POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Post-Normal “Science”

You'll recall that among the aims of our post-numerate President was the restoration of science to her rightful place. An excellent post at Buy the Truth addresses what this nostrum means in practice:

What is going on is that science is no longer what we thought it was. It is now a tool in the hands of socialists, and the smart money is flowing into the pockets of ‘scientists’ who will serve their agenda. Follow the money. Whilst traditional physics and chemistry departments are closing in British universities, and there is a shortage of science teachers, there is an abundance of cash being poured into departments that will serve socialist ends, and no shortage of acolytes desirous to use this as a route to power. Once there was modern science, which was hard work; now we have postmodern science, where the quest for real, absolute truth is outdated, and ’science’ is a wax nose that can be twisted in any direction to underpin the latest lying narrative in the pursuit of power. Except they didn’t call it ‘postmodern’ science because then we might smell a rat. They called it PNS (post-normal science) and hoped we wouldn’t notice. It was thus named and explicated by Silvio O. Funtowicz and philosopher Jerome R. Ravetz, who in 1991 wrote the paper A New Scientific Methodology for Global Environmental Issues, followed in 1992 by The good, the true and the postmodern, and in 1993 by Science for the post-normal age, where they promoted the idea that

…a new type of science – ‘post-normal’ – is emerging…in contrast to traditional problem-solving strategies, including core science, applied science, and professional consultancy…Post-normal science can provide a path to the democratization of science, and also a response to the current tendencies to post-modernity.

In other words, truth is a preterite bourgeois construction that has been superseded by the fierce political urgencies of now. It is the rhetorical handmaiden of socialist political rhetoric. In Plato's works, Socrates argued against the primacy of rhetoric, wishing to substitute a more systemative appeal to reason. Here, we find this formula, which has served Western inquiry so well for thousands of years, explicitly reversed at the behest of the theorists on behalf of the social engineers, the sordid guardians of a "higher truth."

Alas, there are some reactionaries within the hard sciences who seem reluctant to climb on board the paradigm shift for our own good.

(via Van der Leun's Ka-Ching, which yesterday celebrated its 2000th post)

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

Website - More Posts