Improper Instrument for Criticizing Science

Science as Politics. Les Levidow, ed. Free Association Books, London, 1986. 180 pp. £5.95. The last 20 years have seen the flowering of literally dozens of different political critiques of science and technology. The majority have had their roots in the late-1960s movement for social responsibility in science. Most have been broadly left of the political center, and most (but not all, as the continuing strength of the environmental movement amply testifies) have had almost no discernible influence on the conduct of science and technology. For more than a decade, the Radical Science Journal has been developing a distinctive kind of Marxist science criticism. Setting out from the remarkable thesis that modern science is an intrinsically capitalist enterprise (remarkable because, of course, Marx described his own political philosophy as "scientific socialism"), the radical science collective has moved through a form of labor process theory to the view that, in the title of a keynote article by Robert Young a few years ago, "Science is Social Relations." Science As Politics is the 20th issue in the radical science series. Although published as a book, it retains the journal format throughout, from the short editorial and the major articles (Norman Diamond on the social foundations of the Copernican Revolution, and Jim Moore on social Darwinism), through the essay reviews, and right up to the final list of Cornradely Publications and Groups. The only thing that unites the otherwise disparate contents is their single-minded determination to show that everything about science—from its most grandiose and time-honored theories to its most prosaic institutional arrangements and bench-top practices—is political. This is an unsatisfactory way of doing science criticism. Of course, you can choose to make the whole of science political if you wish. For example, you can define all human affairs as political, and then point out that science is a part of human affairs. But the result is that the word "politics" loses all its analytical force. If everything is political, then nothing is. In case this sounds like mere wordplay, consider Jim Moore's article on social Darwinism. Moore is an excellent historian, and he has no difficulty in showing that many Darwinists (including Darwin him-sell) have drawn social and political conclusions from their science. So far, so good; but then we read these words: "I maintain—no, I insist—that 'Social Darwinism' is redundant, for Darwinism is 'social'." What can this possibly mean? If it is merely a restatement of the proposition that many Darwinists have socialized in the name of their science, then it is at best rather misleading rhetoric. If it is a stronger philosophical proposition, to the effect that Darwinism necessarily entails some (presumably evil) social philosophy, then it is both unjustifiable and politically counterproductive. It is unjustifiable because the theory of evolution by natural selection cannot be shown necessarily to entail any particular social philosophy. It is politically counterproductive because, once accepted, it prevents us from distinguishing between the scientific pursuit of a better understanding of organic origins and the ideological pursuit of a Darwinistic philosophy of social conflict. The trouble with insisting that science—all science—is political is that it leads straight to the problem of the baby and the bathwater. The real point of this problem, of course, is that no one wants to lose the baby, so the baby stays unwashed. We shall never develop an effective critique of social Darwinism and other ideologies if we fail to distinguish these theories from science itself. Durant is a staff tutor in biological sciences in the Department for External Studies, University of Oxford, Wellington Square, OX1 2JA, UK.

Improper Instrument for Criticizing Science

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