03.27.06
More on Democratic War on Scientism
Which leaves two questions; could there be a “Democratic War on Science”, and is this purely an American phenomenon?
I have been pursuing my own theme here of the Democratic War on Scientism, a leftist initiative/thought experiment, to separate the question of evolution from the Repubican attack on science, e.g. global warming. The collation of all the issues raised in Mooney’s book is a trap.
In general, the charge of ‘anti-science’ is leveled quite freely, yet it is perfectly possible to support science against scientism, without indulging in anti-science.
But the key question is that of the status of Darwinism, and the way the Darwin debate has polarized on politics. The right will win here, the way things are going now.
They know, what the liberal world can’t grasp because liberal Darwinists are incompetent leadership, that Darwin’s theory is bogus, and that it is only a matter of time before the liberal Darwinists end up outflanked. This should not be confused with the question of the fact evolution, nor as an endorsement of ID. It is the ideology of natural selection that is the crux of the confusion.
Leftist/liberal thought is completely stuck on this issue, yet Darwin’s theory, and the abuse of natural selection, is really a form of scientism held over from the nineteenth century, the positivistic ghost.
Since the issue is ideology, scientific geekhood isn’t going to help extricate anyone. Liberals might take the lead in forging a new social philosophy that is harmonized with science, that can lead the way into a Postdarwinian era.
Otherwise the right will do it for them.
It is not anti-science to consider that the liberal tradition is not in some one to one relationship with science, and that its ‘evolution’ follows a different law. The conservative reaction to this question, granted the immense confusion, springs also in part from the impoverishment of liberal tradition as it embraces the world-view of scientism.
Darwinists seem to think that this ‘favorite theory’, in reality a conservatized Whiggish ideology, is the talisman of universal knowledge, and the hordes of liberal converts fail to see the way they have been bamboozled by such ideology. A new liberal philosophy that can help to extricate its public from scientism, in the name of right Science, is needed to counteract the right here.
From seminar
I think that the answer to the first is yes there could. There are authoritarians on the political left of the spectrum as well as the right, and I can’t help but notice that it is in the American university system that quite sensible French theories of literary criticism have been given a specifically irrationalist interpretation that was never really there in the originals. But I think that the answer to the second is also yes it is. There is a lot of anti-science thinking in Europe (and I’m sure there is in Asia too, but I don’t know much about it), but it has a much less specifically irrationalist cast to it, using the term in Adorno’s sense. It is probably irrational (in the everyday language sense) of Europeans to be so implacably opposed to genetically modified food, but their opposition is not in general cast in “irrationalist” terms; it’s based on “despite what the science says, I don’t believe it” rather than “the science cannot possibly be saying that because I don’t want to believe it”. And I don’t think that this is a coincidence; authoritarian politics in general are these days much less common in Europe than in America. I don’t know why the politics of status insecurity are more common in the last remaining great world power, or why they have got more rather than less influential since the end of the Cold War, but I suggest that this is the root of the troubled relationship between American politics and American science, and that because of this, the Republican War on Science is likely to get worse rather than better.