Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

chroniclerofblarney t1_iur2vlq wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Does Science Need History? A Conversation with Lorraine Daston by Maxwellsdemon17

Science is absolutely dictated by the prevailing ideological currents of each era, far more so than History by virtue of the more considerable resources its earnest pursuit requires. There are countless scientific projects that could be pursued at any given moment, but they are not because political ideologies dictate those that are and those that are not given financial and institutional support. Science is in fact uniquely ill equipped to handle its own ideological embeddedness - largely because of fantasies of neutrality and objectivity displayed in your post. If you think that science is or ever has been pursued free from its historical moment, free from the politics of the moment, you ought to read some history.

7

[deleted] t1_iur6i2f wrote

Science is not universally 'dictated' by politics and good basic science in areas like physics and chemistry, has been, and should continue be, based on what experiments based on theory tell us. There will always be the status quo and controversial new ideas that get tested. A good read in this regard is Einstein's early attempts to get his theories accepted.

For medicine and environmental science, and other applied sciences, I agree that politics is a factor, because more money spent on what politicians want.

But still, in science, if your politically-driven science is bad, your projects will not ultimately succeed. Bad green science won't bring us a better power source or battery. If the emperor has no clothes, the scientists will be found out.

In history, there are naked emperors running around everywhere, getting rewarded for it. Liars and revisionists get extra airtime for poorly researched work that fits the political story certain politicians want people to hear.

Thus idea that science is fundamentally ideologically corrupt is pushed by the people who want to REALLY corrupt it. And unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning naive scientists are just going to roll over while the way hiring and research are done is corrupted, because they want to avoid conflict.

−2

chroniclerofblarney t1_ius5hya wrote

Whoever pays for the work decides what work gets done. Science, as a set of disciplinary practices of people, happens to the extent that other people wish to direct resources toward it. Those other people’s desires and goals are determined by historical forces. Thus, science is driven by historical forces, even if its outcomes may unfold quite independent of historical forces (of course, and not wishing to muddy that main point, things like climate science show that historical forces are very much entangled with experimental data, too).

2

[deleted] t1_iusszuy wrote

Yes----BUT-----the same things that affect WHAT science is done also ensure that it must be done correctly. We have drugs for cancer and Sickle Cell Anemia because of good science, not bad politics. We have drugs for erectile dysfunction because of a serendipitous observation in a different clinical study. We have lithium and NiMH battery tech because of good science done 30 years ago. Science is ultimately results-driven and verifiable. Historical narratives often get twisted by politics.

As far as climate science goes, the problem there is more the politics than the history.

And any scientific argument based on history is very weak. Some say evolution is based on history, as in natural history, but fossils aren't history. They are scientific evidence. Evolution has overwhelming scientific evidence behind it.

1