6 ms·

Is Science Political?

37 points by XzetaU8 7y ago

brownbat 7y ago
The article is about the Cold War and the history of scientific funding, not so much about recent politics. It's interesting! But the title could be misleading. Judging from the last para, maybe that's intentional. Just warning that this could be RTFA bait. Step lightly brave commenters!
- sittingnut 7y ago
  bravery is not needed in hn, all things that offends a delicate establishment bubble mentality is always censored here.
- bigtrakzapzap 7y ago
  ;) Speaking of history and the Cold War, a worthy docuseries to face some uncomfortable facts of the US' post-WW2 behavior: Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. Even Gorbachev wrote an opinion on the subsequently-released book. https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995 https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995
Pfhreak 7y ago
Isn't science, by the nature of funding, necessarily political?
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  Politics arises when 3 or more people decide on who gets what and how much of it. Life is political all the the way down.
  - pharke 7y ago
    By that definition of governance you could argue an individual must engage in politics when dealing with only his own choices. Surely there is a line between direct negotiation and political governance. I'd argue that line is drawn when representation comes into play.
    - james_s_tayler 7y ago
      The line is drawn at the point it's possible to form coalitions to overpower another party. Hence at minimum 3 people have to be involved otherwise it is just direct negotiation. Most of life is deeply political in this sense.
ilaksh 7y ago
Interesting article. I have a slightly related idea to mention. The application of empiricism is suspect by the nature of perception, cognition, and the complexity of reality. This is not to say that empirical activity is not critical to science. It's just that scientific theories by necessity exceed the scope of local observation and are biased by worldview, especially as predictions become grander in scale.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  I don't understand. Empiricism is based on shared perceptions, and scientific theories exceed these?
  - monster99 7y ago
    The truth already exists without our perception of it. Think about this - if there was no absolute ground you couldn't have so much as a single perception. The problem becomes the human minds limitations, aka the problem isn't with the universe but the minds of human beings and their relationship to what actually is.
mLuby 7y ago
No. Stop it. Funding is, science isn't. There's an effective debate tactic where attackers DDoS the other side with innocent questions about their premises. As defenders drown under these reasonable-seeming queries, onlookers wonder if the deluge might indicate a hidden fundamental flaw in the defenders' argument.
- nikofeyn 7y ago
  how exact do you separate the two? without funding, science doesn’t happen? and this article is covering a specific viewpoint, but how people do science can certainly be political (and is).
  - scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
    People can still do science on their own. Grant giving institutions as a driver of science is a relatively recent phenomenon. There's nothing wrong with a garage laboratory to test your ideas so long as you document your methodology so it can be repeated by others and scrutinized for following the scientific method.
  - atoav 7y ago
    I think discussing a tangential discussion is enlighting: Is there such a thing as unpolitical art? You will find the intuition to consider art with political statements as political and art without as unpolitical. But art operates in an status quo, so can it even be unpolitical? Are the shiny baloon-like sculptures produced by questionably paid interns of Jeff Koons unpolitical? Is a painter who depicts the most idyllic sceneries in a starving country apolitical? You quickly realize, that trying not to taking part in political things is itself political in a way. But what about science? Is it political to speak the truth? Yeah, quite much. People have been killed for telling the truth. It takes a very nasty social climate for the truth to become political, but it can become political and when it does, speaking truth becomes as political as denying it. We have this reflex to say: “but if it is political it is less legitimate”, but forget that any action that shapes society in a meaningful way is political — be it intentional or not. You can do the most neutral climate science in the world and base everything on proof and facts and your words will still be political in a world where some fractions deny it. Your goal just isn’t power then, but to speak truth.
clairity 7y ago
the title is a bit misleading in that this is actually a book review of "Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science" by Audra J. Wolfe, which describes the role of global politics on the direction of american science in the 20th century. in college, i read what i assume is a precursor to this book, entitled "The Cold War and American Science" by Stuart W. Leslie[0] which covers much of the same material, particularly the rise of MIT and stanford as top-tier schools. but to answer the question in the title, yes, science is political, because people are political and science is a process devised and employed by humans. [0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074.The_Cold_War_and_American_Science https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074.The_Cold_War_and_...
aeturnum 7y ago
Science is very political! Though as others point out this is about the history of the cold war more than colloquial forces. Scientists are people first and people live in the world, hold views and their views influenced what makes sense to them. All research is aligned with politics in some way, though not all topics are equally engaged.
SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
Is science apolitical? It's the same question, only opposite spin. I don't think that science could be apolitical. Not as long at it uncovers facts, and facts have political consequences.
sametmax 7y ago
There is not a single thing you can't interpret as political. The question is more about intent, both from the emitter, and the receiver.
aluren 7y ago
Of course science is political. What isn't? I have a feeling that non-scientists see science as an invisible ethereal, platonic construct that's slowly being unveiled by hardy explorers, uh I mean scientists, until at last the whole of the Truth and nothing but the Truth fully shines in its enlightening splendor. Except that's not how it works. In practice, science works by scientific consensus. What is true is what the community decides is true. The community can be convinced otherwise by contradicting evidence (or not) but the process of convincing is then subject to all the biases affecting our feeble human minds: it can be contradictory with other evidence, misinterpreted, misunderstood, deemed insufficient, coming from the wrong person, etc. It takes a lot of time for the consensus to evolve, and it's a rather a messy and political affair. There's often a running joke that a theory's acceptance depends on the old guard dying out and being replaced by the younger, more open-minded generation (relevant smbc: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works) Btw, just in case you're wondering, math is absolutely not immune from this either. Cathy O'Neil wrote an excellent post detailing how mathematical proofs work in real life (and not in some platonic imaginary world invented by laymen): https://mathbabe.org/2012/08/06/what-is-a-proof/ https://mathbabe.org/2012/08/06/what-is-a-proof/ also with a relatively recent example: https://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-has-not-been-proved/ https://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-has-not-b...
praestigiare 7y ago
Everything humans do is political. Thinking something is not political is like thinking you don't have an accent: it just means you think of the politics as normal, not that they don't exist. The practice of science involves choices about where to allocate resources, what lines of research are considered prestigious, what fields of study are encouraged or discouraged, debates over the ethics of technologies that arise from research, who gets to do the science... All of these considerations and more are political.
wtdata 7y ago
From various other discussions and clear examples in HN, in my opinion: hard sciences aren't political, soft sciences are clearly political.
iconjack 7y ago
Does the Pope shit in the woods?

37 points by XzetaU8 7y ago

The article is about the Cold War and the history of scientific funding, not so much about recent politics. It's interesting! But the title could be misleading. Judging from the last para, maybe that's intentional. Just warning that this could be RTFA bait. Step lightly brave commenters!

sittingnut 7y ago
bravery is not needed in hn, all things that offends a delicate establishment bubble mentality is always censored here.
bigtrakzapzap 7y ago
;) Speaking of history and the Cold War, a worthy docuseries to face some uncomfortable facts of the US' post-WW2 behavior: Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. Even Gorbachev wrote an opinion on the subsequently-released book. https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995 https://www.netflix.com/title/80127995

Pfhreak 7y ago

Isn't science, by the nature of funding, necessarily political?

james_s_tayler 7y ago
Politics arises when 3 or more people decide on who gets what and how much of it. Life is political all the the way down.
- pharke 7y ago
  By that definition of governance you could argue an individual must engage in politics when dealing with only his own choices. Surely there is a line between direct negotiation and political governance. I'd argue that line is drawn when representation comes into play.
  - james_s_tayler 7y ago
    The line is drawn at the point it's possible to form coalitions to overpower another party. Hence at minimum 3 people have to be involved otherwise it is just direct negotiation. Most of life is deeply political in this sense.

ilaksh 7y ago

Interesting article. I have a slightly related idea to mention. The application of empiricism is suspect by the nature of perception, cognition, and the complexity of reality. This is not to say that empirical activity is not critical to science. It's just that scientific theories by necessity exceed the scope of local observation and are biased by worldview, especially as predictions become grander in scale.

dr_dshiv 7y ago
I don't understand. Empiricism is based on shared perceptions, and scientific theories exceed these?
- monster99 7y ago
  The truth already exists without our perception of it. Think about this - if there was no absolute ground you couldn't have so much as a single perception. The problem becomes the human minds limitations, aka the problem isn't with the universe but the minds of human beings and their relationship to what actually is.

mLuby 7y ago

No. Stop it. Funding is, science isn't. There's an effective debate tactic where attackers DDoS the other side with innocent questions about their premises. As defenders drown under these reasonable-seeming queries, onlookers wonder if the deluge might indicate a hidden fundamental flaw in the defenders' argument.

nikofeyn 7y ago
how exact do you separate the two? without funding, science doesn’t happen? and this article is covering a specific viewpoint, but how people do science can certainly be political (and is).
- scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
  People can still do science on their own. Grant giving institutions as a driver of science is a relatively recent phenomenon. There's nothing wrong with a garage laboratory to test your ideas so long as you document your methodology so it can be repeated by others and scrutinized for following the scientific method.
- atoav 7y ago
  I think discussing a tangential discussion is enlighting: Is there such a thing as unpolitical art? You will find the intuition to consider art with political statements as political and art without as unpolitical. But art operates in an status quo, so can it even be unpolitical? Are the shiny baloon-like sculptures produced by questionably paid interns of Jeff Koons unpolitical? Is a painter who depicts the most idyllic sceneries in a starving country apolitical? You quickly realize, that trying not to taking part in political things is itself political in a way. But what about science? Is it political to speak the truth? Yeah, quite much. People have been killed for telling the truth. It takes a very nasty social climate for the truth to become political, but it can become political and when it does, speaking truth becomes as political as denying it. We have this reflex to say: “but if it is political it is less legitimate”, but forget that any action that shapes society in a meaningful way is political — be it intentional or not. You can do the most neutral climate science in the world and base everything on proof and facts and your words will still be political in a world where some fractions deny it. Your goal just isn’t power then, but to speak truth.

clairity 7y ago

the title is a bit misleading in that this is actually a book review of "Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science" by Audra J. Wolfe, which describes the role of global politics on the direction of american science in the 20th century. in college, i read what i assume is a precursor to this book, entitled "The Cold War and American Science" by Stuart W. Leslie[0] which covers much of the same material, particularly the rise of MIT and stanford as top-tier schools. but to answer the question in the title, yes, science is political, because people are political and science is a process devised and employed by humans. [0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074.The_Cold_War_and_American_Science https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212074.The_Cold_War_and_...

aeturnum 7y ago

Science is very political! Though as others point out this is about the history of the cold war more than colloquial forces. Scientists are people first and people live in the world, hold views and their views influenced what makes sense to them. All research is aligned with politics in some way, though not all topics are equally engaged.

SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago

Is science apolitical? It's the same question, only opposite spin. I don't think that science could be apolitical. Not as long at it uncovers facts, and facts have political consequences.

sametmax 7y ago

There is not a single thing you can't interpret as political. The question is more about intent, both from the emitter, and the receiver.

aluren 7y ago

Of course science is political. What isn't? I have a feeling that non-scientists see science as an invisible ethereal, platonic construct that's slowly being unveiled by hardy explorers, uh I mean scientists, until at last the whole of the Truth and nothing but the Truth fully shines in its enlightening splendor. Except that's not how it works. In practice, science works by scientific consensus. What is true is what the community decides is true. The community can be convinced otherwise by contradicting evidence (or not) but the process of convincing is then subject to all the biases affecting our feeble human minds: it can be contradictory with other evidence, misinterpreted, misunderstood, deemed insufficient, coming from the wrong person, etc. It takes a lot of time for the consensus to evolve, and it's a rather a messy and political affair. There's often a running joke that a theory's acceptance depends on the old guard dying out and being replaced by the younger, more open-minded generation (relevant smbc: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works) Btw, just in case you're wondering, math is absolutely not immune from this either. Cathy O'Neil wrote an excellent post detailing how mathematical proofs work in real life (and not in some platonic imaginary world invented by laymen): https://mathbabe.org/2012/08/06/what-is-a-proof/ https://mathbabe.org/2012/08/06/what-is-a-proof/ also with a relatively recent example: https://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-has-not-been-proved/ https://mathbabe.org/2012/11/14/the-abc-conjecture-has-not-b...

praestigiare 7y ago

Everything humans do is political. Thinking something is not political is like thinking you don't have an accent: it just means you think of the politics as normal, not that they don't exist. The practice of science involves choices about where to allocate resources, what lines of research are considered prestigious, what fields of study are encouraged or discouraged, debates over the ethics of technologies that arise from research, who gets to do the science... All of these considerations and more are political.

wtdata 7y ago

From various other discussions and clear examples in HN, in my opinion: hard sciences aren't political, soft sciences are clearly political.

iconjack 7y ago

Does the Pope shit in the woods?