The following paper is the fruit of personal research carried out in the course of my work at the Forward Studies Unit. It in no way reflects the official positions of either the Commission or the President.
1. Science is changing in a changing society
The Commission organised recently in Oxford a small "Carrefour de la Science et de la Culture" bringing into contact high level members of the Commission with Nobel prizes in different Sciences. There was a long exchange on the changes in Science and in society.
My hypothesis is that there is an important change in the scientific paradigm but that this change is occurring in a more global and broader cultural change.
1.1. Changes in scientific paradigm
Recent developments in Science, like the research of Prigogine, but already of Heisenberg, show that one part of the scientists have been forced through their research to abandon the hope to discover a true and adequate description of universal and exact laws of nature. Nature as Prigogine notes is neither transparent, previsible, manipulable, nor stable, and humans (scientists) must cease to consider themselves as "objective" observers out of time and space. If one agrees with this new vision of science one must draw a major consequence : scientific rationality cannot any more pretend to be in possession of the true laws of nature... of they exist. Rationality has lost its privilege of having direct access to the truth i.e. of objectivity and neutrality. "Exact" science is thus more similar to other human sciences. It has a more humble and progressive (asymptotic) approach of the truth.
But if science is not any more "neutral" nor "objective", it most accept to be "in" and not "above" ethics and politics. Scientists are thus invited to accept that they cannot escape their social, political and ethical responsibilities. It is normal that society asks scientists to give account of their options and choices.
2. Malaise of some scientists
Some scientists resent those new demands about their responsibilities as a plot against science. They have sometimes the impression to be submitted to a new trial of Galilei. They judge the critics against science as obscurantistic refusals of scientific rationality, and as a return to the Middle Ages. Their reaction is thus to start campaigns of "explanations" in order to combat what they feel to be ignorance, backwardness and lack of information.
It is probably true that some criticisms have a real anti-rational tone. Our hypothesis though is that the main reason for this change of behaviour in the public is not at all a plot against science but an important cultural change of our world.
3. What cultural change?
According to our analysis the cultural change is much broader than the changing in the scientific paradigm, although the changing of status of the scientific rationality is an important element of it. Other important elements of this change are:
- The transition towards the "information society", which presupposes an important change in human relations, precisely because of the new possibilities of those new electronic tools. As industrial society was characterised by the importance of capital, of the quantitative element, by analytic approach, and money efficiency, it seems that in this new society information will be more important than capital, qualitative approach will prevail over quantitative, holistic approach will use analysis but be prevalent over it. Meaning and signification will slowly prevail over efficiency...
- This new possibility of communication permits also a globalization of information. This brings also the cultures in closer contact, and relativizes the dominance of the western cultures over the others. We see the resurrection of the cultural element, for the best and the worse. (religious wars etc...).
- Independently of those elements it is also clear that the end of the XXth century sees the roles of women and men changing fast, partly because of the possibilities of birth control.
- Some sociologists also say that we are leaving slowly the consumer society and that we are entering into a society of signification (société du sens).
One could add other elements and there are others to be added. What is important is to situate what is happening to science in a broader context of cultural change. Instead of going back to the Middle Ages, we are going in fact towards a new type of society. The difficulty is precisely that the new paradigm being more holistic, resembles to some extent the uni-fying paradigm of premodernity (Middle Ages) but without the authoritarian-vertical aspect of it. The confusion is thus understandable, but it is a confusion that has to be clarified.
If one accepts that we are changing the social paradigm, a changing of the status of science becomes an acceptable hypothesis. Moral responsibilities of the scientists become self evident as for any other human beings.
Notes:
- Based on a contribution to the "Second European Congress on Systems Science". PRAGUE 5-8 October 1993.
- I. PRIGOGINE is currently one of the three main advisers of the Commission for science policy.
- I. PRIGOGINE ET I. STENGERS: La Nouvelle Alliance Gallimard Paris 1979. p. 290-296.
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