Where is the Boundary between Science and Politics?

1
Where is the Boundary between Science and
Politics?

• Poole Gakuin University, Osaka Japan
• Gentaro KATO
• gen_at_sociologist.com

2
Todays presentation

• Background of the problem (a trend on STS)
• Posing a critical viewpoint
• Dividing ST-S (science from politics) by systems
  theory
• Summary and further challenges

3
Background of the problem (a trend on STS)

• Linkage of science and society
• (natural science, including technology and
  society)
• In particular, STS studies highlight the linkage
  of science and politics
• (political turn)
• ? Science in the society is seen as such
• Recent social demand to science is
  politically constructed

4
Background of the problem (the trend on STS) (2)

• Environmental issues or scientific risks
• scientific issues and political issues in
  parallel
• esp. in the case that scopes on the conflict
  between government and public citizen
• tangle of scientific and political
  criticism
• ? the arena of the issue overlaps on both science
  and politics
• both scientific experts and political experts
  cannot decide on their arbitrarily
• making public opinion on science-cum-politics
  is needed

5
Posing a critical viewpoint

• Science and politics is tightly linked
• politics on scientific problems
• ex. science in democracy / public review of
  science
• We must divide them from discussions such as
  science plays politically or scientific
  knowledge is constructed politically
•  
• We should not equate politics that deal with
  science as its theme, and science that can be
  politically talked about or scientific activities
  that is read in some political contexts.

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Science cannot be talked only by science.

• Such a scientific view is suitable to represent
  ongoing science in a way.
• But what is the two SCIENCE?
•  
• STS studies have emphasized the ST-S linkage
  and we have missed the boundary of them.
• ex. Consensus conference / science shop
• ? fatal flaw of STS studies

7
Ulrich Beck

• Risk society (Risikogesellschaft)
• ? a mode of reflexive modernization
• society based on risk distribution
• fall to the world society in the same way
• ( world risk)
• ? every person can be the party interested
• cf. proletariat
• release from expert system STSs argument

8
Becks subpolitics (Subpolitik)

• Subpolitics a state that each system interact
  and
• cannot keep its boundary
• a non-politics realm but
  it can make
• social reform like
  politics
• Beck points out that politics become reduced.
  systems dedifferentiation
• ? We can see the linkage between science and
  politics in Becks argument but we cannot find
  the crucial difference because we dont have any
  frames for it.

9
Niklas Luhmann

• Social systems theory which depend on
  Maturanas autopoiesis.
• Maturana e Varela Autopoiesi e cognizione
  (1980)
• Luhmann Soziale Systeme (1984) etc.
• The view of systems that is closed but open,
• autonomous but interpenetrating.
• Luhmann can explain each system and their
• relations with sustaining systems autonomy.

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The boundary between science and politics

• Science system devotes to true/false
• determination (of
  scientific issue)
• Politics system directs to attribution of
  decision
• power
•  
• Whether there is power intervention or not,
  science system is still the system of determining
  scientific truth and it never wanders from the
  code of true/false determination.

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The boundary between science and politics (2)

• Its inappropriate to assume concrete
  organizations or groups.
• ? The more detail we see an object, the more
  complex entanglement of systems we find.
• cf. Actor Network Theory (Callon 1991
  etc.)
• ? it should not be treated on analyzing concrete
  objects but on semantic sphere.
• The constituent elements of systems are not
  persons or organizations but communications which
  is directed to a particular code in the system.

12
Summary

• STS studies (including Beck) show suitable view
  of todays science.
• However, they scoped on the linkage of STS so
  that they cannot the relation of STS in detail.
• Luhmanns social systems theory may enable to
  analyze the relation of science and society in
  more detail
• superficial analysis of the objects
• ? functional or semantic analysis.

13
(my) Future challenges

• Analysis with system trust
• a pattern of trust that is to trust that
  the other persons trust something
• ex. money, medical care
• social function of expert and expertise
• What is the condition when we trust
  scientific expert or expertise?
• With reference to system trust, it may be that
• we can suggest social integration which
• doesnt necessitate autonomic participations.