Politics of Science and Science Education

Abstract

That there is a constant interplay between science and politics is not a new thesis; it is a fact well known and recognized by those who advocate a realist, rationalist and universalist conception of science. Just to give a few examples, Bacon observed long ago that the use of scientific knowledge can enhance human powers (see Section 11.5.1). Centuries later, especially with two world wars in the 20(th) century, applied science became an enormous source of military and therefore political power for governments. Conversely, after turning into a costly enterprise, the direction of scientific research began to be shaped considerably by the availability and amount of funds, the distribution of which is open to all kinds of political negotiation. The Lyssenko affair attested to the degree to which scientists may be influenced by ideological factors in pursuing a theory. Nevertheless, according to the realist, rationalist and universalist conception of science that we advocate in this book, the influence of political or social factors either stays at the institutional level and therefore does not penetrate into the content of science, or even if it does, it can be detected, eliminated or at the very least bracketed by scientific means. Science education was not blind to this set of complex interrelationships between science and politics, and since at least the mid-fifties many developed countries including USA and Britain stressed the need to include in school science the social, political and economic dimensions of science (Bybee and DeBoer 1994; Matthews 1994, Chapters 1 to 3). The call for the inclusion of the history and philosophy of science into science education was, in part, an expression of this need. By and large, the image of science in science education circles until around late 1970s was universalist. In the previous chapters we saw that with the rise of currents like constructivism, postmodernism and epistemic multiculturalism this image of science came under fierce attack. 1 What is perhaps more interesting is that at the same time, under the influence of these movements and the social studies of science more generally, 2 science began to be perceived, in unprecedented ways and degrees, as a political enterprise, and politics of education became one of the primary concerns of many educationalists. If, as postmodernists argue, the main aim of education is empowerment or deconstruction, if mainstream science education is culturally hegemonic and imperialistic because it includes the teaching of only 'Western science' at the expense of 'indigenous science' as multiculturalists charge, if social constructivists are right in pressing that science is socially constructed in its very content and, finally, if science is revealed to be ideological, masculine, elitist, competitive, exploitative, impersonal, and violent by the social studies as it is often claimed (Aikenhead 1997, p. 220), then this is expected and not surprising. Under these conditions science and science education cannot but be political in the strongest sense, through and through. We believe it is not a coincidence that such politicisation goes hand-in-hand with the constructivist-postmodernist-multiculturalist attack on the realist-rationalist-universalist image of science; for in the eyes of the attackers, there is an intrinsic connection between the two. Surprisingly, however, to the best of our knowledge, this relationship has not been explored in detail, if at all. As far as we can see, the attack and the politicisation are related in the following way. Many postmodernists, epistemic multiculturalists and constructivists claim that talk of universal science and reason, objective truth and knowledge is repressive and reactionary because it is imperialistic, homogenizing and unifying. That is why they attack it; that is, they attack it in the name of a progressive and emancipatory education and politics. And they embrace relativism for the same reason because they think that relativism is tolerant of alternative (local, indigenous) forms of science, knowledge and rationality. In this way conceptions of science become related to political concerns. This is indeed a radical politicisation of conceptions of science, knowledge and reason. In the next section we document and spell out this argument in more detail and then subject it to a critical scrutiny. Our conceptual analysis and criticism reveals that there is nothing in postmodernism and epistemic multiculturalism that is intrinsically liberating or progressive. While we believe it is a mistake to think that a political position can be derived solely from epistemological considerations, we nevertheless argue that the two can be allied with each other under certain historical conditions. In Sections 14.2 and 14.3 we present two case studies, one from India and another from Turkey, that show how conservative and/or reactionary movements in various parts of the world today are nourished by postmodern and epistemic multiculturalist ideas about 'local knowledges', 'alternative sciences' and so on. These case studies support our contention that, although epistemological positions such as universalism and relativism are politically neutral, under certain conditions they can be exploited to serve certain political purposes, indeed, sometimes very conservative or reactionary ones, nullifying the argument that postmodernism and epistemic multiculturalism are intrinsically emancipatory and progressive. We believe that it is important to address the interplay between science and politics as part of science education in today's globalized world, but this must be done with care. In our opinion, most of the problems associated with science today have to do more with the institution of science as it operates and sustains itself within the larger context of real politics and economics policies than with science as an activity and thought (see Section 6.6). As is well known, in the twentieth century both science and science-driven technology have become sources of wealth and power. Forces of the free market economy, and the interests of states and governments for gaining more power, are exerting an enormous ( negative) influence on the direction of scientific and technological research, forcing universities to enter into unhealthy relationships with industry. To blame science tout court or to blame the universalist conception of it does nothing but to muddle these real issues. We highlight this point in Section 14.4.