Science policy under discussion
Boaventura de Sousa Santos¹
Whenever there are significant changes in a country's science policy, dissenting opinions emerge and a national debate erupts. In principle, such a debate is welcome because it demonstrates the importance of science for the country's democratic development. However, the debate sometimes takes on anti-democratic and even unscientific characteristics. This is the case when proposed changes clash with entrenched interest groups within the national scientific system that directly or indirectly control the allocation of public resources to science.
The most recent and notorious case in Latin America was the appointment of Dr. Elena Álvarez-Buylla as director general of CONACYT (Mexico's National Council of Science and Technology) by President López Obrador upon assuming office. Dr. Álvarez-Buylla is an internationally recognized Mexican biologist specializing in evolutionary ecology and a recipient of the 2017 National Science Prize. There would be no question about her scientific qualifications to lead CONACYT. However, Dr. Álvarez-Buylla is also known for her commitment to defending native corn varieties against the threat of their replacement by genetically modified species. In other words, the new CONACYT leadership had confronted the powerful interests of industrial agriculture and its allies entrenched in positions of power within the scientific system. The ensuing debate surrounding her appointment did not reflect well on the Mexican scientific community, and President López Obrador stood firm in his decision.
A similar debate is now emerging in Colombia regarding the science and technology policy document of the Historical Pact that supported the election of President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez. The well-known Colombian scientist, Professor Moisés Wasserman, published an article on July 15th in Weather a column in which he strongly criticizes this document. Setting aside the dismissive tone of the prose, his arguments deserve to be debated and are essentially twofold. The first concerns the concept of hegemonic science. Professor Wasserman defends the conventional position that was hegemonic until the 1960s, when social studies of science and the epistemological conceptions that developed from them emerged.
The contributions of Robert Feynman, Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway, Edgar Morin, and Bruno Latour were decisive for the changes that took place at that time. It became clear then that science progresses not only through scientific curiosity and experimentation (problematic in itself) but above all through powerful economic (and military) interests that guide the course of science through the funding they control. This led to the progressive erosion of the distinction between fundamental and applied science and to the need for careful epistemological vigilance and the activation of precautionary principles.
The hegemonic science Professor Wasserman speaks of, certainly in good faith, is the science that has not yet grasped the real scientific context in which it operates and continues to imagine itself protected from political, cultural, and social influences within its ivory tower. This illusion of autonomy stems from the unquestioned routine of funding criteria.
What is at stake in Colombia right now is a challenge to this established practice, seeking to readjust investment in science policy to respond to the aspirations of the majority of the Colombian population to improve their lives. These aspirations include greater food sovereignty, increased citizen security, a healthier environment, greater respect for nature and its regenerative life cycles, better and more peaceful territorial control, and more active preservation of the rich cultural diversity that characterizes Colombia.
The second argument concerns epistemic justice. In this case, Professor Wasserman either misunderstood the concept or attempted to discredit it by ridiculing it. For a long time, the positivist philosophy of science considered scientific knowledge to be the only valid knowledge. Philosophy and law themselves would only be considered valid knowledge if they adhered to the positivist criteria of science. Hence, analytic philosophy and legal science, which entailed a drastic reduction of philosophical and legal thought. This conception of science has entered into crisis over the last sixty years. The atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first triggers of the crisis of the positivist philosophy of science.
From this crisis emerged other philosophies of science and knowledge that enrich our understanding of these topics today. On the one hand, it has become clear that science only answers questions it can formulate scientifically. For this reason, there are many important questions that science cannot answer. The great German physicist Carl von Weizsäcker often pointed to two such questions: What is happiness? What is the purpose of doing science? It became evident that science, while valid knowledge, is not the only valid knowledge. To go to the moon, we need scientific knowledge, but to understand the biodiversity of the Amazon, we need Indigenous knowledge. Furthermore, the Indigenous and Afro-descendant movements of the continent played a significant role in demonstrating that there were Afro-Indigenous philosophies based on a conception of nature different from that which underlies modern science.
While for modern science nature is Descartes' extensive res, an object at our disposal to be explored, for Afro-Indigenous philosophies nature is the vital center to which we humans belong and to which we owe respect. In other words, while for modern science nature belongs to us, for Afro-Indigenous philosophies we belong to nature. Due to global warming and the resulting ecological crisis, these latter philosophies have gained increasing credibility. Interestingly, these philosophies have a strong affinity with the philosophy of a great philosopher of Jewish origin, a contemporary of Descartes. I am referring to Bento Spinoza, for whom nature is a vital force from which everything emerges, including human beings, and to which we must submit with respect. Hence his conception of nature as naturans (nature) and "God, that is, nature" ("Deus sive natura").
In light of all this, it is important to formulate and discuss science policy assuming that what is proper to humans is not the truth, but rather the search for the truth.
¹Professor at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Science Prize 1996. Mexico Prize for Science and Technology 2010. Translation by Bryan Vargas Reyes
