“Anti-science” in sustainability and resilience Absolute relativism in the aftermath of nihilism LUIZ OOSTERBEEK – LOOST@IPT.PT

INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR THE PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SCIENCES

IPT – CGEO – ITM – UISPP

Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish St. Thomas Aquinas

A threefold trend

The growing specialization of science and technology provided everstronger solutions for human needs, but there is a feeling of failure in face of global challenges.

Science is about making small steps in face of specific problems, but adaptation is about making choices in face of dilemas, based on values.

The decrease of participation of people in the production of science and technology paved the room for a renewed magical understanding of S&T results, diminishing resilience of societies.

“Anti-science” is an expression of such alienation process

It offers na alternative vision of the future

The road of alienation

Main issues to consider THEORY: The epistemological mistakes of positivism and post-modernism

MAKING SENSE: The difference between facts and perceptions and the growth of anxiety

PRAXIS : The role of tangibility in the learning process

METHOD: Clues for a programme of transition

Theory The epistemological mistakes of positivism and post-modernism

First question

If science was born from the belief in imanent logical causality, through the valorisation of reason, observation and experiment, to what extent is it compatible with nihilism and post-modern relativism?

Decay epistemologies Once post-war optimism started to face trouble, faith in science led to anti-science.

Positivism, attempting to assign all relevant rigorous knowledge the same nature, opened room for skepticism

The critique os positivism, instead of building into a compreehensive integrated dialectic dimension, moved towards relativism, thus reinforcing anti-science

The context of the current debate A long cycle of change, topped by the 21st century depression ◦ Global changes (environment, knowledge,

geostrategy,…)

◦ Contradiction between employment and technology

A restriction of financial resources due to the exhaustion of the inflation cycle ◦ Pressure of short term demands

◦ Failure of oprtimism short term narratives

200 years of growing clash of values ◦ Rights and duties

Knowledge and governance

The key component of governance is knowledge ◦ Abstract knowledge reasoning on causality

(awareness and science)

◦ Applied knowledge connecting needs and resources (logistics and technology)

(Cultural) knowledge (k) is a time (t) product between gesture (m) and technology (y)

K=t(my)

A framework of reference

UNDERSTANDING DILEMMAS

FORESIGHT

KNOWLEDGE CENTERS

GOVERNANCE

KNOWLEDGE

LOGISTICS

Making sense The difference between facts and perceptions and the growth of anxiety

Second question

How do human rights and ethical considerations on the access to territories and heritage impact on the retreat of science?

The crisis of science fordism

Current science management values primarily quantity, short term deliveries and knowledge fragmentation

Universities produce skilled workers with limited inetgrative knowledge, unable to make sense of their work

People perceive this loss of sense, and look for alternative narratives that might make sense

Sustainability cannot be fostered as a new version of unique thought

How does anti-science reveal itself?

Anti-science is not merely, or even mainly, a discourse of negation (creationist or other). It’s root is not the belief in non-scientific explanatory modes, but the decay of beliefs and the absolute relativism.

Society is unable to understand the complexity of the debates on global changes. For this reason it oscillates between negationism and catastrophism.

Praxis The role of tangibility in the learning process

Third question

Is useful technical knowledge a process restricted to science researchers? What may be the role of traditional knowledge in a sustainable science programme=

Examples of anti-science progress Segregation of the Humanities

Divide between fundamental and applied sciences

Focus of funding on short term deliveries: technologies (problems) and training (competences)

Strict alienation and its cognitive implications

Xenophobic questioning of the existence of Human epistemologies (instead of regional, racial, gender divides)

Three case studies and one project The search for Human origins put into question (the racist appropriation of the past)

The misunderstandings about climate change implications (the weakness of the positivist narrative of global warming)

The public interest in archaeology or astronomy and the praxis dimension in those domains ◦ Cognition (learning through doing)

◦ Economy (understanding social use of knowledge)

◦ Sense (powerful narratives related to identity)

The project:

Method Clues for a programme of transition

Fourth question

Can the interlinkages between adaptability, vulnerability and resilience be understood by society based on programmatic disputed goals (e.g. sustainability), or do we need alternative methods of engagement?

Overall considerations It will not be through publicity that perceptions will change

Science is about reason, awareness, critical reasoning

Alienation is the key problem, seating in the root of anti-science but also of other disruptive behaviour, such as culturalist radicalism. To understand this link is crucial for sustainable science

The explanation of science relevance requires a strategy of participation, and in this process knowledge and governance are interlinked

Traditional knowledge is a mix of contextual sense and tested efficiency: studying and valuing such knowledge, explaining this process bridges the gap between science and people

The Apheleia approach

Human, social and natural sciences

Fostering contradiction

Dilemmas

Sociocultural matrices

Education

Applied projects

100 words of sustainability

www.apheleiaproject.org

Summing-up RECOMMENDATIONS

Sustainable science strategies should be buit as part of governance strategies

Education, participative experiments, science based narratives and dilemas debates should be promoted as comprehensive “packages”

Sustainable science should be based on an integrated framework involving mid-long term humanities dilemmas and short term natural and social problems

PROPOSALS

RESOURCES: A list of exemples of transferable projects should be made available (WHC)

EDUCATION: At school level, at least one discipline or area of studies in all pre-University education should bring together human, social, natural and hard sciences, discussing dilemas

RESEARCH: Funding of science and society projects should consider projects focused in involving people in the making of science (participative science)