left and religiously influenced policy proposals on the Right have become unlikely allies with one another, even if not in intent. For these reasons, the essays in this volume put a particular emphasis on the political implications of anti-science thought, while the older “science wars” were conducted around more philosophical questions of method and epistemology. The new realities of anti-science policy—the withdrawal of funding from agencies that rely on the sciences, the effort to redesign school curricula, and many related concerns—speak to a political terrain in which anti-science views are reshaping our institutions, our culture, and our sensibilities.
Moreover, the issue of an anti-scientific worldview and its accompanying dismissal of the importance of reason have had an impact on contemporary political discourse. In a context where notions such as “alternative facts” have helped to foster populist political sentiment, we believe that the defense of a scientific worldview helps to oppose this broader social tendency to privilege ungrounded belief over reasoned argument and evidence. As we are now witnessing, this carries dangerous consequences for environmental policy and the health and well-being of citizens. Such political trends, we argue, are symptomatic of the bolstering of modes of thought that reject the values behind good science. Hence, when contributors to this volume speak of science, they not only have in mind knowledge of the laws and theories in the natural sciences, but, in addition, the type of intellectual procedures and forms of inquiry upon which the discovery of such laws and the development of such theories are founded. Viewed from this vantage point, postmodernist claims about the overlapping of power and knowledge finds their political expression in a more general tendency to view expertise as a form of elitism and the arguments of scientists as an attempt to forcibly impose beliefs. The degradation of science in academia, at best, leaves the next generation ignorant and, at worst, incapacitates the ability to combat irrationalism in civil society.
This is a problem that has only gotten worse with time. As democratic engagement and attitudes have eroded in American society so has investment in public education. Our public school systems are being starved of funding, and students are forced to share outdated textbooks that are literally coming apart at the seams. Meanwhile, wealthy donors with fundamentalist beliefs—whether of religion or the market—are seeking to lure the most vulnerable students into charter schools where they can more easily influence the curriculum. At the same time, they seek to use their wealth to infiltrate the boards of our great public institutions that sought to inspire wonder and curiosity in all citizens, regardless of class, such as the American Museum of Natural History. Add to this the spreading phenomenon of the corrosive effects of a commodified popular culture and we begin to grasp the extent to which reason—the cradle of science—has been receding. This culture of commodification has even transformed the popular mind's conception of what constitutes intellectual achievement, with more and more young people looking to Silicon Valley elites and the production of ever-more time-wasting features for their smartphones as marks of intellectual contributions to the social good.
Technological society has become increasingly dominant and with it an atrophy of the individual's moral and cognitive faculties. Students at universities can scarcely endure their lectures without attempting to clandestinely play the latest video game on their phone. Adults, in turn, are infantilized by these same technologies and are as addicted to social media as young people. The dominance of technique—with its emphasis on means over ends, prescribed processes over creative experiment, and conformity over creativity and spontaneity—means that the well-springs of political judgment are drying up. With these new realities in mind, the basic question and problem the essays assembled here seek to examine is the extent to which we can draw upon the relationship between science and democracy. More specifically, we want to explore the ways that science—as an attitude as well as an epistemic style of thought—is in retreat in modern societies. We therefore seek not only to polemically critique the anti-scientific cast of different features of modern culture and politics, but also to stake out a defense of rational, scientific dimensions to democratic life and a democratic society.
The essays collected here probe the problem of how these trends are affecting democratic society. The collective thesis of the essays that follow maintains that democracy is withering due in no small part to our culture's drifting away from the scientific mind-set and the erosion of reason that results from it. What is the relation between science and democracy? What is the difference between science and its technological-industrial expressions? What are the consequences and implications of opposition to science for political life? How does a rational-scientific attitude aid in core democratic values such as objective social knowledge, tolerance, just institutions, the promotion of a common interest, and so on? In the end, the fundamental question is: How does science—and the distinctive form of rationality that it promotes—underwrite a democratic society? For the essays in this book, science is more than a technical enterprise, it is an attitude toward reason, toward the importance of objective knowledge and the kind of inquiry that calls into question the traditions and practices taken for granted or as without justification by the community as a whole or by one's tradition or group in particular. We therefore insist that science, in the end, must be viewed as a core feature of a modern, democratic society and that its erosion in our culture is having, and will continue to have, grave political consequences. If the essays presented here go in any small way toward a reconstruction of democracy, we will all be the better for it.