Good Science Always Has Political Ramifications

[WillParkinson]

Good Science Always Has Political Ramifications

When speaking about science to scientists, there is one thing that can be said that will almost always raise their indignation, and that is that science is inherently political and that the practice of science is a political act. Science, they will respond, has nothing to do with politics. But is that true?

Let's consider the relationship between knowledge and power. "Knowledge and power go hand in hand," said Francis Bacon, "so that the way to increase in power is to increase in knowledge."

At its core, science is a reliable method for creating knowledge, and thus power. Because science pushes the boundaries of knowledge, it pushes us to constantly refine our ethics and morality, and that is always political. But beyond that, science constantly disrupts hierarchical power structures and vested interests in a long drive to give knowledge, and thus power, to the individual, and that process is also political.

The politics of science is nothing new. Galileo, for example, committed a political act in 1610 when he simply wrote about his observations through a telescope. Jupiter had moons and Venus had phases, he wrote, which proved that Copernicus had been right in 1543: Earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, as contemporary opinion—and the Roman Catholic Church—held. These were simple observations, there for anyone who wanted to look through Galileo's telescope to see.

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=good-science-always-has-political

[Ian David]

1. Asimov's Law

Every major change in society is brought about by a change in technology.

Every major change in society is met with resistance.

The greater the change, the greater the resistance.

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. Asimov also said

[MisterP]

2. without parallax, the Tychonian system was as good as the Copernician

[Bosonic]

3. The discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe?

That's quite a hefty scientific milestone, but I'm unaware of any political ramifications of dark energy making up 73% of the universe's energy.

[Jim__]

4. For example, Kay Bailey Hutchison wants us to exploit dark energy to ease the energy crisis.

Your post made me curious, so I googled it. Hutchison is talking nonsense, of course, but it's political nonsense based on dark energy - this is from 2006. I wonder if they'll attack Obama for not exploiting this opportunity:

Yesterday Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington on “Exploration and the Future of U.S. Leadership in Space.” What seems to have attracted the most attention, and perhaps some confusion, are some comments she made in her speech about the role the ISS could play regarding energy production. Here is what she said on the topic:

We had a great hearing in our committee where Dr. Sam Ting, who is a Nobel laureate at MIT, he talked about the importance of the basic science that can be done on the space station and especially in light of our energy crisis in this country. He said that what they’re trying to do is go to the dark side, the dark energy that is in the universe, the energy that scientists believe is propelling the galaxies and the expanding universe. We believe, and Dr. Ting believes, that if we could improve the understanding of that dark energy, that matter, that that would help us find a new source of power, perhaps, if we could harness that energy, maybe a new source of energy that we could use on Earth. That is one of the things that he wants to do if we could get the space station finished with the equipment that he needs. Well, at a time when we’re desperate for new sources of energy, while China and India are exploding as industrialized nations and we see the price of energy going up all over the world, this is something that we should explore. That is something that the 16 nations who are part of the space station could do together, because all of us have a common goal of needing more efficient energy in all of our countries.

Now, that does sound an awful lot like trying to harness dark energy for power production, something that I imagine that most (if not virtually all) scientists would find a bit ludicrious, if for nothing else that there’s no consensus regarding just what dark energy is.

If her statements sound vaguely familiar, there’s a good reason: at an STA breakfast in early March, Sen. Hutchison said, “We had a great Commerce Committee hearing with Dr. Samuel Ting, the Nobel laureate at MIT, who talked about cosmic rays being the most important energy source in space that we can start probing to see how we can harness that to provide energy, energy in space, but maybe we can bring it back here too.” That’s very similar to yesterday’s comments; only that cosmic rays have since been replaced by dark energy, it seems.

more ...

[Bosonic]

5. Hmmmm

Nobel prize worthy (astro)physics causes insipid buffoonery?

I'm not putting that in the conclusive example column.

If the OP had replaced Science with Technology (and lost the universal quantification), I might have been more inclined to agree.