Brief response to Professor Moisés Wasserman

Arturo Escobar
Colombian anthropologist

I write this brief note with respect for Professor Wasserman as a scientist, but with profound disagreement with his outdated view of science, which stems from a biased and distorted reading of the draft document of the Historical Pact regarding his science and technology policy. To begin with, Professor Wasserman fails to mention that the document he criticizes recommends relying on the Mission of Wise Men (of which Professor Wasserman himself has been a member), strengthening the existing research system and its network of universities, supporting the development of productive economies for well-being, and seeking the best conditions for environmental sustainability and the food and energy transitions, among many other widely accepted goals in the face of the current crisis.
The Mission of Wise Men is a group of experts that began operating in 2019, covering different areas of knowledge, with the objective of “Contributing to the construction and implementation of public policy on Education, Science, Technology and Innovation and to the strategies that Colombia must build in the long term, to respond to productive and social challenges in a scalable, replicable and sustainable way.”
The professor is annoyed that "living well" is mentioned fourteen times, but he fails to note that "innovation," a central concept in contemporary science, is mentioned nineteen times. One has to wonder, innovation for what? Contemporary science no longer asks this question. It assumes that all innovation is for "progress," measured in material terms, consumption, and unlimited growth. This economistic and competitive notion of science and technology, challenged by the document, is destroying the planet.
The verdict on “universal science” (yes, hegemonic science) and the societies it has built has been expressed many times. The philosopher Walter Benjamin proclaimed it in the face of the rise of Nazism: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” For Michel Foucault, National Socialism was not a temporary aberration of Western civilization, but the result of its calculating rationality. The modern worldview, based on post-Renaissance scientific rationality, has been integral to Conquest, colonialism, the slave trade, and, today, terricide, as well as a cause of the discontent with life felt by young people today, fostered by digital monocultures and economies with no future for the majority. There is no longer any way to hide this reality by appealing to its many impressive achievements. Enough of celebrating the great advances of science without pointing out its responsibility for its countless destructive applications! A gradual transition to other ways of life is necessary, where humans can once again coexist in a mutually enriching way with each other and with the Earth. Buen Vivir (Good Living) and Vivir Sabroso (Living Well) are expressions of this idea, and they already have some academic and political traction.
Science and technology must play a central role in these transitions, but they cannot continue to rely on 17th-century epistemologies and 20th-century glories. This is why the vast majority of solutions proposed by scientists and governments to address climate change have clearly become part of the problem. The Historical Pact proposes building a science and technology for the 21st century that subordinates science, technology, and the economy to the defense of life and the well-being of all, rather than to accumulation, as has always been the case.
It is necessary to place the proposals of the Historical Pact within their broader historical and philosophical context to understand what is truly at stake. We are witnessing a broad process of civilizational challenges that seek to move beyond the dominance of the Western model, without disregarding its most important achievements, but reorienting them to serve life and the Earth, prioritizing the groups that have suffered the most from the model's consequences: the marginalized. This is not happening only in Colombia; it is a global phenomenon. At the governmental level, Colombia is taking the lead. We read, at the beginning of the 2022-2026 Government Program, Colombia: World Power for Life, that the program “is conceived as the beginning of a transition that, in the immediate future, will make possible a dignified life, the overcoming of violence, and social and climate justice, while consolidating the permanent conditions for a lasting peace that will allow all of Colombian society a second chance on Earth” (p. 6, emphasis added).
Let us dare to consider the Historical Pact Programme as a gateway to the socio-ecological transitions envisioned by so many social and intellectual movements today. None other than the revered Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh invites us to actively meditate on the end of the Western civilizational project: “Our civilization will have to end one day. But we have an important role to play in determining when it ends and how quickly. … As I inhale, I know that this civilization is going to die. As I exhale, this civilization cannot escape death.” It is necessary to think about transitions within this historical horizon to avoid the narrow interpretations often offered by mainstream science and economics, which trap us in reductionist readings of the Programme and thus perpetuate the unsustainable horror of the current state of affairs.
The difficulty in speaking of such a horizon of change lies in the fact that history is biased against anything alternative or different. It is much easier to repeat the familiar story—based on the normative Western notion of humanity as naturally secular, liberal, rational, individualistic, and competitive, white-male, and separate from nature—than to express a genuinely novel idea. Why? Because this dominant worldview rests on several hundred years of so-called modernity. It is from this history that the powerful imperialize their desires and designs, which are considered "the truth" of things. Going against the current of this history is extremely difficult, since it provides us with the categories with which we think, feel, and live. Other Colombias are possible, but this requires a substantial reorientation of science and technology, the inclusion of the knowledge and wisdom of peoples systematically discredited by science (epistemic justice), and the invention of new knowledge that we have not yet imagined. What is at stake, ultimately, is a necessary reinvention of humanity and the meaning of life.
A brief footnote: In the early 80s, as a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, I attended one of the seminars of the great philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, one of the most popular professors at Berkeley at the time, and a frequent target of Professor Wasserman's column. Among many other things, he taught that there is no universally valid methodology and that, therefore, science must be governed by an open epistemology. For Feyerabend, modern science is not superior to others, and the rationalist method is not the only possible one; therefore, we cannot continue to disregard other forms of knowledge. Many considered him an enemy of science, but the lesson of his philosophy is that science must be profoundly pluralistic. What should science be like in a free society? This is the question this philosopher left us with, and which the Historical Pact now seems to be taking up again.

July 16, 2022.