Democracy has a problem with science
Source: Salon
Democracy has a problem with science
As populist leaders stoke rage and rejection of elitism, they also throw out objectivity and the value of expertise
MICHAEL J. THOMPSON • GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER
APRIL 28, 2019 2:00PM (UTC)
This essay is adapted from "Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy: Defending Reason in a Free Society," by Michael J. Thompson and Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker, published by Prometheus Books.
In August 2018, the recently elected populist government in Italy passed an amendment that startled scientifically-minded citizens in the country. The amendment suspended the law that requires parents to show proof of vaccinations for their children entering school, claiming that, in the words of Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, they “are useless and in many cases dangerous, if not harmful.” More recently, the anti-vaccine movement has penetrated even deeper into the United States, with an outbreak of measles spreading in several highly populated centers in the country. Add to this the stubborn persistence of climate-change denial, and even new beliefs about the earth being flat, and it does not take us long to see that modern democracies are having a problem with science. What it is important to see in these trends is that this rise in anti-science attitudes is also corrosive to modern democracy as well.
What is so troubling about these events, beyond their obvious public health implications, is what it indicates about the growth of anti-science world-views in modern democracies. A crescendo of anti-science attitudes has been gaining steam in recent decades leading to a cultural and political environment where adherence to basic standards of truth, evidence, reasoned argument and agreement have all but collapsed. From the stubborn denial of climate change, to the rejection of findings by natural and social scientists, we seem to be entering not only a “post-truth” environment, but more dangerously, an “anti-science” climate where modern, liberal democracy itself is under threat. It gives aid to the enemies of modern democracy and to the impulses of a reactionary populism bent on nationalist and ethnic superiority.
The relationship of modern democracy and science is an intimate one. Centuries ago during the Renaissance, the re-emergence of scientific ideas were aimed at cracking open the encrusted forms of traditional authority that held sway. Science was able to test and, in so doing, to question the authority of the Church, theological doctrines, as well as political authority. Science fed a new vision of democracy as one based on reasoned citizens, using argument and debate to shape their common lives together. The Enlightenment cemented the foundations of this modern conception of democracy where human beings were first becoming viewed as universal bearers of rights and reason could be employed for the public good. Science and modern democracy, it was understood, share certain basic ways of thinking: the idea that reasons are universal, in the sense that they apply to everyone; the idea that we should be skeptical of received ideas about the world that makes claims to truth; the idea that our ideas about the world should evolve as new evidence emerges; and the idea that we find these truths through participating in a community of others who searching for what is correct and true. All of these are features that science and modern democracy share with one another. Together they constitute a culture of political reason that should be seen as a standard for our political institutions and the culture of our citizenship.
The entwinement of science and democracy informed and strengthened the idea of human rights, of universal political and moral principles, and ideas about pluralism and equality. It rooted our political institutions in a rationalist, objective framework where reasoned argument and debate would be the core nucleus of political change. It also informed citizens’ movements, from the labor movement to the civil rights and feminist movements, to question the ingrained prejudices and authority of their time. Social divisions based on race, class and gender that once rested on false ideas about biology and tradition soon revealed their intellectual bankruptcy.
But in recent years, the emergence of anti-science attitudes has led to a devolution of democratic mindsets and to a populist — and perhaps more sinister — openness to submitting to authority. ...
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Read more: https://www.salon.com/2019/04/28/democracy-has-a-problem-with-science/
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