Abstract
In sociological debates that have been ongoing since the 1990s, a shift has been heralded from normal to post-normal (or from Mode 1 to Mode 2) science. There is hardly any field of science and engineering nowadays that is not said to have undergone a fundamental change. The four books reviewed briefly here can all be seen as part of the outcome of such discourses. While the volume edited by Nordmann et al., Science Transformed?, explicitly takes up the debate about ‘epochal breaks’ in science as a means of discussing the validity of such concepts, Fuller et al.’s The Customization of Science explores how religious worldviews in particular have had an impact on modern science and how this impact in turn has led to epoch making changes. Although not stating it explicitly, James’ monograph Science Unshackled highlights the virtues of an ideal type of ‘normal’ academic science as the best way to achieve useful research results, given that scientists can never know when their work on apparently small scientific questions will turn out to have a big impact. She concludes that academic research free of ‘customization’ needs to be defended. Olga Kuchinskaya’s The Politics of Invisibility discusses research on nuclear power after the Chernobyl accident, arguing that it led – paradoxically – to an epochal change precisely because its effects were largely imperceptible. Lay people, Kuchinskaya suggests, are becoming increasingly dependent on the media for their understanding of the risks associated with science. Especially, nuclear hazards cannot be easily interpreted because they are invisible. Kuchinskaya identifies three types of (in)visibility: visibility, referring to what can be perceived by the eyes and ears; hypervisibility, such as dramatized media portrayals of radiation impacts; and finally, invisibility, or things that are not directly perceptible (e.g. radiation). As an example of such invisibility, Kuchinskaya discusses radiological contamination, which for a long time has attracted little interest in the Russian media because socioeconomic issues have been more important.
While Kuchinskaya’s politics of invisibility remain marginal to journalistic interests, Fuller et al. ask critical questions about the consequences of today’s science being increasingly conducted in line with the interests of particular groups or with religious or political ideologies. Fuller et al. are interested most in science that is driven by ‘religious or anti-religious, right or left wing, anthropocentric or nonanthropocentric, and feminist or nonfeminist interests or commitments’ – in short, with what they call ‘worldview customized science’ (p. 4). The 12 chapters (including an insightful introductory essay and a postscript) engage critically with the different types of impacts on science fostered by atheism, Islam, Christianity and – lo and behold – environmentalism. Their approach appears to be based implicitly on an ideal of science that is independent, in the sense that scientists determine autonomously the direction their research should take. In the book’s final chapter, Zackariasson and Stenmark (pp. 193–200) suggest that the notion of customized science is perhaps best used as a hermeneutical tool to help researchers identify and explore new issues relating to the changing intellectual climate within which science is done. Implicitly, then, their book can be seen as a gentle warning regarding the consequences of an epochal break in science that is already upon us.
In most of the 16 chapters of Nordmann et al.’s volume, the empirical foundation of this epochal break is called into question. While Nordmann (pp. 19–30) argues that new developments in computing and simulation modelling have turned science into a technology-driven institution, Schiemann (pp. 31–42) argues even more forcefully against viewing the contemporary era as part of a new scientific revolution. Referring to the last observed epochal change from medieval to modern science, he insists that those who are caught up in such a process cannot themselves recognize its significance, as they lack the necessary distance to perceive the overall context in which it is occurring. Furthermore, the empirical examples found in the literature that indicate a radical break are, according to Schiemann, ‘limited to specific problems that are decidedly atypical of the majority of objects of scientific inquiry’ (p. 38).
In her book Science Unshackled, C. Renee James shares the view that as a result of current institutional funding arrangements, the focus on clearly defined problems and on usefulness is in the process of suffocating much (potentially useful) research. She laments the fact that society today has ‘misplaced its priorities’, which have shifted away from basic research. In today’s world, James argues, funding for things such as radio telescopes would be impossible since no direct benefit could be expected to accrue to society. Her book thus constitutes a rallying cry against problem-oriented or ‘mode 2’ research: nearly all the positive and beneficial results that have emerged from research have been either unplanned or have been proven useful only after a considerable time lag. James presents many well-known (and a few less well-known) cases of serendipitous findings as well as cases where the benefits of research work have become clear only after several decades. Her account ranges from Fleming’s discovery of penicillin to the triumphs of modern satellites (which grant us the benefits of global positioning systems) and from curved space-time to the discovery of black holes; naturally, it also includes that old favourite, the story of Gregor Mendel’s plant breeding experiments. James’ argument is that failing to fund such research ‘will save perhaps a penny on every other tax dollar, but at what cost?’ (p. 182). What is striking here is James’ – implicit – call for ‘obscure’ or highly abstract research ideas to be funded. Whether or not we agree with her, it would have been helpful – given the scarcity of funding resources – to have been given at least some indication of the criteria that should apply; in other words, in what cases might it be more promising to fund certain kinds of obscure research rather than others? Perhaps there are ways of differentiating between seemingly useless types of scientific research that may help to separate the wheat from the chaff? On this question, however, she leaves the reader in the dark and simply repeats that even the most obscure science is worth funding because, in the long run, it may be the basis of something useful. In a way, then, James is appealing for a return to an (undefined) era in which scientists are free to play and experiment without restrictions.
What do these four books tell us, in a nutshell, about contemporary science? While Kuchinskaya discusses the ways in which the negative outcomes of science are rendered invisible to the lay public, James seeks to return to an ideal of basic research for the progress and betterment of society. The majority of authors in Nordmann et al. tend to agree that there never was such an ideal past and that there has not been a change in the way science is done in today’s world; there may at most have been a cognitive shift in the way we now perceive science. Fuller et al., in line with James and, to some extent, with Kuchinskaya, make clear that this perceptual shift is already upon us and that it requires us to develop strategies to cope with the impacts of ideology on science.
Taking these books as a touchstone for current analyses of contemporary science, it appears that something is happening with the way science is done, but we don’t really know what it is. Put differently, the consequences of modern science and technology are becoming increasingly invisible, as are the (purported) epochal breaks that are occurring. In conclusion, then, the books provide considerable food for thought but are not to be recommended to anyone who is seeking clear guidance on the state of science in contemporary advanced industrialized society.