GBL – April 2006
Nightmare Science
Brad Allenby
The philosopher Alvin Gouldner entitled Chapter 13 of his classic study The Two
Marxisms, “Nightmare Marxism,” observing that every discourse contains within it
alternatives that suborn its expressed intent – its nightmare side. For Marxism, there
were two nightmares: the first that Marx’s theory was, despite its claim to scientific
legitimacy, just another utopian project; the second that, despite his theoretical analysis, it
would turn out that the bourgeoisie were right all along, and that private property was,
indeed, the basis of civilization. Should these nightmares be right, Marxism would not be
the path to an enlightened future, but to despotism – as, in fact, it was in practice.
What, then, are the nightmares of the scientific discourse or, more precisely, the
environmental science discourse? Surely a major one is that, despite the claim of the
scientific discourse to primacy in creating a valid understanding of the world, the reality
is that the postmodernist critique is right, and science is no more than another normative
discourse, of no greater ontological value than any other.
Evaluating the potential for this nightmare science scenario is tricky, but a few
observations are possible. To begin with, it is useful to recall perhaps the principal way
science distinguishes itself from other discourses: the reliance on discovery of facts
through observation, and validation of theory through test and falsification - in short, the
scientific method. This procedure evolved in Western Europe in contrast to the medieval
mechanism for establishing truth, which was reference to authority, in the form of the
Church Fathers, Aristotle, or other accepted texts. The seismic shift in worldview that a
change from authority to observation as source of truth induces is difficult to appreciate
in hindsight, but there is little question that it was a seminal step in the rise of the West
and the creation of modernity.
But it is precisely the strength of this core characteristic of the scientific discourse
that creates the potential for nightmare science. The nightmare arises in this way. We
have, as scientists, established the validity of science through adoption of a process that
institutionalizes observation, and thus grants us privileged access to truth, at least within
the domains of physical reality. In doing so, we have destroyed authority as the source of
privileged knowledge – and, concomitantly, assumed much of the power that used to
reside in the old elite (e.g., the Church).
But now suppose that scientists become increasingly concerned with certain
environmental phenomenon – say, loss of biodiversity, or climate change. They thus not
only report the results of the practice of the scientific method, but, in part doubting the
ability of the public to recognize the potential severity of the issues as scientists see them,
become active as scientists in crafting and demanding particular responses, such as the
Kyoto Treaty. These responses, notably, extend significantly beyond the purely
environmental domain, into policies involving economic development, technology
deployment, quality of life in many countries, and the like.
In short, the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses
the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but
to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific
communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not
exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their
privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains. Science is, in
other words, segueing back into a structure where once again authority, not observation,
is the basis of the exercise of power and establishment of truth by the elite. But the
authority in this new model is not derived from sacred texts; rather it is derived from
legitimate practice of scientific method in the scientific domain, extended into nonscientific domains. Note that this does not imply that scientists cannot, or should not, as
individuals participate in public debate; only that if they do so cloaked in the privilege
that the scientific discourse gives them they raise from the dead the spectre of authority
as truth.
Why is this nightmare science? Precisely because it raises an internal
contradiction with which science cannot cope. In an age defined by the scientific
worldview, which is the source of the primacy of the scientific discourse, science cannot
demand privilege outside its domain based not on method, but on authority, for in doing
so it undermines the zeitgeist that gives it validity. When demanding the Kyoto Treaty as
scientists, it is themselves, not their opponents, that they attack.