The Politicizing of Science: Implications for Education

Running head: THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE:

IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION

Thomas A. McDonald

August 13th, 2012

A thesis submitted to the

Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University at Buffalo,

The State University of New York

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Education

Department of Learning and Instruction,

Science and the Public Program

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE ii

Thomas A. McDonald

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank everyone behind the program in Science and the Public for making it possible,

including all those in the UB Graduate School of Education, in the Department of Learning and

Instruction, and at the Center For Inquiry. It is difficult to undertake advanced study as a working adult,

so I am especially grateful for the communication and support that have been available throughout my

studies; for me, the faces of the program have been Louise Lalli, Dr. Xiufeng Liu, and Dr. John Shook,

so this sincere thanks is directed to you. I also want to extend a very special thanks to Dr. Anantha

Sudhakar for her kindness, scholarly feedback, and infinite patience through many long and helpful

discussions.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................................... iii

Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................... v

Method and Definitions .............................................................................................................................. vi

Chapter 1. The Politicizing of Science ........................................................................................... 1

Chapter 2. Science and the Public ................................................................................................ 22

Chapter 3. Science and the Rule of Law ...................................................................................... 35

Chapter 4. Science and Biopolitics .............................................................................................. 52

Chapter 5. Science and the Subject of Moral Autonomy ............................................................. 68

Chapter 6. Science for the Public: An Outline ............................................................................. 91

References ............................................................................................................................................... 106

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE v

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the politicization of science in recent times coincides with a necessary turn

toward social epistemology and historicist conceptions of science and rationality. It is shown how

history, philosophy, and sociology of science (HPSS) make important contributions to interdisciplinary

research in public understanding of science (PUS). However, it is argued (in agreement with Kuhn’s

finding) that critical HPSS is not a necessary part of traditional, pre-professional science education, but

is a necessary part of any general or liberal science education, the latter being needed to foster critical

ability among citizens to judge increasingly complex science-related public issues. With a view to

informing such an approach, fundamental problems at the intersection of science and society are

analyzed, concerning the relationship between science and the state, implications of the new life

sciences for politics, and ultimately whether modern science is to remain in contradiction with modern

political self-conceptions.

Keywords: cultural authority of science, liberalism, philosophy of science, political science, public

understanding of science, science education

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METHOD AND DEFINITIONS

Method

Multiple methods are deployed including empirical, textual, historical, and conceptual analysis.

Theoretical Definitions

Liberal: The term liberal used herein, as in reference to the development of a liberal science

curriculum, does not refer to the currently popular usage in American media to refer to left-wing politics

as opposed to right-wing politics. Rather, it refers to the traditional meaning from which the notion of a

liberal arts curriculum derives, which is related to the classical liberal political tradition in the West. In

the United States, today’s right-leaning libertarian conservative and left-leaning liberal progressive

sensibilities are both offshoots of this classical liberal tradition; despite superficial appearances, each

basically adhere to the principle of individual right as outlined in the US Constitution and Declaration of

Independence. This concealment of similarity behind differences is clearer to European observers, going

back to Alexis de Tocqueville. For such observers, the alternatives of aristocratic traditionalism and

radical socialism, a communitarian right and a collectivist left respectively, give much clearer definition

to liberal in contrast. It is part of the intent of this paper to show how the relative lack of such historical

understanding in America hinders our public discourse about modernity and the role of science. In the

Western tradition preceding the United States, the word derives from the Latin liber, meaning “free”:

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE vii

Thus, a liberal education, as the term is applied traditionally to liberal arts curricula, means a system or

course of education suitable for the cultivation of a free individual human being.

Historicism: Historicism refers here to a philosophical view on the nature of knowledge or

epistemology, and rationality. It applies to both scientific knowledge and political self-understanding. It

rejects as a fundamental misconception the intuitive notion that there is some information or knowledge

that is immediate; all information and knowledge are mediated by historical, linguistic, and socially

shared categories. In science this entails that explanations are not judged solely by comparison to

empirical data; explanations are understood as alternatives to historical predecessors, potentially

superseding them by accounting more adequately for both (a) new empirical data, e.g., empirical

anomalies that disrupt the coherence of currently viable explanations, and also (b) why past views were

held. At the least, theories always involve cognitive virtues in excess of the empirical data they reference

(Kuhn & Hacking, 2012, p. xxxi). Thus the context of discovery is essential (not only the context of

verification), and it follows that we should be generous in reconstructing past conceptions. Major figures

in the literature include 19th-century German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel and 20th-century

American historian and philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn. Historicism is not necessarily opposed

to the objectivist view that science progresses toward a more and more accurate account of the world, or

the associated view that science begets a progressive rationalization of society. However, it qualifies

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE viii

objectivism through critical analyses revealing the mediation of all such accounts by shared social and

historical categories, i.e., by criteria internal to real, historical inquiry.

In education, historicism is aligned with constructivist approaches, which recognize that new

concepts are built up from the context in which the learner begins.

Objectivism: Objectivism in epistemology and science refers here to the view that an explanation

can be judged in immediate comparison to empirical data, thereby obviating the significance of past

views, which can be relegated to mere historical error. While this view has diminished with increasing

critical scrutiny in 20th-century philosophy of science, it has been given its most sophisticated and

durable philosophical formulation by Karl Popper. Popper’s falsification criterion underwrites the

pragmatic acceptance of present understanding so long as present views do not appear falsified; this

underwrites the dismissal of history, which is needed to better explain and understand the present.

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE 1

CHAPTER 1

THE POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE

This paper is in part a response to Brian Wynne’s call for the interdisciplinary field in public

understanding of science (PUS) to “draw more fully on wider and more historical work in political

philosophy” (2008, p. 21). Wynne argues that the political dimension of the subject has tended to be

construed too narrowly, as pertaining only to issues involving expert risk management and public

perceptions of risk. Such approaches assume the political legitimacy of the present, the world of liberal

political freedoms—the public—in which science has grown and flourished, but they do so without

necessarily understanding how or why such a political system came to be justified, and thus they do not

necessarily understand what makes science possible.

Therefore Wynne points to a significant gap in the literature of PUS. In Chapter 2 the history of

research in PUS is traced in order to better illustrate the development of the discourse, and its

outstanding questions, from which Wynne’s point follows. In Chapter 3, in response to this problem, I

argue that a complex understanding of the political history in which science has developed and

flourished is essential to understanding the political present in which science is now situated and

challenged; this is done through an analysis beginning from Donald Stokes research on the dichotomy

between pure versus applied science when public funding is called for. In Chapter 4 I investigate and

illustrate the complexity of the challenge in a free, liberal polity where scientific arguments in public

appeal to genetic science in a manner that would impact normative and policy actions like the creation

of single-sex education. The biopolitical debate examined in Chapter 4 reflects the long-running

divergence between scientific and humanistic intellectuals in the public sphere, identified by Charles P.

Snow as the “two cultures”; thus Chapter 5 takes up a more theoretical inquiry into recent advances in

neuroscience and cognitive science with a view to how these might help bridge the alienation between

these two modes of inquiry. Humanistic intellectuals tend to fear that science threatens freedom; this

problem between the two cultures centers on the nature of the free, morally autonomous individual actor

or subject—the ideal of political liberalism in its right-leaning and left-leaning modern guises: classical

liberalism and progressive liberalism; the former referring to that formulated in the natural rights

philosophy of John Locke, written into the constitution of the United States, and characterizing modern

American libertarian conservatism; the latter referring to that more recent strand given progressivist and

collectivist modifications in the work of theorists like John Stuart Mill and John Dewey, yielding the

left-liberalism to which the word “liberal” in recent American discourse has unfortunately become

nearly exclusively identified. Thus Chapter 5 is an attempt to help detail a meta-ethical theory for how

recent neuroscience and cognitive science can be bridged with this public ideal. Chapters 1 to 5 are

intended as a contribution to the scholarly discourse within PUS. These chapters help identify the

parameters of appropriate general or liberal science learning that the public needs today. They are aimed

at other educators, education policy makers, communicators, historians, and philosophers of science.

Not all of the material in Chapters 1 to 5 will flow into a science curriculum plan for the public, but

rather they are intended to preface my outline for such a curriculum with a survey that enriches

appreciation of the challenges. A curriculum for the public must be broad enough to address various

communities within the United States. Therefore the outline in Chapter 6 emphasizes science as a

method and the conclusions of historical and contemporary science not as dogmas but as conclusions

standing for free minds to test. Final judgments of absolute truth are suspended, so that learners can

appreciate how scientific theories can be freely entertained, considered, examined, non-coercively, by

free minds.

Wynne’s call follows from many detailed empirical studies and much scholarly reflection in PUS

recognizing breakdowns of trust and communication between science and the public, over the last four

decades especially (Irwin & Wynne, 1996). In the studies presented here, I find a philosophical root

common to various problems identified in PUS research. In 20th-century Anglo-American thought there

has been lacking both in philosophy of science and in political philosophy insufficient attention to the

legitimating basis and rational authority of modernity or modern life; the claims of science and the

claims of modern, liberal belief in individual freedom have been equally essential to modern life, while

contradicting each other. This takes a number of forms. Most essentially, in modern science we see

things and persons as determined by external causes—e.g., magnetic forces, genetic expressions—and

this has helped yield the tremendous successes of modern science and technology; while in modern

politics we are called to recognize the individual as (at least potentially) a free, self-determining center

of responsibility, endowed with an intrinsic dignity and ‘rights’ that make no sense in the scientific

picture of the world. Also, modern science and technology create the need for new regulatory systems,

and then the tools for creating the systems themselves in which life is collectively limited and shaped,

for example the production and the regulated use of modern medicine and industrial systems. Michel

Foucault described the latter, technocratic effect of science on modern life as “biopolitics,” and Jonathan

D. Moreno argues in The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America (2011), that Foucault’s term

must be updated to consider the impact of genetic science, insofar as its ripples are already beginning to

be felt (Fukuyama, 2002; Moreno, p. 19). If modern life means living in contradiction between the

claims of science and the claims of freedom then the fundamental question is whether we can learn how

to make the contradiction productive in each of these essential domains—science and political life—

rather than poisonous to both. It is thus that it becomes clear we need a different approach to science

education for the non-specialist public. This must foster not only an appreciation for the basics of

science practice and present scientific knowledge, but it must also show how the legitimacy and

authority of science is grounded in history, experience, and a culture of mutual criticism.

The need for such an approach is made more urgent by the unprecedented implications of 21st-

century sciences of life—molecular biology, population genetics, behavior genetics, evolutionary

biology, cognitive neuroscience, neuropharmacology, and DNA-level genetic engineering. Even if we

do not see the most extreme possibilities of genetic engineering like “designer babies” realized, the

growth of knowledge in these fields is already creating the ripples of the new biopolitics, which harbors

major consequences for future public science policy. Already in the 1990s, The Bell Curve (Herrnstein

& Murray, 1994) created a huge stir by arguing that intelligence, at least whatever is measured by IQ

tests, is about 70 percent genetically inherited, and that racial differences have a genetic basis. Of course

the counterargument must entail looking to historical environmental conditions, rather than genetic, to

explain racial differences in the data. But the investigation of this paper is concerned with how to

prepare the citizen to be critically equipped to parse and judge science-based arguments like this in the

public sphere, which harbor the most serious ethical, legal, and policy consequences. The rise of life

sciences complicates an arena already politically charged by the disputes in recent decades over climate

change science and policy, evolution and human origins in education, and mass vaccination safety and

policy. I argue that the future authority of science in such a political climate will depend upon a more

complex appreciation of its historical coevolution with modern politics, more so than is common in the

United States today.

To these ends, I find there are two distinct approaches in the PUS and science education literatures

that can be discerned and respectively justified: a post-Kuhnian, historicist approach, largely informed

by history, philosophy, and sociology of science (HPSS); and a Popperian, neo-positivist approach,

often suspicious of the former. The latter aligns with traditional science education, with the preparatory

requirements for professionals to advance in specialized sciences; while the former, I argue, is better

suited to the requirements of the general, liberal science education citizens need, insofar as they will be

among various parties to science-related public debates in the 21st century. There are reasonable

Popperian worries to be addressed, legitimate concerns that HPSS fields have been to blame for

postmodernist relativism, skepticism, and undermining of science. That is why Kuhn ultimately wound

up arguing that the history of science proper belonged to general or liberal science education, but was

not a necessary part of special science education and professional training (Kindi, 2005). Once this

distinction is recognized, the stage is set to further explore how HPSS, indeed of enlarged scope, should

be used to assess public challenges and to develop appropriate liberal science education curricula.

The Standing of Science in America Since the 1970s

The standing of the scientist in general remains high in American public opinion; according to a

2009 survey by Pew, roughly 70% of Americans believe that scientists “contribute a lot” to society,

compared to 38% for journalists, 23% for lawyers, 40% for clergy, and 21% for business executives;

Nisbet & Scheufele point out that “Only members of the military (84%) and teachers (77%) rate higher

in public admiration and esteem” (2009, p. 1769). In light of such data it seems a paradox why recent

decades have been characterized by public disputes so politically charged, over issues including climate

change science, evolution in education, nuclear energy safety, and vaccination safety.

A broad gathering and analysis of American survey data by Gordon Gauchat, spanning the years

1974 to 2012, confirms a general decline in trust of science as an institution, but the decline is reflective

primarily of change within distinct subpopulations by political self-identification. Social conservatives

began the period with the highest levels of trust in science, but ended with the lowest. Gauchat notes this

in his report, but does not address the fact that the trend among self-identified moderates tracks closer to

the pattern among conservatives. It is the self-identified left-liberals alone who do not reflect the decline

in trust among conservatives and moderates during the period (Gauchat, 2012, p. 174):

This period spanning the last four decades coincides with the decline and end of the Cold War; the

end of the Space Race era symbolized by NASA; and the rise of neo-liberal policies in the West, which

have decreased public funding for the research university and effected the decentralizing of much

scientific research, now often dispersed into private and commercial enterprises. When writers in

Popular Mechanics lament that “the future isn't what it used to be” and call for the return of “big, bold

science fiction” writing (Reynolds, 2012) they bear witness to an unbounded optimism about science

and modernization in American life once felt during the Space Race era of mid-20th-century, and

inscribed in the very name of NASA. In view of the increasing public conflicts over science

characterizing recent decades, such unbounded optimism about it must be difficult for younger

generations of Americans to grasp. Thus the interdisciplinary problematic emerging in this time under

the name of research in PUS can be illuminated more by the past century, despite an explicit premise to

address the problems of the next. Like Hegel’s remark on Minerva’s owl: it takes flight in the evening,

arriving on the scene only in time to know a form of life in its passing; for scholarly reflection in PUS

the high-water mark of the cultural authority of science in 20th-century America becomes evident only

in retrospect, and the ‘grey on grey’ of theoretical reconstruction or scholarly reflection will not

rejuvenate it. But in this one can at least gain clarity about the standard in the shadow of which the

present of PUS appears problematic, and this is needed if mere nostalgia is to be distinguished from

genuinely promising points of departure and renewal.

Barbarians at the Gates

Prompted by this troubling change in social circumstances, the science community, institutional

defenders, and public advocates have tended to a defensive stance concerned with rising ‘anti-science’.

There is a natural default to objectivist epistemology deriving from the revolutionary 17th-century

European philosophy of science, which identified rational authority with the present state of scientific

knowledge, liberated from historical error, especially that of religion. This stance appears supported by a

widely assumed theory of modernization, disseminated by 20th-century sociology influenced by Max

Weber; this theory predicts the progressive “rationalization of society” (Locke, 1994; 1999a, pp. 3-43)

and the inevitable “cultural ascendancy” of science (Gauchat, 2012, p. 171) as modern institutions

become more dependent upon scientific knowledge, technology, expertise, and a corresponding need for

greater public science education. Defense of objectivism seems not entirely unfounded, owing to the

undeniable successes of science and technology since the 17th-century scientific revolution, greatly

responsible for the rise to global dominance of modern, Western liberal states (Fukuyama, 2006, pp. 82-

108). Objectivism remains plausible especially in light of the weakest criticisms of science by the

postmodernist left and religious right. Thus the Public Understanding of Science movement was

stimulated by institutions like the Royal Society of London during the 1980s (Bauer, 2012, p. 2) on the

premise that the recent challenges for science in the public lie in a deficit of scientific knowledge or

literacy among the public; the problem is in the public: not enough citizens are educated like scientists;

greater knowledge and greater support for science simply go hand in hand.

Most in the professional science community would agree with Shirley Ann Jackson, who urged in

her 2005 presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that “we are

at a critical juncture regarding the nexus of science and society” (Jackson, 2005). Such urgings often

come with worries about decreases in public funding for research; at the April 2012 meeting of the

American Physics Society, physicists expressed worry that there is a “crisis looming” for science in

America, related to a drop in funding for fundamental research (Moskowitz, 2012). But precisely why

we should be at this critical juncture with a crisis looming for science in America remains unclear

despite two decades of research in PUS and related efforts at public outreach. Before addressing the

question of trust between science and the public, Jackson highlights the recent trend toward “multiple

voices” in the public agora. She resurrects the Greek term agora to designate the site “where the public

selects its ‘truth’; or put differently, what society will accept as ‘fact’.” The agora is, she notes, “where

leaders make public policy decisions.” But what shall be “the role played by science [in the agora?]” (p.

1635). From Jackson’s ambiguous—if not ironic—use of “truth” and “fact” in this context we may infer

on her part a politically astute allusion, or bait, to a common belief among her audience that, despite

other nuanced points within her speech, the real, underlying problem with society is simply stubborn

unwillingness to accept the truths and facts of science. However, in stateswoman-like fashion, Jackson

urges plainly that science must recognize the emergence of “the media” into a major role in the agora,

competing for the attention of citizens and leaders among its other, traditional residents: government,

industry, religion, the academy. Jackson worries that the media have come to be influenced by the

Washington think tanks that have proliferated since the 1970s (p. 1638), many of which are politically

conservative, like the Heritage Foundation, which has been a leading supplier of criticisms of much

climate change science, for example (Sandoval, 2012). The media filter, editorialize, comment, and

otherwise interpret an increasing flood of information confronting the citizen. The Internet has only

intensified this trend. What happens when self-proclaimed experts proliferate in the marketplace of

ideas? When we have instantly available authorities to support every view? Jackson asserts that the

result of this trend is “the devaluing of information and even the devaluing of science”; it “threatens the

concept of the scientist as the dispassionate, objective voice of reason, as well as the authoritative role of

science in helping shape sound public policy” (p. 1638).

Jackson is right to point to a relation between the recent fortunes of science—for good and ill—and

the information technology (IT) revolution. What Scientific American described in 2000 as the

“bioinformatics gold rush” is a merger of biology and the IT revolution; bioinformatics is necessary to

the rise of the new life sciences because it would be impossible without modern computing power to

store and interpret the overwhelming amount of data generated by genomics and to build reliable models

for representing complex biological phenomena like protein folding (Howard, 2000, p. 58). On the other

hand, the IT revolution in the form of mass Internet communication is responsible for an extreme

democratization of public interpretations of science that is especially threatening to the notion of science

as a domain of expert and singular knowledge. But this social phenomenon can be understood as a

further radicalization of political liberalism in the West since at least the Protestant Reformation of the

16th century, whose epistemological upshot is a universal recognition of the individual, in his or her

freedom, as the ultimate standard for interpretation of the truth (Fuller, 2007, pp. 12, 60; Jensen,

Fukuyama, & United States Institute of Peace., 1990). Science is itself paradoxically bound up with this

particular history in which it is both nourished and threatened.

Directions in Public Understanding of Science

Even if public education providing more factual information about science did entail greater

support, how is one to address the cases in which the public is beset by conflicting views of the facts and

conflicting experts? On the question of nuclear energy, a potentially clean, 21st-century power source,

the public is confronted by an abundance of technical arguments from experts on opposite sides of the

issue, pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear, environmental skeptics (Irwin & Wynne, 1996, p. 2); in this case it

is right-leaning industrial scientists arguing for its safety, while left-leaning environmental scientists

provide reasons for skepticism. On the question of stem cell medicine, we find a political inversion;

right-leaning scientists arguing that supporters of embryonic stem (ES) cell research have exaggerated

the scientific evidence for its curative potential (George et al., 2012, p. 19). Examples such as this make

clear that values and commitments must be admitted more into public scientific debate, e.g., regarding

degrees of risk acceptance, and how those different degrees of acceptance figure into different visions of

By focusing too narrowly upon the plight of the institution of science one may be led to ignore

much empirical data showing that since the 1970s, decline in public trust has been a widespread problem

afflicting other social institutions besides science, particularly political institutions (Fukuyama, 1999;

Inglehart, 1997; Pharr, Putnam, & Dalton, 2000). It is reasonable then to infer that the conservatism

often dismissed as anti-science is a social phenomenon responding to a larger pattern of erosion in social

trust. This is supported by Gauchat’s data (2012, p. 175), as well as a recent survey, conducted by

Evans, finding that among “high-information,” educated conservative Protestants, it was not science in

general or scientific method that was cited as the object of skepticism, but rather claims that science is

value-free (J. H. Evans, 2011).

Matthew C. Nisbet presents data showing that the broad public trust in science expressed during the

Cold War period did not correlate with greater literacy or knowledge of the factual or technical content

of science, and nor does the trust expressed today so correlate (Nisbet, 2010, p. 1769). Furthermore, why

should anyone expect that greater information or knowledge about science among the public would

uniformly predict greater support? It is clear that the deficit model of public understanding, insofar as it

deduces the decline of institutional trust from low-information, is not empirically supported. Why does it

endure then?

This question leads the wing of PUS informed by recent work in the fields of history, philosophy,

and sociology of science (HPSS). The dismissal of such work by deficit views of the public may be

pragmatically justifiable insofar as one’s time is consumed by the requirements of advance within

increasingly specialized sciences. We may agree with Kuhn that in this respect the historicism of HPSS

is not necessary to special science education (Kindi, 2005; Kuhn & Hacking, 2012). The fields of HPSS

in the American academy since the 1970s have begun to explore the difficult but inevitable subject of

social epistemology, long developed in post-Kantian continental European thought, while largely

shunned by the analytic philosophy dominant in the Anglo world. Steve W. Fuller notes that the recent

emergence of “social epistemology” as a distinct area of inquiry for analytic philosophy, as opposed to

the continental traditions, reflects how accounts of knowledge in the latter already presuppose a social

dimension, which make ‘social epistemology’ a superfluous term (2007); from the 19th century onward,

epistemologies descended from French positivism and German idealism have constantly stressed the

systematic and collective character of knowledge (p. 1). The tension between Popperian and Kuhnian

philosophy of science in PUS and in the American academy in general, is itself a symptom of a long

tradition in which British philosophers of science and their American followers have sought to

demarcate liberal Anglo thought from the dark, exotic, socially illiberal thought of the European

continent. Popper’s strong anti-historicist philosophy of science, given its political form in The Open

Society and its Enemies (1945), expresses Anglo fears that the social epistemology derived from

continental philosophers like Hegel was ultimately to blame for 20th-century communism, fascism, and

World War II (Rose, 2007, p. 7; Stewart, 1996, pp. 87-102). This view seems plausible in the case of

Heidegger, a major influence on postmodernism, who took the historicism without the rationalism from

Hegel’s theory of modernity. This strand in the history of ideas tells us an important part of the tale

leading to current differences of view within PUS.

On my argument post-Kuhnian HPSS is best positioned to diagnose and devise appropriate

responses to the social situation of science in America. Post-Kuhnian HPSS opens paths to long-needed

social epistemology, to Geisteswissenschaften in American philosophy; it opens the path to what Dewey

began (Shook, Good, & Dewey, 2010), only to be overshadowed during the middle of the 20th century

by the ascendance then of logical positivist philosophy. These fields evidence the socially contingent,

historically rooted character of public reasons and their normative authority. They point to a more

complex, varied picture of modernization than the rationalization hypothesis of Weber, which leads to

the deficit model in PUS and its problems for the science community (Locke, 1994; 1999a, p. ix; 1999b,

2002).

Wynne evidences this influence of HPSS in his call for PUS to draw more fully on wider and more

historical work in political philosophy (p. 21). In the science community, backlash against HPSS, and

the influence of Kuhn generally, is based on worry that these fields have fostered postmodernist

skepticism, undermining scientific realism and reason. On my argument these philosophical worries are

misguided, and such a backlash amounts to ‘shooting the messenger’ of a real problem. Kuhn’s insight

that science is intrinsically historical need not undermine rationality or progress, as Kuhn himself argued

in his own defense during the years of debate following the publication of The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions (Kuhn & Hacking, 2012, p. xxxi). Historicist epistemology may however require significant

alterations in our conception of rationality.

Having given an exposition of the social situation of science during the last four decades, Chapter 2

traces how the field of PUS has developed since the 1980s, coinciding with the decline and end of the

Space Race and the Cold War. Through analysis of debate over the deficit model of the public, in

comparison with more recent critical views, I find that two distinct approaches in PUS and science

education can be discerned and respectively justified: a post-Kuhnian historicist approach, largely

informed by history, philosophy, and sociology of science (HPSS), as well as a Popperian neo-positivist

approaches often suspicious of the former. The latter aligns with the requirements of pre-professional

education aimed at the advance of specialized sciences, while the former better to the requirements of

the general, liberal science education citizens need, insofar as they will be among various parties to

science-related public debates. This curriculum outlined in Chapter 6 follows from this.

Whereas Chapter 2 demonstrates the contours of the necessary turn toward history, philosophy, and

sociology of science (HPSS) within research in public understanding of science (PUS), Chapter 3

undertakes historical analysis of the relationship between science and the state and between pure and

applied science. The analysis yields important conclusions for the kind of literacy a liberal science

education needs to provide for contemporary civic discourse. I begin with an examination of political

scientist Donald E. Stokes’ study of the weakened state of the compact between science and

government. Stokes argues that the traditional distinction between basic and applied research is at fault

in part for the recent weakening of the relationship between science and state. I extend Stokes’ search

into the history of ideas for the origin of the distinction between pure and applied science, thus between

the often conflicting ideals of knowledge and social utility. If civics refers to the study of the theoretical

and practical aspects of citizenship—its rights and duties; the duties of citizens to each other as members

of a political body—then the aim here is to understand why modern science is aligned with the

particularly modern norm of universalism in civic affairs, the notion that science should serve all. This is

peculiar because there is no reason in the scientific pursuit of knowledge as such to entail this attitude.

In fact the invention of theoretical science by the ancient Greeks involved no such sense of duty beyond

the ethnic group toward a universal humanity. In the West, it is the intervening centuries of medieval

Christian ideas, which—contrary to their demonization by traditional science history—mediate the

transformation of science from a purely theoretical pursuit to understand nature—as the Greeks

conceived it—into the modern instrumental pursuit to transform nature toward human ends. More

historically informed ‘old atheists’ like Nietzsche have recognized—and lamented—this connection

between Christianity and the universalism of modern secular humanism. The aim here is not to justify

the content of any particular ethical claims, whether religious or secular-humanist, but the analysis

shows that recent approaches to science advocacy in the public, like the supposedly science-based ‘new

atheism’ of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, make errors in both substance and

strategy insofar as they ignore or attempt to purge religious thought from the historical grounding of

modern science and politics. The analysis here yields a solution for appropriately situating science and

religion within a liberal science education that would elevate the civic discourse, and this is addressed as

a unit within the curriculum outlined in Chapter 6.

While Chapter 3 analyzed the historical evolution of science in the civic realm, Chapter 4 looks at a

contemporary public policy debate involving claims appealing to recent genetic science. This illustrates

the complexity of the challenge in a free, liberal polity where scientific arguments in public appeal to

genetic science in a manner that would impact normative and policy actions, like the creation of single-

sex education. The need for critical science literacy in this respect is made urgent by the unprecedented

implications of 21st-century sciences of life—molecular biology, population genetics, behavior genetics,

evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, neuropharmacology, and DNA-level genetic engineering.

Even if we do not see the most extreme possibilities of genetic engineering like “designer babies”

realized, the growth of knowledge in these fields is already creating the ripples of the new biopolitics.

Psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax mounts a sophisticated public argument that recent

research in brain genetics confirms a natural, genetic—not cultural or socially constructed—basis for

differences in the behavior of boys and girls; this entails, Sax argues, normative implications for

differences in how we educate boys and girls. Sax is prompted by developments arising from another

area of the new life sciences, neuropharmacology. He criticizes for a lack of prudence the recent, sudden

wave of brain- and behavior-altering psychotropic drugs during the sudden wave of mass diagnosis of

ADHD in boys. On Sax’s genetics-based argument, such prescriptions are detrimental to natural

differences of disposition in boys that require attention within educational contexts to fulfill their

educational potential. Sax’s critics, often humanist intellectuals and feminists like academic

psychologist Cordelia Fine, charge in return that his argument amounts to no more than another attempt

to prop up old-fashioned prejudices for socially constructed differences under the authority of science.

Such debates are so controversial in the public sphere because they suggest science may be in conflict

with our political ideals of freedom and equality. Addressing how to navigate this new iteration of the

nature-nurture debate yields important conclusions for the kind of critical literacy a liberal science

education needs to provide in contemporary civic discourse.

In Chapter 4 we gain a sense of the depth of conflict between naturalist and social constructivist

views of human behavior. Fine’s feminist criticism of Sax is aligned with the strong social constructivist

views common in the humanities. This biopolitical debate reflects the long-running divergence between

scientific and humanistic intellectuals in the public sphere, identified by Charles .P. Snow as the “two

cultures”; thus Chapter 5 takes up a more theoretical inquiry into recent advances in neuroscience and

cognitive science with a view to how these might help bridge the alienation between these two modes of

inquiry. Humanistic intellectuals tend to fear that science threatens freedom; this problem between the

two cultures centers on the nature of the free, morally autonomous individual actor or subject—the ideal

of political liberalism, including both the classical, conservative, Lockean liberalism, written into the

constitution of the United States, as well as the more recent communitarian modifications of liberalism,

as articulated by Dewey for example. Thus Chapter 5 is an attempt to help detail a meta-ethical theory

for how recent neuroscience and cognitive science can be bridged with this vital public ideal.

Chapters 1 to 5 are intended as a contribution to the scholarly discourse within PUS. These chapters

help identify the parameters of appropriate general or liberal science learning that the public needs

today. They are aimed at science teachers, education policy makers, communicators, historians,

sociologists, and philosophers of science.

Thus, in Chapter 6, I outline a proposal, in the critical light of preceding investigations, for a non-

specialized, liberal science education for non-majoring students and adult citizens. This follows from

Kuhn’s view that the historicism of history and philosophy of science is not a necessary part of

traditional, pre-professional science education or training for specialized sciences, but it is a necessary

part of general or liberal science education, needed for critical appreciation of science by citizens. It is

especially important to prioritize and develop liberal science educational programs for non-majoring

students and adult citizens, as they will be among various parties to increasingly complex, science-

related public debates in the 21st century. A curriculum for the public must be broad enough to address

various communities within the United States. Therefore the outline in Chapter 6 emphasizes science as

a method and the conclusions of historical and contemporary science not as dogmas but as conclusions

standing for free minds to test. Final judgments of absolute truth are suspended, so that learners can

appreciate how scientific theories can be freely entertained, considered, examined, non-coercively, by

free minds.

An important philosophical point: The guiding approach in the following analyses of issues at the

intersection of science and society takes special heed from a hard-won, sage insight, thusly expressed by

the 20th-century heretic analytic philosopher Richard Rorty: “Take care of freedom and truth will take

care of itself” (Rorty & Mendieta, 2006). His deceptively simple point conceals a lifetime of

philosophical labor in the trenches of impassioned disputes, and speaks to a perennial—perhaps

irreconcilable—tension between the pursuits of truth and democracy, a problem recognized since at least

Plato’s Republic. Should we expect it to be any easier for us?

CHAPTER 2

SCIENCE AND THE PUBLIC

In Chapter 2 the brief history of interdisciplinary research in public understanding of science (PUS)

is traced in order to better illustrate the development of the scholarly discourse, and its outstanding

questions, from which Wynne’s call for PUS to “draw more fully on wider and more historical work in

political philosophy” follows (2008, p. 21).

Having exposed the social situation of science over the last four decades, which gave rise to the

need for research in PUS, Chapter 2 traces how the field of PUS has developed since the 1980s,

coinciding with the decline and end of the Space Race and the Cold War. Through that two distinct

approaches in PUS and science education can be discerned and respectively justified: a post-Kuhnian

historicist approach, largely informed by history, philosophy, and sociology of science (HPSS), as well

as a Popperian neo-positivist approaches often rightly suspicious of the former. This analysis of debate

over the deficit model of the public, versus more recent critical views, we can find leads to a conclusion

that the latter aligns with the requirements of pre-professional education aimed at the advance of

specialized sciences, while the former better to the requirements of the general, liberal science education

citizens need.

Who is the Public for Science?

Within the field it is generally recognized that a unifying theory of PUS is lacking (Lewenstein,

2002, p. 2; Locke, 1999b, p. 75). Reasons for this include that it is a relatively young and

interdisciplinary field, having become a formalized area for scholarly inquiry only during the 1980s

(Kahlor & Stout, 2010, p. 12); that there is to contend with the historically typical resistance of social

science to the positive character of a formal science or a natural science; and that we are dealing,

arguably, with an intrinsically discursive subject (Lewenstein, p. 3; Locke, p. 76). Yet there is a clear

need for empirical researches, quantitative and qualitative, when one is dealing in the speculative,

precarious territory of conjectures about “the public,” regarding what it does or does not understand

adequately enough (Irwin & Wynne, 1996, p. 1; Prpic, 2011, p. 734).

The problem of how to represent the public is widely addressed in PUS and related literature, often

including investigations into its historical connections with the emergence of modern science (M. S.

Evans, 2009; G. Holton, 1993; G. J. Holton & Blanpied, 1976). Today it is common in public life to

observe that appeals to any particular representation of “the public” provoke skepticism. This usually

occurs on those occasions when a political dilemma calls forth claims appealing to universal interests

the public is supposed to possess. But healthy skepticism at this juncture remains superficial if it does

not prompt deeper inquiry into who “the public” is and how it is constituted. In a modern, liberal,

middle-class, democratic culture, such as our own, it is taken for granted that the individual is a part but

also apart from the public, with only a minimal need for concern about or duties toward it. The assumed

practical procedures and technological characteristics of this public culture are, if only implicitly, deeply

entwined with the historical emergence of science, reflecting the instrumental rationality through which

modern science has managed to avoid disputes over values and achieve the great modern technological

revolutions (Gray, 2007, pp. 81-83; G. Holton, 1993, p. 298; G. J. Holton & Blanpied, 1976).

This is the case by design, deriving from the Enlightenment period in Western history (~ 1650 to

1800) when a confluence of natural science (then “natural philosophy”) and political liberalism, together

under the banner of a single, universal, “public” rationality, defined modernization precisely as the

supersession of historical, religious, and cultural difference (Gregory & Miller, 1998, pp. 20, 56, 66-67,

84). According to research by Evans (2009), the historical development of social science in America

between 1880 and 1920 is characterized by debate over the degree to which the newer social application

of science—and consequently “the public” to be studied—should be defined on the model of the

Enlightenment, Newtonian ideal of a natural, positive science, and the degree to which it might openly

reflect the historical, normative character of progressive social reformers with religiously inflected

desires to advance it (p. 7). The positivists prevailed insofar as the “sociological public” modeled in this

period was deliberately defined “by excluding the undesirable religious public” (p. 5). This was

necessary, Evans argues, since in order to establish credibility against the high bar of the positive ideal,

aspiring sociologists needed to establish the possibility of symmetry between the assumptions of a

positive science and its object. Evans concludes by suggesting that a significantly flawed model of

science–public relations was established at this particular juncture, helping to explain later, intermittent

eruptions of concern about public understanding by the scientific establishment during the 20th century

(p. 19).

The Development of Models of PUS

In his departing editorial for the Fall 1997 issue of the journal Public Understanding of Science,

founding editor John Durant expressed concern about the lack of theory in PUS generally (J. R. Durant,

1997). Progress at filling this gap is marked by Dominique Brossard and Bruce Lewenstein (Public

Understanding of Science editor from 1998-2003) in “A Critical Appraisal of Models of Public

Understanding of Science: Using Practice to Inform Theory,” their contribution to a 2010 volume on

Communicating Science (Kahlor & Stout, 2010, p. 11). Brossard and Lewenstein present a study of four

models which have emerged in the PUS literature for framing and researching public-understanding-of-

science issues: the traditional “deficit model” in which the public simply lacks necessary technical

knowledge or factual information needed to be supplied by modern science; the “lay expertise model” in

which multiple publics are recognized to possess local and historical knowledge which will shape the

meaning of encountered science; the “contextual model” which updates the deficit model to require

assessment of differences in context of reception; and the “public engagement model” which affirms a

necessity for democratic participation in determining science and technology policies (p. 17).

Brossard and Lewenstein present field research testing these models in the case of public

educational projects funded by the Department of Energy and related to the Human Genome Project,

specifically the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) component of the Human Genome

Project research program. Results were mixed, with some important implications for science

communication research. In assessing findings, the authors soberly warn that in practice “theoretical

approaches to public communication of science do not capture the complexity of the reality of informal

science education projects” (p. 32). This would not be a surprise to qualitative researchers accustomed to

encountering the limitations of theoretical constructions in practice. More promisingly, they found

“overlap between [the above models, which have been] traditionally presented as incommensurable in

theoretical discussions”, since the outreach projects wound up gravitating toward “mixed approaches

that blended models”. Nevertheless, all of the outreach projects “tended to use the Deficit Model as a

backbone, even if they seemed to follow other theoretical approaches” (p. 32). In the authors’ analysis,

this fallback occurred owing in part to a failure to more carefully assess the context of inquiry for

adequate interest and commitment on the part of the public participants. This may be a problem in the

“contextual model” to the extent that it is only taken up as a rhetorical modification upon the linear

transmission of information sought by the deficit model. “Not all citizens want to be involved in science

decision making” the authors note. But perhaps this outreach failed to elicit public engagement because

it was not serious looking for it, i.e., not seriously seeking any public involvement or democratic

participation?

Despite the challenges encountered and questions raised in this particular field test, the emergence

of distinct models—deficit, contextual, lay expertise, and public engagement—signals a definite

advance for PUS. They help readers identify key dispositions within its discourse. And they represent a

maturing discourse about the relation between science and the public: creating the terms for structured

arguments; creating distinct areas for diverse empirical research; and helping generally to advance a

lively, critical, stimulating, and productive debate within the literature.

While Brossard and Lewenstein have made a valiant effort to integrate a diversity of theoretical

approaches, it may be argued that their use of the public outreach and informal education wing of the

Human Genome Project did not lend itself to a genuine study of the lay expertise or public engagement

models, setting up an inevitable reliance upon a deficit model approach. This is the case insofar as the

lay expertise and public engagement models derive from practitioners, many trained in or influenced by

sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) (Irwin & Wynne, 1996, pp. 7-8), whose contributions are

aimed at illuminating PUS issues from a citizen-centered rather than science-centered perspective.

From Representation to Discourse

In a different response to John Durant’s concerns about PUS, Simon Locke (1999b) argues that it is

not so much that research has been “under-theorized” but rather that it has been “theorized in

fundamentally contrasting ways” (p. 75). Locke identifies essentially two contrasting representations of

the public: “deficit” versus “interpretative.” The former characterizes both the “deficit” and “contextual”

models presented by Brossard and Lewenstein, used more so by researchers concerned with how to

communicate science to the public more effectively, in order to create greater science literacy at large;

the latter characterizes the “lay understanding” and “public engagement” models, emphasized by PUS

researchers like Locke (1999b, 2002), Alan Irwin, and Wynne (1996; 2008) concerned to show that

many PUS dilemmas are rooted in an ontological blind spot about the nature of scientific knowledge.

For these researchers, scientific knowledge does not consist simply within a collection of true

propositions or in the factual content of statements, but is reliant upon external, social, discursive,

interpretive performances and manners of comportment, which in turn rely for their intelligibility upon

implicit background assumptions about social context (Irwin & Wynne, pp. 19-20, 39-40). Science is a

practice among other practices, even if a special, theoretical praxis. Because these dependencies upon a

particular praxis are not built into the traditional conception of scientific knowledge, and so are not

taught to be recognized, they constitute in effect an ontological blind spot, which results in the perennial

irruptions of lament over the failure of purportedly objective information to be transmitted into the

deficient public mind (pp. 2-3). This diagnosis of what ills PUS leads these researchers to demand that

science become more reflexive regarding its own social and practical conditions of possibility. It would

be a grave mistake to interpret this diagnosis as a form of ‘anti-science,’ rather than a call for further

enlightenment about the real conditions of scientific reason and thus for genuinely helping to improve

the relation between science and the public.

Locke is thus led to recognize, in addition to the two contrasting models of the public, two

contrasting models of science: “body of knowledge” versus “golem science” (p. 75). By “golem

science” Locke refers to the humanized image of science developed by sociologists Harry Collins and

Trevor Pinch in The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science (1993), where they urge

displacement of the “god-like” image of science as definitive knowledge. Collins and Pinch argue that

this god-like image of science creates unrealistic public expectations, which in turn fuel “anti-scientific”

reactions in the public when unmet.

But in Locke’s analysis, Collins and Pinch are still not doing citizen-centered PUS, despite their

purported critique of science. Locke argues that their concern remains implicitly framed by a deficit

model of the public, insofar as they represent lay citizens as childishly beholden to and dependent upon

a god-like image of science, bound to disappoint them (p. 79). Locke’s reflexive analysis shows that in

their explicit representation of the dilemma for the public, we also find implicit the dilemma of

professional social scientists, insofar as they appeal to the authority of science while simultaneously

deconstructing it. Locke urges that we see this dilemma as the outcome of a deeper tension within

science between the universal status of knowledge claims and the particular, human conditions of

knowledge production.

Locke finds a dialectic pattern of certain–uncertain, universal–particular, necessary–contingent,

impersonal–personal structuring the argumentative understanding of science equally for scientists and

the public alike, even if the discourse among scientists takes place in a more complex, technical register

or vocabulary about the phenomena under consideration. It can be observed playing out within the

scientific literature between “empiricist” and “contingent” rhetorical repertoires. Locke obtains these

terms of analysis from a study by sociologists of science G. Nigel Gilbert and Michael Mulkay (1982).

Gilbert and Mulkay examined a controversy between biochemists over the production of adenosine

triphosphate (ATP), a complex molecule that is accepted to transport chemical energy within cells for

metabolism, providing a source of energy for bacteria, animals, and plants. Since the early 1950s, it has

been accepted that, in animals, the process takes place in small membraneous particles called

mitochondria, which are composed of proteins, enzymes, and lipids and contain inorganic substances,

more familiar to common public vocabulary, such as calcium, potassium and sodium. The debate to be

examined emerged in the early 1960s, following a hypothesis by Watson about the mechanism for

catalyzing ATP, put forth in opposition to the prevailing hypothesis of Spencer (pp. 386-387). Gilbert

and Mulkay describe at great length the state of existing biochemical knowledge about ATP (pp. 386-

387) making clear that ‘anti-science’ deconstruction is not their intent. Their approach is not to pass

judgment upon the relative merits of each biochemist’s position, not to pass judgment upon which side

more accurately represents reality, but instead to focus on the discourse itself and the rules of scientific

argument (p. 402). In regard to our problem of how to represent the public understanding of science in

PUS, clearly there should be instructive lessons to draw from the general, argumentative structure of

scientific understanding by science itself. What Gilbert and Mulkay find in the controversy is that each

side tends to characterize their own actions in the “impersonal” tones of the “empiricist” repertoire,

while describing the actions of their opponents in the “personal” tones of the “contingent” repertoire.

Locke (p. 81) relays that the “key feature of the empiricist repertoire is that it consists of linguistic

formulations that obscure the agency of scientists in the process of fact production.” His phrase “fact

production” will be controversial, but it is at least undeniable that an empirical fact, to be established

and understood as such, must be recognizably picked out by human agents and thus to some definite

extent relies upon a particular, contingent socio-linguistic context, background, and repertoire. Locke is

at pains to make clear that his rhetorical analysis is not a form ‘anti-science’ or an attempt to

delegitimize science:

Studies of scientists’ discourse, then, provide some documentation of this characteristic mode of

argumentative interaction—or, in a word, the rhetoric of science [emphasis original]. It should

be stressed that the use of the term “rhetoric” here is not intended in its common pejorative

sense. Describing science as rhetoric is not intended in itself to downgrade, devalue, or

undermine what scientists say; rather, it is intended to refer to the fact that what they say can be

treated for its features as argument, as part of the broader study of rhetoric referring to the

forms, processes, and procedures of argumentation. (p. 81)

If scientific argument provides an exemplary form of human reasoning toward achieving

understanding, then clearly it should provide valuable lessons for PUS. But this approach poses a

problem for science presented in public, insofar as the Enlightenment ideal devalues process, demanding

incontrovertible, positive, determinate results, such that can then be presented “in an impersonal, passive

voice, giving them the appearance of direct and universally applicable [universally reliable]

representations of the world” (p. 81). Indeed, Locke finds the empiricist repertoire is favored by

scientists in public settings, such as published research reports. But if science is an argumentative

process, and not only its results, is this not relevant to the public understanding of science? In sum,

Locke finds that the process of scientific argumentation is “dilemmatical”: there is a recursive dilemma

between the universal form of knowledge claims and their factical, contingent grounding in the

particular actions of particular scientists in particular contexts and locations, though the detail of actual

expression varies from context to context (p. 82). What applications might this approach have for PUS

issues more explicitly outside formal science, in the public sphere?

Teaching science as a discursive, argumentative process has a number of potential benefits. For

one, it emphasizes the need for critical thinking and structured reasoning, with application for citizens

and learners beyond science proper. In addition, this approach can encourage science literacy in the form

of enriched science reading. Rather than science being presented as a list of results, which one is

supposed either to accept or not accept upon threat of being deemed ‘unscientific’, an invitation to read

science as a dramatic, discursive process is a step toward creating greater science literacy and inviting

constructive public engagement. For example, reading from the often dramatic public debates over the

normative consequences of the work of Pasteur, Darwin, Mendel, Watson and Crick, can provide a path

into the fundamental concepts, methods, major themes, and questions of life sciences: natural selection,

genetics, eugenics, genomics, ecology, molecular biology, artificial life, and biotechnology. What has

“life” meant at different moments in history? Does science change the meaning of “life” for us?

In a thorough application of discourse theory in PUS research, Locke presents his study of the

“Creation Science” movement in Britain, where he documented the contrast of empiricist and contingent

voices in the way creationists argue with evolution (Locke, 1994). What he found is that they use the

detached, impersonal, and universal appeals of empiricism when advancing views consistent with their

own, but use the personalized, particularized forms of contingency when characterizing the actions and

beliefs of evolutionists. In other words, creationists in public discourse have adopted rhetorical

techniques of science as means to legitimize their own account of the origins of life and to delegitimize

the alternative account provided by evolution (pp. 409-410). This shows that the Enlightenment ideal

drives a kind of arms race for who can speak more sharply in the voice of metaphysical certitude,

representing no longer a fallible, contingent self, but so as to speak in the name of reality itself. One can

easily find plenty of US-based Internet sites filled with such delegitimizing contests presented as dialog.

What are the lessons for PUS? It may be advisable for science in public to become, as Wynne advises,

more self-reflexive (D. Durant, 2008; Wynne, 2008), thus dropping the harder rhetoric of

incontrovertible positivity and universal reliability in knowledge claims, and allowing science to speak

publicly in its contingent, human voices.

We have traced how the field of PUS developed since the 1980s, coinciding with the decline and

end of the Space Race and the Cold War. Through analysis of debate over the deficit model of the

public, versus more recent critical views, we have found a necessary turn within PUS toward a post-

Kuhnian historicist approach, largely informed by history, philosophy, and sociology of science (HPSS).

The requirements of pre-professional education aimed at the advance of specialized sciences differ from

the requirements of a general, liberal science education citizens need, insofar as they will be among

various parties to science-related public debates. This conclusion informs the curriculum outline in

Chapter 6.

While this short history of research in PUS illustrates the development of the field into a richer

discourse, we have seen why outstanding questions lead to Wynne’s call for PUS to “draw more fully on

wider and more historical work in political philosophy” follows (2008, p. 21). In Chapter 3, in response

to this problem, I argue that a complex understanding of the political history in which science has

developed and flourished is essential to understanding the political present in which science is now

situated and challenged; this is done through an analysis beginning from Donald E. Stokes research on

the dichotomy between pure versus applied science when public funding is called for.

CHAPTER 3

SCIENCE AND THE RULE OF LAW

Having illustrated why Brian Wynne has called for wider and more historical work in political

philosophy within the field of PUS (2008, p. 21), in Chapter 3 I begin to address this gap. I argue here

that a more complex understanding of the political history in which science has developed and

flourished is essential to understanding the political present in which science is now situated and

challenged; this is done through an analysis beginning from political scientist Donald E. Stokes’

research on the dichotomy between pure versus applied science when public funding is called for.

I begin with an examination of Stokes’ study of the weakened state of the compact between science

and government. Stokes argues that the traditional distinction between basic and applied research is at

fault in part for the recent weakening of the relationship between science and state. I extend Stokes’

search into the history of ideas for the origin of the distinction between pure and applied science, thus

between the often conflicting ideals of knowledge and social utility. If civics refers to the study of the

theoretical and practical aspects of citizenship—its rights and duties; the duties of citizens to each other

as members of a political body—then the aim here is to understand why modern science is aligned with

the particularly modern norm of universalism in civic affairs, the notion that science should serve all.

This is peculiar because there is no reason in the scientific pursuit of knowledge as such to entail this

attitude. In fact the invention of theoretical science by the ancient Greeks involved no such sense of duty

beyond the ethnic group toward a universal humanity. In the West, it is the intervening centuries of

medieval Christian ideas, which—contrary to their demonization by traditional science history—mediate

the transformation of science from a purely theoretical pursuit to understand nature—as the Greeks

conceived it—into the modern instrumental pursuit to transform nature toward human ends. More

historically informed ‘old atheists’ like Nietzsche have recognized—and lamented—this connection

between Christianity and the universalism of modern secular humanism. The aim here is not to justify

the content of any particular ethical claims, whether religious or secular-humanist, but the analysis

shows that recent approaches to science advocacy in the public, like the supposedly science-based ‘new

atheism’ of Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett, make errors in both substance and strategy insofar as they

ignore or attempt to purge religious thought from the historical grounding of modern science and

politics. The analysis here yields a solution for appropriately situating science and religion within a

liberal science education that would elevate the civic discourse, and this is addressed as a unit within the

curriculum outlined in Chapter 6.

Crisis of Purpose in Post-Cold War American Science

What are the goals of science? What level of public investment in scientific research can be

justified today? If we have no fundamental agreement between scientists, politicians, and the public on

these questions, might there at least be a way toward a more effective consensus, an improvement

beyond the worst conflicts in the current science-policy-public nexus? The contentious debate over

energy sources, climate change, biotechnology, and the teaching of evolution are only the most visible to

the larger public; less visible is a debate about science policy and the funding of pure versus applied

endeavors.

Stokes (1997) argues that the modern research paradigm, which peaked after World War II during

the Cold War, has always carried an inherent flaw, and is in part to blame for current disarray in the

relationship between science and government (p. 1). Stokes’ prime target is the assumption of a

fundamental separation between fundamental, basic, or pure research on the one hand, and applied or

practical research on the other. Stokes finds that “It was widely accepted in the postwar years that basic

science could serve as a pacemaker of technological progress only if it is insulated from thought of

practical use.” He finds this a paradox in view of how often those who built modern science were

directly influenced by applied goals, as Louis Pasteur was influenced by practical goals throughout his

fundamental work in microbiology (Stokes, p. 26).

Stokes revisits the tremendously influential post-World War II government report Science, the

Endless Frontier (United States. Office of scientific research and development. & Bush, 1945). In this

report Vannevar Bush claimed a fundamental dichotomy between basic and applied science, and

articulated a view of science at the core of the compact between science and the state. This compact

enabled the golden age of American science research during the middle of the 20th century. Stokes

observes that this compact has begun to unravel since the decline and end of the Cold War. This trend

has continued in the decade since Stokes’ inquiry, with globalization and neo-liberal approaches to

science policy relegating more research to private, transnational commercial enterprises, with

diminished funding for the pubic research universities that arose during the post-WWII years. Stokes’

challenges the earlier view of Bush and argues that to restore the relationship between science and the

state, we need to understand what is wrong with that view. Stokes ultimately concludes that the goals of

understanding and use in science are more intimately connected than Bush had assumed. I argue that this

connection of theory and practice could have been explored further earlier—because in fact it was by the

Hegelian, Marxist, and American pragmatist traditions—but it has been forced to the fore in recent

American discourse by the post-industrial IT revolution, in which high-tech is science-based and

sciences have become more obviously dependent upon technology. This is above all evident in the

advance of genetic science and biotechnology (Howard, 2000). Stokes looks for a model of practice in

Louis Pasteur, who laid the foundations of microbiology a century ago, during the era of the “second

industrial revolution,” when the interaction between basic science and technological change became

visible in its modern contours. For Stokes, Pasteur’s work is exemplary, because it aims for and achieves

the goals both of fundamental understanding and making possible applications of moral and practical

significance for society.

Searching for an Ethos

The idea that pure research is fundamentally separate from the practical, even if its proponents

begrudgingly accept that their financial support depends on practical interests (Stokes, p. 61), is deeply

entwined within western history. Considering the close association of science and technology in the

mind of the public today, one might be inclined to think Stokes’ problem not a real one. Stokes is

concerned with a conceptual assumption about science within the research community, and how this

impacts public funding. Many argue that technological innovations benefiting the public flow ultimately

from a pure research unconcerned with consequences (p. 56), but Stokes holds up in response the model

of Pasteur, whose work not only achieved basic insights, but was also motivated by concern for public

utility.

To find a way out of the dichotomy between pure and applied research, Stokes presents a quadrant

model, wherein he locates four possibilities. Along the y-axis he draws a line from lesser to greater

value for fundamental understanding (basic science). Along the x-axis he draws a line from lesser to

greater value for use (applications). This allows him to identify Pasteur’s work in chemistry and

microbiology as expressing a virtuous mean, represented by the upper right quadrant, wherein both

fundamental understanding and consideration of use are exemplary. For Stokes, Pasteur avoids the

distance from practical concerns sometimes characteristic of highly theoretical research, but also avoids

the lack of emphasis on fundamental understanding characteristic of narrowly instrumentalist research.

In the upper left quadrant we might locate theoretical physicist Niels Bohr, as well as Albert Einstein,

who, despite his popular public image, cannot be said to have served the public in the same capacity as

Pasteur. In the lower right quadrant we might locate Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell who

provide models of the industrious scientist-inventor, developing instruments of inestimable utility to the

world (which tend to be highly marketable and profitable as well). We might also include in this latter

category Benjamin Franklin, lesser known for his invention of bifocal eyeglasses.

Into the History of the Present Ideas of Science and State

To better understand the current ideological split Stokes makes a study in the history of ideas. He

traces the ideal of pure inquiry to the Greek development of theory and natural philosophers. In the

Greek world speculative thought about nature was practiced primarily by an aristocratic elite, whose

privileged economic position (Athens economy depended on slavery) allowed them the generous

amount of leisure time needed for its development. Inquiring about the origins of the modern paradigm,

Stokes finds that

The natural philosophy of the Greek world […] that entered [Europe] during the Renaissance,

continued to be read by the classes in western Europe from which the natural philosophers of

later centuries were largely drawn […] There is little doubt that it kept alive the view of the

superiority of pure science that was so deeply rooted in the Greek world (Stokes, p. 31).

This passage points to the Enlightenment and the beginning of the modern paradigm, but it doesn’t

account for the Enlightenment’s other emphasis on transformation, instrumentality, and the egalitarian

desire for large-scale practical benefits to society, i.e. the universal ethos of the new science. Regarding

this transformation, we have “only partial clues as to why” it should be true that “Europe’s natural

philosophers were readier than he Greeks to see their science as a means of controlling, and not only of

understanding, nature” (Stokes, p. 31). This points us down a path exploring how the ideas of law in

science—natural law—and in politics—civil law—have evolved in Western history.

The Greeks invented the idea of science as epistêmê, theoretical description and explanation of

empirical phenomena according to the discernment of abstract, logical, impersonal principles, instead of

according to animistic or theistic agencies. The pre-Socratic Parmenides (c. 515 / 540 BC) seems to have

been the first to infer the universal, necessary character in the logic of symbols as something distinct

from, over or above the particular, contingent, empirical phenomena, which the logic describes and

explains. The Greek λόγος is the “ground”, “plea”, “opinion”, “word”, “speech”, or “account” of things.

Parmenides writings say that the logical principle or λόγος of ‘being’ tells what is more true than

appearance, tells what stands somehow apart, above, or behind the manifestly changing appearances of

empirical phenomena. This begets the metaphysical character of science as the positing of principles or

laws to explain phenomena, while not being themselves empirical objects.

Aristotle further elaborates upon this negative character of formal scientific principles exposed by

Parmenides; he identifies the formal rules of syllogism implicit in language by removing or negating the

empirical content of particular linguistic statements (Wittgenstein & Kolak, 1998, p. xiv). For example:

If the sword caused the event, then it wasn’t the rose.

The sword did cause the event.

Therefore, it wasn’t the rose.

Aristotle seems to have been the first to discover that this argument is valid not because of anything

to do with the empirical content or meaning of the words, but due to the syntactical structure of the

sentence form:

Therefore Q.

The key point here is to see that in logical formulation, required by all empirical, scientific

statements, the ultimate rule is the formal, non-empirical law of identity, the consistency of symbolic

meaning implicit in the use of language. The rule or law itself never appears, but can only be inferred

from particular empirical cases of the things it is supposed to govern; in being inferred from empirical

things, the rule cannot be directly observed. This creates perennial questions for science.

Contrary to the modern myth that science has become purely empirical, the metaphysical character

of natural law runs through the entire history of science from Parmenides to Aristotle to Newton to

Darwin. The negativity of the formal law, empirically unverifiable, empty of content, continues to hold

sway over science today. For example, consider that the Darwinian principle of natural selection is never

itself observed directly and is never itself supposed to undergo change over time like the observable

things, which it is inferred to govern. From that which can be empirically observed in particular place

and time, like the various objects in the fossil record, it is thought to provide the best explanation. Note

how Richard Dawkins, the strongest public advocate today for a Darwinian Weltanschauung, asserts—

beyond any possible empirical verification or observation—that natural selection is the law ruling

throughout the universe (Dawkins, 2006); and this in a book intended to refute speculative notions.

Now, perhaps one finds this principle does provide the best explanation of what one observes—if this

were the case, it would still not excuse the need for critical thinking about the nature of scientific reason.

This persisting metaphysical characteristic of science, leaving scientific claims constantly open to

question, is the reason for David Hume’s skeptical problem of induction, i.e., the problem that no finite

number of empirical observations can confirm the infinity or universality suggested by the notion of a

natural law. Karl Popper’s philosophy of science is designed precisely to address this negativity or

emptiness of empirical content in the logic of law. Popper claims the only way around Hume’s problem

of induction is to recognize that the universal statements of science are negative in this formal sense:

they are never themselves proven true or verified, but can only ‘stand’ as yet not falsified by any

particular observation made so far.

We owe to Hume the modern critical recognition that inferences to law in nature give us only

seeming necessities; we can see this insofar as we become capable of critically distinguishing between

(a) the contingency of empirical observations and (b) the logical necessity in symbolic systems. It is

difficult to overstate the importance of this insight for modern, critical thinking in science and practical

philosophy.

The point of this excursion into philosophy of science is to critically expose the theoretical aspect

of science: the constructive work of reason in positing natural laws and principles to explain the

regularity of things in the world. This critical recognition in the history of thought is significantly joined

to coinciding social changes in the conception of civil law, toward recognizing the social construction of

civil law and therefore a greater degree of freedom possible in the creation of the rules regulating human

affairs. This is why the history of the concept of law in both natural and civil senses of the term is

important to understanding the modern senses of science and the state. This will explain the reasoning

behind Fine’s feminist criticism of Sax’s appeal to genetics in Chapter 3.

Now, at the historical birth of the idea, science—epistêmê—is an end in itself for the aristocratic,

contemplative man of Greek philosophy; for the Greeks it is unattainable by the masses among which

technê dominates sans epistêmê, application without true knowledge, particular know-how without

grasp of universal why. The Greeks discover the idea of natural law essential to modern science, but

they also found that some men are naturally free while others are naturally slaves.

To locate the origin of the modern notions of universal human rights and democratic law we have

to look to the appearance of Judaic-Christianity as a slave religion in late Rome. It is a slave ideology

that challenges the aristocratic politics of antiquity with the notion of universal freedom and dignity for

the individual as such, recognized by a transcendental creator and judge of the human world, above even

aristocratic men. The medieval period in Europe, dominated by Roman Catholicism, brings a universal

esteem to the practices and craftwork of the laboring individual person, a social reality unknown to high

Greek thought. Thus the notion of universal rule of law begins to move from nature into the polis, laws

necessary in nature, but laws contingent, created in the human polis upon a moral, historical expansion

entwined with particular religious beliefs about the free individual. This sets the stage for Renaissance

humanism, the Protestant Reformation, political liberalization, and the Scientific Revolution of the 17th

century. The latter gives us our modern idea of science by adding to Greek theory and mathematics the

ingredients of practical experiment, instrumentation, and empirical verification. Hume’s modern, critical

recognition that inferences to natural necessities in nature seem rather to be an effect of merely logical

necessities within our symbolic systems was not merely an exercise of abstract philosophy, but also a

cultural expression of an emerging realization of human freedom, leading to the modern democratic

revolutions in the Western world, including that leading to the establishment of the United States. Thus

the history of scientific thought is written into the DNA of the US as a distinctly modern nation.

Stokes investigation into the origin of the ideas of pure and applied science thus taps, but only

scratches the surface, of a rich tradition in the study of history, the same tradition that leads along

different branches of thought to Marxist economic history, to the American pragmatism of Charles S.

Pierce, William James, and Dewey, and also to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn. It

follows largely from the 19th-century German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel. Hegel’s philosophical

reading of history became influential in the 20th century through Alexandre Kojève, a bureaucrat in the

French Ministry of Economic Affairs and a chief planner of the European Common Market following

World War II (Kojève & Queneau, 1980; Nichols, 2007). Kojève was a student and colleague of the

historian of science Alexandre Koyré when both taught at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris

during the 1920s. Kojève succeeded Koyré there as lecturer on Hegel, and Koyré is cited by Kuhn in his

introduction to Structure as a key influence in the “historiographic revolution” Kuhn sought to help

bring about in the study of science (Kuhn & Hacking, 2012).

On Stokes’ question about the transition between the Greek to the modern paradigm, Kojève points

to the medieval interlude. In the transition from the ‘dark ages’ to the late medieval period, the masterly,

aristocratic cultures of Greece and the Roman Empire give way to the Judaic-Christian world built by

former slaves. The slaves’ memory of oppression, signified in the martyrdom of the crucifix, leads to the

notion that each particular individual interests should, in principle, be equally recognized. This ethos

stands in stark contrast to the guiltless elitism of masterly Greek thought (Kojève & Queneau, 1980, pp.

55-58). Stokes remarks how “Those performing the practical arts held a different station in late medieval

and early modern Europe than they did in the Greek world. The medieval guilds lent these arts

considerable prestige, and the Christian tradition gave manual labor a meaning quite different from the

ancient world’s” (Stokes, 1997, p. 31). Kojève remarks how “different is the situation created by work

[the slave’s labor]. Man who works transforms given nature. […] Where there is work, then, there is

necessarily change, progress, historical evolution” (1980, p. 51). On Kojève’s and Stokes’ analysis this

new historical emphasis upon labor, negation, and the transformation of nature is connected to the

Christian notion of the ‘super-natural’, the notion of a beyond-nature, leading eventually to the

temporally-oriented, modern philosophy of science expressed by Francis Bacon in The New Atlantis of

1624 (Bacon, Weinberger, & Bacon, 1989), that through science and technology, man is destined to

subordinate nature to his own ends in time, an idea unknown to the ancient Greeks.

Implications for Study of Science and the Public

We thus arrive at a rich historical explanation for why the contrasting values of pure and applied

science today are prone to conflict. The ideal of fundamental insights achieved through basic scientific

research into nature remains the most esteemed kind of science, scientists’ science. This also helps

explains to a great extend why the deficit model of the public in PUS persists, and why a dichotomy

between the ideals of pure and applied science shall probably remain, despite Stokes’ praise of Pasteur’s

research program as a mediating model.

Consider for example when conservative populists in America appeal to feelings of resentment

toward the ‘Washington elite’ when arguing for religious freedoms and defending religious

interpretations of human origins in education. The preceding analysis suggests how deeply rooted the

practical, Christian, populist element in American culture is, and likely to remain in tension with a

counterpoised high science ethos, ideologically descended from the Greek tradition.

In this sense, current conflicts over science and its relationship to the state today often involve

complex permutations of two strands of historical thought about science: the high Greek view of pure

knowledge of nature, and a practical view which derives from the Christian, human-centered

Weltanschauung, from which also derives secularized humanistic calls for universal benefits to society

from science.

Returning to Stokes’ question of the weakened compact between science and state following the

decline of the Cold War, could it be that the post-WWII compact was an exceptional condition, a unity

of science and the public made possible only by the dire threat of an external enemy? This would be a

very pessimistic conclusion, but it does not seem wholly implausible. The conclusion that social unity or

universality is conditional upon difference from an opposed other is one of the pessimistic features of

postmodern theory. Disenchantment with the modern pillars of science and progress comes in both right

wing and left wing varieties. For the postmodernist left, Stokes’ quest to establish a new compact

between government and science—with its ethos of universalism—such as we had during the Cold War,

entails, if unintentionally, the need for some enemy to be identified. A variety of anti-science

dispositions which have developed on the left following this picture are described fairly by Jane Gregory

and Steve Miller in their Science in Public: Communication, Culture, and Credibility (Gregory &

Miller, 1998, pp. 53-74). This is an especially disconcerting trend, since the left was traditionally a

strong source of support for science. I will return to this theme in Chapter 5 when considering the

raproachment betweeen ‘the two cultures,’ and possibilities in recent neuro and cognitive science for

reconnecting science and humanistic inquiry.

If civics refers to the study of the theoretical and practical aspects of citizenship—its rights and

duties; the duties of citizens to each other as members of a political body—then perhaps we have shed

light here on why modern science is aligned with the particularly modern norm of universalism in civic

affairs, the notion that science should serve all. This is peculiar because there is no reason in the

scientific pursuit of knowledge as such to entail this attitude. In fact, as we have shown, the invention of

theoretical science by the ancient Greeks involved no such sense of duty beyond the ethnic group toward

a universal humanity. In the West, it is the intervening centuries of medieval Christian ideas, which—

contrary to their demonization by traditional science history—mediate the transformation of science

from a purely theoretical pursuit to understand nature—as the Greeks conceived it—into the modern

instrumental pursuit to transform nature toward human ends. More historically informed ‘old atheists’

like Nietzsche have recognized—and lamented—this connection between Christianity and the

universalism of modern secular humanism. The point here is not to justify the content of any particular

ethical claims, whether religious or secular-humanist, but the analysis shows that recent approaches to

science advocacy in the public, like the supposedly science-based ‘new atheism’ of Dawkins, Harris,

and Dennett, make errors in both substance and strategy insofar as they ignore or attempt to purge

religious thought from the historical grounding of modern science and politics. The analysis here yields

an important approach to situating science and religion within a liberal science education that would

elevate the civic discourse, and this is addressed as a unit within the curriculum outline proposed in

Chapter 6.

The historical and moral evolution of science in the civic realm having been illuminated, Chapter 4

looks at an important instance of contemporary civic debate appealing to current science. Debates

involving appeals to genetics and the new life sciences harbor significant ethical and policy implications

that will decide the fate of the relation between science and the state in the 21st century.

CHAPTER 4

SCIENCE AND BIOPOLITICS

Having elaborated the historical and moral evolution of science in the civic realm, we now turn to a

contemporary debate in the public sphere involving claims appealing to recent genetic science, and with

significant ethical and policy implications. In Chapter 4 I investigate and illustrate the complexity of the

challenge in a free, liberal polity where scientific arguments in public appeal to genetic science in a

manner that would impact normative and policy actions. I look at the case of psychologist and family

physician Dr. Leonard Sax. Sax, who supports his case for single-sex education in large part on appeal

to new, scientific evidence for deeply rooted, genetic-level male/female brain differences.

The need for science literacy in this respect is made urgent by the unprecedented implications of

21st-century sciences of life—molecular biology, population genetics, behavior genetics, evolutionary

biology, cognitive neuroscience, neuropharmacology, and DNA-level genetic engineering. Even if we

do not see the most extreme possibilities of genetic engineering like “designer babies” realized, the

growth of knowledge in these fields is already creating the ripples of the new biopolitics.

Sax mounts a sophisticated argument that recent research in brain genetics confirms a natural,

genetic—not cultural or socially constructed—basis for differences in the behavior of boys and girls;

this entails, Sax argues, normative implications for differences in how we educate boys and girls. Sax is

prompted by developments arising from another area of the new life sciences, neuropharmacology. He

raises questions about the prudence of prescribing brain- and behavior-altering psychotropic drugs

during the sudden wave of mass diagnosis of ADHD in boys. On Sax’s genetics-based argument, such

prescriptions are detrimental to natural differences of disposition in boys that require attention within

educational contexts to fulfill their educational potential. Sax’s feminist critics like Fine charge in return

that his argument amounts to no more than another attempt to prop up old-fashioned prejudices for

socially constructed differences under the authority of science. Such debates are so controversial in the

public sphere because they suggest science may be in conflict with our political ideals of freedom and

equality. Addressing how to navigate this new iteration of the nature-nurture debate yields important

conclusions for the kind of critical literacy a liberal science education needs to provide in contemporary

civic discourse.

The Fallacy of the ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’? Or, Nature-Nurture Redux

Modern Western thought has long deferred to the ‘naturalistic fallacy,’ the view derived from

Hume that there can be no legitimate inference from the ‘is’ of the natural laws or patterns discovered by

science to the ‘ought’ upon which ethical rules and laws of state are supposed to be founded. When

natural scientists assert that their work has no political or policy implications they usually have in mind

this is-ought dichotomy. A recent example of this is evidenced in biologist Paul Ehrlich’s writing on

genetic science and human culture (2000). Like Popperian demarcation, the naturalistic fallacy is

deployed to compartmentalize and insulate science from any complicating external relations. It seems a

sensible move insofar as a science like genetics might arouse political controversy over what it suggests

about human nature. I analyze exactly such a debate here between Sax and Fine. We can count Sax’s

argument as a part of the new “bioconservatism” identified by Moreno (2011, pp. 24, 58, 121-122, 139,

141-142). Social scientist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama gives bioconservatism its strongest

articulation in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002, pp. 84-

128). These writers are mounting a sophisticated new case, appealing to recent discoveries in the new

life sciences, for the existence of a human nature that may need protecting from potential harms caused

by other, pharmacological and biotechnological advances following from the new life sciences.

This movement reflects a noted affinity between Darwinian and Aristotelian science, insofar as the

centrality and complexity of biology in each bears more in common than either do with the clockwork,

mechanical universe of classical, Newtonian physics. In the face of modern dangers like genetic

engineering, the bioconservative can happily deny the existence of timeless Aristotelian essential natures

while affirming the need to conserve the existence of human traits developed from time immemorial

over the long course of evolutionary history—such traits count as enduring natures for all practical

purposes within normal human lifetimes.

After Darwin, genetic theories of social behavior began proliferating, in the late 19th and early 20th

centuries. Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism, Madison Grant, and a whole school of scientific racism

appeared, arguing that the stratification of the social world, with white Europeans at the top and all the

various colored people at the bottom, was genetically based. Debunking the empirical basis for such

claims was an achievement of 20th-century science. Certainly in the political realm Nazi Germany

helped discredit eugenics and the notion of genetic determinism, so that the nature-nurture debate swung

mid-century to an extreme of social constructionism, where liberal sentiment came to conclude that

whatever we are is entirely the product of environment, with genes playing almost no role—e.g., if girls

behave differently from boys, it is entirely a result of socialization and not because of biology. But

recently the debate has shifted again, with the discovery of DNA, the mapping of the genome, and the

molecular basis of genetic causation. In many sensitive areas related to intelligence, crime, alcoholism,

and the like, there appear to be genetic determinants.

Note how Freudianism was considered up to just a few decades ago to give the pivotal modern

understanding of human behavior, at least among intellectuals. The speed with which Freudian talk has

been superseded by genetic, biological, and chemical-pharmacological frameworks for understanding

human behavior and psychology indicates how powerful and compelling the recent developments in life

sciences are (Goodwin, 2008; Jenkins, 2010). These developments have come to public consciousness

through FDA approvals, beginning in the late 1980s, of pharmaceuticals like fluoxetine, marketed under

its commercial name Prozac. Many such antidepressant medications have been introduced and widely

adopted since, belonging to the class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Clearly, part of the reason for abandonment of Freudian psychoanalysis and talk-based

psychotherapy is the shaky standing in which the social sciences have always been held, as measured

against the success of the strict empirical methods and results in the natural sciences. Skepticism toward

social science as science has gone together with liberal political concerns for individual difference,

autonomy, and freedom from questionable claims to scientific authority on human life generally. The

concerns appear in Fine’s feminist criticisms of Sax.

Genetics, Gender, and Education

Evolutionary theories of sex and gender have begotten a slew of controversies, including debates

over the theory of sexual selection and the evolutionary basis of monogamy, sexual preference, physical

attraction, rape, maternal instinct, and sex differences in cognition.

Here I shall examine some of the most recent scientific evidence presented within the long running

debate about the nature of sex and gender differences. This debate concerns generalizable behavioral

difference we may perceive between boys and girls, between men and women, e.g., a greater or lesser

tendency to express aggression. Do these have a basis in biology, or are they entirely shaped by social,

historical, and cultural forces external to the body? The implications of the normative inferences or

conclusions we come to on such questions are significant. For, it is on such beliefs that policy-makers,

administrators, and teachers decide how education shall be structured. Do we have an imperative to

recognize and accommodate naturally different tendencies in boys versus girls, and if so, in what

respects precisely? Or do we have an imperative to educationally cultivate greater equality between boys

and girls against merely traditional prejudices held in the name of a natural difference that isn’t

necessarily so?

In Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of

Sex Differences (2005) Sax declares intent to found his case upon empirical evidence. “Every time I

make any statement about how girls and boys are different, I will also state the evidence on which my

statement is based. Every statement I make about sex differences will be supported by good science in

peer-reviewed journals” (Sax, 2005, p. 7).

Sax is particularly concerned about the influence of social constructionist theorizing about gender

on medical and educational practices. He takes as typical of the genre an academic text by professor

Anne Fausto-Sterling of Brown University, titled Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction

of Sexuality (2000). Fausto-Sterling claims that the division of the human race into two sexes, female

and male, is an artificial invention of our culture. “Nature really offers us more than two sexes,” she

claims, adding, “Our current notions of masculinity and femininity are cultural conceits.” The decision

to “label” a child as a girl or a boy is “a social decision.” We should not label any child as being either a

girl or a boy. “There is no either/or. Rather, there are shades of difference” (Fausto-Sterling, 2000).

America’s most prestigious medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine praised the author

for her “careful and insightful” approach to gender (Breedlove, 2000).

So is Sax simply going to dress up a traditionalist rebuke in the guise of science? He anticipates this

charge by also taking critical aim at books on the subject from such conservatives who he believes can

be equally guilty of putting political agendas ahead of careful attention to the evidence of recent science.

Sax finds books with such titles as The Wonder of Boys and Girls and Girls Will Be Girls, which he

agrees do “promote antiquated and inaccurate gender stereotypes”, such as that ‘girls are more

emotional than boys’ and ‘boys have a brain-based advantage when it comes to learning math’. But

“those familiar notions turn out to be false” in light of the evidence Sax (2005, p. 7).

Sax first appeals to research that is said to demonstrate how the hemispheres of the male brain are

more asymmetric than are the hemispheres of the female brain, particularly in regard to the function of

language.

Does Sax’s use of the descriptors “male brain” and “female brain” indicate he already assumes or

presupposes certain gender differences that he aims to prove by appeal to empirical evidence? In

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (2010) Fine

criticizes Sax by appealing to the real problem, widely recognized in philosophy of science, that we do

not in fact observe pure empirical evidence in science, free of any prior, historically-acquired categories

or theoretical views. In philosophy of science this is understood as the theory-laden character of

observation. It is related to the realism/constructivism or realism/anti-realism debate. These vexing

problems are skillfully addressed in Hegel’s concept of mediation (Westphal, 1998, p. 23). Hegel argues

that mediation must be recognized as an inescapable outcome of critical reflection in the history of

philosophy and science: mediation means that reality is for us always mediated by ideas or concepts;

nevertheless, the radical social constructivist view that we cannot or do not grasp the real does not

therefore follow. The strategy is empirical in spirit, since any resolution of realism/constructivism

questions can only take place within experience. In scientific pursuits we should be skeptical toward our

own ideas, but skeptical doubts in science can be overcome to the degree that we remain willing to

honestly and critically examine—and reform—disparity within experience between concept and

observation (Westphal, 1998, pp. 1-19, 93-115). This means that the individual can never simply take a

scientific claim at face value; to come to a justifiable judgment of its merit, one must be able to critically

reconstruct the process leading to the claim.

Reconstructing the Scientific Argument

Sax refers to a number of scientific studies from the 1960s and 1970s, published in journals such as

Nature, the Journal of Neuroscience, and the journal of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. These studies

involved people who had suffered a stroke, causing damage to the brain. The participating male subjects

who had suffered a stroke involving their brain’s left hemisphere suffered a drop in verbal IQ of, on

average, about 20 percent (from 111.5 to 88.7); the men who suffered a stroke affecting the brain’s right

hemisphere suffered virtually no drop at all in their verbal IQ. The female subjects who had also

suffered a stroke, showed different effects in the brain. Those who suffered a stroke affecting their

brain’s left hemisphere suffered a drop in their verbal IQ, on average, of about 9 percent (from 113.9 to

103.6); women who suffered a stroke affecting their brain’s right hemisphere suffered a similar drop in

verbal IQ, about 11 percent (from 113.9 to 101.0).

What may we infer from this data? Sax claims the evidence is clear, that we are justified to

conclude that women use both hemispheres of their brain for language, while men do not (p. 12). The

first brick of evidence is laid in Sax’s argumentative edifice for the thesis that behavioral sex differences

have a basis in biology. Sax notes that this earlier research from the 1960s and 70s led to a consensus

built up by the mid-1980s. There was a hemispheric compartmentalization of cognitive function obvious

in men’s brains, where the left hemisphere supported verbal cognition almost exclusively in comparison

to the right hemisphere’s support of spatial cognition. But the evidence did not support this being the

case in women, where such functions seemed more distributed or dispersed throughout the brain.

This leads to the question, why then? What causes the difference? “At that time [in the mid-1980s]

most scientists believed that these differences in the brain derived from hormonal differences” Sax

writes (p. 12). This in turn led many scientists to believe that sex differences must be small in the brains

of children, since prepubescent children don’t manufacture sex hormones in large quantities. But Sax

does not think they were right. If this were so, the differences would be relatively superficial, since they

would be determined at a chemical level, appearing later in development, rather than at a more basic

genetic level. Is there evidence for this?

Sax cites research in laboratory animals that has demonstrated “large, innate, genetically

determined sex differences in the brain” (p. 13). A 2004 study at UCLA examined a bird that was a

lateral gynandromorphic hermaphrodite, a bird that was literally half-male and half-female. Every cell

on the right side of the bird’s body was male; every cell on the left side of the bird’s body was female.

Anatomically, the bird had a testicle on its right side and an ovary on its left. Chemically, the bird’s

blood contained a mix of female hormones manufactured by the ovary and male hormones from the

testicle. Therefore, Sax reasons, if the hormonal theory were correct, we shouldn’t see big differences

between the left and right sides of the bird’s brain.

Let’s make this reasoning clearer. In the human male and female stroke victims we were able to

identify structural and functional differences between the brain of the men and the brain of women. If

such differences are ultimately caused by differing chemical expressions of testosterone versus estrogen,

then this bird’s brain, nourished by blood containing an equal mix of male and female hormones, should

exhibit a structural symmetry, despite the anatomical asymmetry of his male and female hormone-

producing organs. But, on disChapter, the left and right sides of the bird’s brain turned out to be

“dramatically different,” leading the scientists to conclude that the female brain tissue and male brain

tissue differ owing to a different complement of sex chromosomes, regardless of the mix of hormones in

the blood.

In regard to humans, Sax finds support for this genetic hypothesis in a 2004 study by fourteen

leading neuroscientists from the University of California, University of Michigan, and Stanford (p. 14).

This study found a “dramatically different” expression of proteins derived from the X chromosome and

Y chromosome in human and female brains. In the men, the study found many areas of the brain rich in

proteins coded directly by the Y chromosome, but these proteins were absent from the women’s brain

tissue. The direct inverse was true for the women’s brains, rich in protein material transcribed by the X

chromosome, but absent from the men’s brains. Thus, Sax infers, “[t]hese sex differences are genetically

programmed, not mediated by hormonal differences” (p. 15) [emphasis original]. This doesn’t mean that

hormones do not affect the brain at all, but it does mean that the effect of chromosomes to structure

brain tissue need not be mediated by hormones expressed mostly following puberty. If the differences

derive from genetic transcription, then they are factors at birth.

What Does It Mean?

Now, all of this seems to amount to a compelling, evidence-based case, but what normative

inferences are we to draw? Should we then in practice accept and perhaps even endorse all the

stereotypical clichés about male versus female behaviors? Does this mean that men and women are

entirely determined in a programmatic manner by nature? Sax’s appeal to genetics does seem to be

setting up a critical attack on the cultural construction theory of gender identification. Is Sax a

reactionary who simply opposes the modern ideal of greater equality? He anticipates this opposition by

making clear that he does not believe the genetic differences identified so far imply that one sort of brain

pattern is better than other: “Differences. Not one better than the other. Not one worse than the other.

Just different” he writes (p. 15). Thus, we need not abandon egalitarianism, but what precisely does that

mean in practical terms, in the structure of educational institutions for example?

Sax goes on to address many of the commonly perceived differences between boys and girls,

including differing behaviors and attitudes regarding risk, aggression, authority at school, sex, drugs,

and discipline. He also discusses the question of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered

individuals fit into the picture he presents (biological sex difference trumps sexual orientation Sax finds,

i.e., homosexuals and heterosexuals of the same sex exhibit more of the same natural characteristics in

contrast to the opposite sex). Sax then makes normative arguments for how parents and teachers can

make better informed judgments about how to fairly address differences in ways that are not sexist and

do not violate the egalitarian principal of helping to mediate the realization of free agency in all children.

Nevertheless, there are critics who remain unconvinced. In Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds,

Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (2010), Fine insists that Sax and others are in fact doing

nothing but providing cover and pseudo-scientific justifications for oppressive sexist practices. The

normative implication of the social construction theory of identity is that we should recognize a radical

indeterminacy and thus a fundamental freedom from any sort of ‘nature’ in the human. If that is so, and

if one desires to bring about greater equality in the world, then children, prior to being affected (or

infected) by cultural traditions that seem to perpetuate inequalities, should be subject to the intervention

of a more rational, egalitarian educational ideal, aimed at ensuring the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest

number’ for people in the future. Perhaps I am overstating the implications of the social construction

theory of identity and behavior, but it is important to draw out why Sax raises a legitimate reason for

concern. If the social construction theory is wrong, then the interventions that it leads one to justify may

in fact do a kind of violence to children, imposing behavioral adjustments upon them that are in conflict

with real natures that they have a legitimate need to express.

This is precisely the underlying problem with what Sax calls a nearly overnight, uninformed

movement to diagnose large numbers of boys in the classroom with ADHD, just as psychotropic

medications capable of altering restless behavior began coming on the market. Ironically, these

medications are products made possible by much of the same recent neuroscience on which Sax’s

argument is based. This helps make clear that the challenge we are facing is not simply descriptive or

positive, not simply a matter of being accurate to the facts, such as Sax presents. To be consistent, Sax

would have to hold that such biotechnologies could not fundamentally alter human natures, but he does

seem to be worried about such a possibility. To worry about such a possibility is to grant that we may

indeed have the freedom, through reason over nature—as the social constructionists claim—to radically

alter what human life is. If this is a possibility created by the new biotechnological treatments, then the

normative questions raised in Sax’s book take on a different light: ought we preserve anything of human

nature as we’ve known it heretofore? This is the question of bioconservatism.

Nature vs. the Spirit of Identity in Political Recognition

This problem is so vexing because of the modern, liberal, normative ideal of free, rational

individual agency, which contradicts our scientific understanding of the natural organism. On the

Hegelian account of social theorists like Robert Pippin, the fact that this normative concept of self has

become a practical ideal at all, is not a given fact of the natural individual organism, but a collective,

political, social, and historical achievement, characteristic of modernity (Pippin, 2008). It is predicated

on the fact that one’s linguistically-articulated, reflective self-conception as a free, rational individual

agent, whether in critical thinking or in acting, is not a natural given, but is in definite part a product of

mutual recognizability as such an agent within a social context of other such agents. This claim can be

formally expressed as a general, non-empirical rule of subjectivity: I cannot recognize myself as the

owner of my actions and thoughts if I am not actually or potentially recognizable by another I as the

owner of my actions and thoughts; when I take up self-articulation in language, self-reflection, self-

positioning, and explicit reasoning, I am taking up ‘perspectives on myself’ mediated by social and

historical conditions for the possibility of being identifiable or recognizable in a certain manner.

How can one know one is free? In the Hegelian account of the realm of political right, the subject

firstly demands to know how he can be certain that he is different from animals and does in fact act on

his own will as opposed to external necessity. The answer is through the validation of others: I must be

sure that they are aware of me as free and I am aware of them as free and this certainty is gained through

interpersonal recognition that is not strictly empirical, i.e., is based on recognizing how the subject is

more than an object (Pippin, 2008; Rose, 2007, p. 61).

This helps addresses fundamental problems for contemporary cognitive science: the modern ‘mind-

body problem’ or mind-brain dualism, i.e., the fact that we speak to each other in terms of an intelligible

difference between “I” and “my body”; the related question of naturalism, i.e., can human rationality

and freedom be reconciled with the naturalistic, deterministic worldview of science? In contrast to

earlier English reception of Hegel, the more recent scholarship (Brandom, 2009; Krasnoff, 2008;

Pinkard, 1994; Pippin, 1989, 2008, 2011; Westphal, 1990) recognizes compatibility with naturalism,

albeit a liberalized naturalism that recognizes a ‘space of reasons’ for human freedom—including

science itself—to appear historically, even if the world is largely determined by natural causes (De Caro

& Macarthur, 2010).

Implications for Science Representatives in the Public Sphere

This helps explain cultural clashes representatives of science in the public representatives often

encounter. For example, when neuroscientist Sam Harris (2012) claims that new research refutes belief

in free will we can see better, in light of the preceding analysis, why such a charge does not resonate as a

merely technical or scientific matter. If one can only achieve knowledge of one’s freedom of action

through the validation of others: through awareness that an other recognizes me as a free, then the denial

of this recognition by an other amounts to their being a threat, an enemy. Now, it may be a skeptical

duty in philosophy to constantly question and challenge anew such notions as freedom, but

representatives of science in the public like Harris should give more due to the historical and political

dimension of such questions and not merely the scientific when doing so. I would further argue that in

much of the intellectual clash between ‘new atheist’ figures like Harris (2004) and American Christians,

the object of religious belief, i.e., the idea of God, functions as a proxy in a sublimated struggle for

recognition in the above sense.

The biopolitical debate examined above reflects the long-running divergence between scientific and

humanistic intellectuals in the public sphere, identified by Snow as the “two cultures”; thus Chapter 5

takes up a more theoretical inquiry into recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive science with a

view to how these might help bridge the alienation between these two modes of inquiry. Humanistic

intellectuals tend to fear that science threatens freedom; this problem between the two cultures centers

on the nature of the free, morally autonomous individual actor or subject—the ideal of political

liberalism, including both the classical, conservative, Lockean liberalism, written into the constitution of

the United States, as well as the more recent communitarian modifications of liberalism, as articulated

by Dewey for example.

CHAPTER 5

SCIENCE AND THE SUBJECT OF MORAL AUTONOMY

Can the modern scientific worldview be reconciled in public with our equally modern moral and

political commitment to the idea that each person is a morally autonomous individual agent? If it cannot,

then we should not be surprised if the public is more inclined to sacrifice the former for the latter.

The biopolitical debate examined in Chapter 4 reflects the long-running divergence between

scientific and humanistic intellectuals in the public sphere, identified by Snow as the “two cultures”;

thus Chapter 5 takes up a more theoretical inquiry into recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive

science with a view to how these might help bridge the alienation between these two modes of inquiry.

Humanistic intellectuals give only a more sophisticated voice to what is essentially the same fear found

among the religious public, that science threatens freedom. This problem between the “two cultures”

centers on the nature of the free, morally autonomous individual actor or subject. This ideal belongs to

political liberalism in various stripes, including the classical, conservative, Lockean natural rights

liberalism, written into the constitution of the United States, as well as the more recent progressivist and

collectivist modifications of liberalism, as articulated by Mill and Dewey. Thus Chapter 5 is an attempt

to help detail a meta-ethical theory for how recent neuroscience and cognitive science can be used to

build bridges with the public ideal.

The analysis here utilizes again the broad outline of the history of science and the state sketched in

Chapter 3. I analyze Paul M. Churchland’s “Toward a Cognitive Neurobiology of the Moral Virtues”

(2010) as a candidate for a descriptive neuroscience of ethics. I draw significant connections between

Churchland's account and phenomenological philosophy influential to recent humanistic inquiry. I also

examine Robert Brandom’s “How Analytic Philosophy Has Failed Cognitive Science” (2009), drawing

implications for how cognitive science can be reconciled with the important modern ethical

commitments to individual freedom and humanistic self-understanding.

Paolo Costa raises the problem of neuroscience and agency in his essay “Personal Identity and the

Nature of the Self” (Giordano & Gordijn, 2010, pp. 117-133). Costa takes a cue from Heidegger in

arguing how the threat is not that science will show there is no personal agency in behavior, but rather

that we might come to misinterpret ourselves by not recognizing how selfhood is a precondition for

having a world to investigate at all. I will show how such points can be more rationally unpacked

through a consideration of Brandom’s “inferentialist” account of cognition (2009, pp. 197-224). On this

view both scientific-theoretical and moral-practical activities can be understood as species of normative

inference (reasoning) requiring a world-situated agent.

Churchland claims that his neurobiological account of moral behavior does not reduce human

agency to the effects of neural automata (2010, p. 147). If what we normally call agency in moral action

can be adequately described and predicted by a neuroscience of ethical behavior (a meta-ethical theory),

could this advance the project to secularize morality?

I will unpack our normative concept of agency by way of Brandom’s argument that cognitive

science in general has not been well enough served by important developments in analytic philosophy,

especially regarding the nature of inference in human thought. Then I will consider Churchland’s

proposed neurobiological account of the moral virtues (p. 144) as one of the most promising candidates

for a descriptive neuroscience of ethics. I find Churchland’s account distinctive for helping to advance

the beneficial reconvening of two long-separated threads in modern thought: Anglophone analytic

philosophy and the so-called ‘continental’ or phenomenological school.

Analytic philosophy has traditionally played the role of the ardent supporter and champion of the

natural ‘hard’ sciences, creating distance in the 20th century between Anglophone philosophy and the

‘fuzzy’ concerns of the humanities. In contrast, the ‘continental’ school of philosophy has played a key

role informing the American humanities in the 20th century through phenomenology, existentialism,

neo-Marxist critical theory, poststructuralist anthropology, the deconstructive approach to literary and

cultural studies, and Nietzschean postmodernism. English professor Mark McGurl of UCLA provides a

prototypical lit-crit take on the issue at hand, informed by this tradition. In a review of the recently

popular ‘mash-up’ novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the prevalence of zombie themes

generally in the zeitgeist, McGurl gives rich rhetorical expression to a dilemma facing the humanities:

What should the novel do once consciousness has been physically “explained”? What happens

to the tradition of novelistic realism stemming from Austen when the reality is that we are all a

bunch of tottering skin-bags animated by neural subroutines? (McGurl, 2010)

Though we might be inclined to agree with McGurl as to this dismal vision of the human, we

should not therefore let philosophical thought generally fall into this sort of postmodern pessimism,

becoming soured on science. This postmodern mood has led to a rejection of reason by many smart

people, believing that reason can no longer be bent to distinctly human purposes, including political

reform. My argument in part is intended to show that this is a mistake and a loss for everyone in the

conversation.

Science and Freedom

By agency I refer to our attribution of causality to the subject of such statements as ‘President

Obama signed the bill into law today’ and ‘scientists now know that there is water on Mars’ and ‘Ivy

believes that Margaret did the right thing when she chose to leave her abusive husband’ and ‘Coltrane

produced his finest work during the recording sessions for A Love Supreme’. The notion of the freely

willing individual agent seems indispensible to the modern way of life wherein we emphasize

individuality and attribute responsibility.

This notion has never squared with our equally modern institution of natural science and the

worldview we acquire with it. The contradiction between our liberal, humanistic vocabulary of

autonomous individual agency, on the one hand, and our scientific vocabulary of universal

determination by natural cause, on the other, constitutes one of the persistently perplexing ironies in

modern life. From the standpoint of natural science, the inducted behavior of any particular object is to

be understood by inference to general causal laws that best explain it in terms of a pattern to which it

belongs. The disciplined practice of this inductive logic in modern science has made possible the

acquisition of extraordinarily successful power at predicting, controlling, and regulating nature by means

of the technological applications, which follow seamlessly from the causal models of science.

It is a significant problem for us that this success leads us to skepticism regarding our liberal,

humanistic vocabulary of the individual as a free will in self-legislating, in guiding their own actions

from the rule of their conscience (Pippin, 2008). We are led to this skepticism because the inductive

logic of science outlined above does not attribute ultimate agency to any particular individual object.

Science attributes ultimate agency to the causal law or rule or pattern of nature inferred as being the

essential force behind the observable behavior of any class of objects to which one in particular happens

to belong.

One solution to the problem, exemplified in modern Kantian ethical philosophy, is to make belief in

the agency of free will and moral responsibility a matter of a sort of rational faith. Despite its troubling

contradiction with a commitment to natural science that Kant shares, he argues that freedom is a

rationally normative concept, required by or intrinsic to the nature of reason itself. We seem to discover

this when we become creatures capable of complex reasoning about our situation, but the question of

precisely how that becoming is supposed to occur is a problem Kant does not address. The Kantian

ethical position explains the persistence of religion in the modern world. If free will cannot be an object

of empirical science, but is nevertheless a normative concept we find binding on reason in practice, then

one is justified to infer that the idea derives ultimately from a transcendental condition of subjectivity.

This solution is obviously dissatisfying to anyone concerned with promoting science and secular

values in the public sphere like Harris (2004). Such advocates would do better to recognize that they are

crying for the moon so long as scientific approaches to morality do not account for the experience of the

individual conscience as distinct from general principals no matter how seemingly empirical or universal

or rational or useful or scientific. In the following I aim to give an outline of how this problem can be

approached in a way that does justice to at least some central concerns of both religious traditionalists

and secular modernists in the debate.

Ought We Be Scientific? Normativity in Science

In philosopher Richard Rorty’s 1997 introduction to Wilfrid Sellars’ Empiricism and the

Philosophy of Mind (originally published 1956) he notes Sellar’s own description of that work as “an

attempt to usher analytic philosophy out of its Humean and into its Kantian stage.” For Rorty and

Brandom, Sellars’ work is a key step in each of their (differing but complimentary) philosophical

projects to ‘usher analytic philosophy of science out of its Kantian and into its Hegelian stage’

(Brandom, 2000, p. 34). What this means in the post-analytic pragmatisms of Rorty and Brandom is a

turning away from dead-end problems in empiricism and representation toward the logic in language-

use, and the abilities we acquire with language, to express self-awareness, and to alter our conditions.

On this view, knowledge and moral practices, science and social institutions, are understood as based in

the normative logic of social development, not based in representation of or correspondence with a

nonhuman ultimate reality whether that is supposed to refer to Deus or Natura. This is not to say that

something like ‘representation of nature’ does not take place at all in science, but it is to emphasize the

much greater importance of the fact that human beings are uniquely self-creating creatures. Agency is

seen to emerge on this model in being able to grasp, describe, and justify one’s actions and thoughts as

one’s own to others linguistically.

Brandom’s inferentialism is a general theory of intelligence (Brandom, 2000). In the following I

want to give a basic reconstruction of Brandom’s argument that the skill of normative inference is the

genus from which theory and practice, scientific cognition and action-taking are each species. He

provides the most compelling contemporary clarification of this substantive claim originally made by

Hegel (p. 26). On this view, reason as such is a normative, self-legislating power that grows in human

life from or out of nature, yet is thereafter distinct and irreducible to the nature from whence it came.

It is remarkable that Brandom is able to make the case for reviving this humanist view using

analytical tools developed to show the mathematical logic and sense in language. 20th-century

Anglophone philosophy, descending from Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein,

developed these techniques expressly for the sake of supporting the mathematical and natural sciences,

and for criticizing allegedly obfuscating lack of rigor in other sorts of humanistic philosophical work. In

fact, this school traditionally defined itself against Hegel in particular and in general the various

‘continental’ schools descending from his influence (Glock, 2008, p. 133). Thus Brandom reveals a

remarkable irony in modern philosophy by demonstrating, in the very language of Anglophone technical

philosophers, the persistent relevance of a humanistic view of science that they had explicitly

endeavored to ban permanently from all serious-minded scientific discourse.

A version of Brandom’s argument is given in his case for how analytic philosophy has failed to

share its most important insights with cognitive science, and how this failure can be redeemed

(Brandom, 2009, pp. 197-224). To this end he articulates four clear stages in cognitive development, of

which I cannot claim to do full justice in reconstructing. At best my recount here aims to provide the

rough-and-ready outlines suitable to supporting the case that science is grounded in normative reason.

The first discernable sort of cognition is sense–perception accompanied by simple naming or

labeling, taking the form ‘that is x’. Brandom illustrates using the example that

We might train a parrot reliably to respond differentially to the visible presence of red things by

squawking “That’s red.” [However, this acquired linguistic skill] would not yet be describing

things as red, would not be applying the concept of red to them, because the noise it makes has

no significance for it. It does not know that it follows [to infer] from something’s being red that

it is colored, that it cannot be wholly green, and so on (p. 204).

Now, many people nowadays, with whom I share a deep and abiding affection for animals, tend to

become defensive at this approach. It can appear arrogant because there is now a norm to infer

dangerous human arrogance from any suggestion that human beings are especially peculiar, unusual, or

distinct compared to the rest of the natural order. (Don’t go thinking you’re special, people!). This is a

good point on which to note that normative inferences are always more or less contestable. This one is

clearly contestable. It’s an intriguing speculation that my cat Ulysses might be privately cogitating a

universal theory or science of the cat world and cat behavior, as yet unexpressed to me. But, lovable as

he is, I find this a highly implausible inference. Brandom discloses that his interest differs from most

approaches taken during the 20th century, which have sought to assimilate cognition to animal

psychology on behavioral sensory-motor-reflex modeling. In contrast, he is interested in investigating

what distinguishes discursive creatures, as subject to distinctively conceptual norms, from their

non-concept-using ancestors and cousins. Products of social interactions (in a strict sense that

distinguishes them from mere features of populations) are not studied by the natural sciences—

though they are not for that reason to be treated as spooky and supernatural” (Brandom, 2000, p.

In order to get from mere perceptual classification, such as the parrot demonstrates in our example,

to the sort of conceptual classification necessary to do science, one must develop skill at drawing

inferential consequences from a description. Yet, in this second stage it still remains plausible to stop at

a behaviorist model, assimilating human inferential skills in science to animal skills. A basic descriptive

classification has the form ‘x means y’, e.g., ‘wolves mean danger’ or ‘mold means germs’ or ‘red

means stop’ or ‘falling means gravity’. We can see how these require inferential skill at drawing a

regular consequence from a perception. But there is a question at this stage: will the consequent

prescription immediately entail an instinctual, practical action to take? For example: ‘wolf means run’;

‘cold means fly south’; ‘hunger means eat’; ‘green means go’. Or will it entail a conceptual meaning that

appears to stand apart from any obvious, immediate implications for action? For example: ‘the temple

means Athena watches over the city’; ‘a science means control’; ‘a beginning means the end’. Thus we

arrive at the cognitive condition in which the break of reason from nature—whether in the sense of

primary or ‘second’ habitual nature—becomes in principal conceivable, where more knowledge and

more freedom imply each other. In Hegel’s phenomenological account of Kraft und Verstand—“force

and understanding”—the Newtonian systematic theory of forces is described as the greatest

achievement, up to that point in time, of the descriptive inferential cognition that is science (Hegel &

Pinkard, 2012 (projected publication date); Pinkard, 1994, pp. 34-45; Westphal, 1990, pp. 93-120). The

normative establishment of Newtonian physics as the legitimate, authoritative, recognized description of

the universe was not only a scientific achievement. It also provided support to the normative

establishment of greater freedom in legal, civic, and cultural domains. A new normative judgment in

culture appears on the scene along with Newtonian science: if one can conceive the universe to behave

without a divine rule, i.e., according to merely natural, mechanical regularities, then one is justified to

break from other (cultural) practices thought to be given by divine rule. Scientific theoretical

construction in this way gives coherence and expression to the reality of human experience, which

includes the progressive realization of freedom as self-regulating reason. It is significant that the

superseding of Newtonian physics by relativity theory in our own time, as a matter of desire to represent

new observations that do not cohere with the Newtonian view, does not at all invalidate Hegel’s

phenomenological approach to how the philosophical-normative implications of science exceed

professed ambitions of practitioners simply to represent the laws of nature.

To clarify what was unclear about how human science is built on descriptive inferential skill,

Brandom proceeds to the import of the conditional, i.e., the cognition the logical “if,”, e.g., ‘if p then

what would follow, then what should follow?’. He argues against attempts to reduce the conditional in

logic to a psychological attitude. To do this would be to make “the same mistake as believing that denial

can do the work of negation.” In this way the perennial critique of empirical positivity about rules

(Fukuyama, 2002, pp. 112-115) appears again: don’t mistake the normative conditions of reasoning for

merely subjective or psychological dispositions; a simple psychological denial that behavior y follows

from x, a denial that xày, is not identical to one’s determinately reasoned negation that behavior y does

not in fact follow by any logical necessity from x, that ~(xày). Brandom writes:

Conditionals make possible a new sort of hypothetical thought … Can [the non-human] not just

use concepts to describe things, but also semantically discriminate the contents of those

concepts from the force of applying them, by using them not just in describing but in

conditionals, in which their contents are merely entertained and explored? … Conditionals are

special because they make inferences explicit—that is, put them into endorsable, judgeable,

assertible, which is to say propositional form (Brandom, 2009, p. 212).

An implication to draw out here is that the ability to distance oneself from, or freely endorse,

conditional inferential norms (theoretical or practical) makes possible what we mean by self-

consciousness in human discourse. To describe an agent as self-conscious is to describe them as capable

of ‘taking-oneself’ to be the holder of certain inferences that they may or may not endorse, may or may

not judge to be the right inference, may or may not act upon (Pippin, 2008). Clearly this capability

requires expression in dialog to count, but we could also say that its genesis, constitution, and

perpetuation are not other than the expression in dialog, i.e., the expression is not a representation of a

‘hidden subject’ but the directly expressed reality.

Wittgenstein discovered the need to contrast a representational with an expressive understanding of

language when he found his earlier “picture theory” of knowledge could not make sense of the

expression of pain. The linguistic utterance “ouch” does not represent, picture, or stand-for an empirical

object that can be studied scientifically. From the standpoint of medical science one might be tempted to

infer that the empirically represented correlate of “ouch” is the stimulation of nerve fibers. But this

would disregard that a creature needs no empirical training in identifying C-fibers to give expression to

the reality of pain-experience (Rorty, 1979, p. 74). Wittgenstein’s investigations of this problem

(Wittgenstein & Anscombe, 2003, pp. §244-351) begin to point linguistic analysis in the more fruitful

direction of expressionism. But for Brandom, Wittgenstein remains a cognitive assimilationist insofar as

he does not move us beyond a naturalistic stimulus-response model to explain the logic of language. The

value of Wittgensteinian analysis is that it opens the way for better explaining the distinguishing

possibilities for language users, not exclusively as a tool for empirical representation of the world, but

also as the direct—non-representational—expression of self-conscious intelligence and its freer agency

in the world.

The fourth stage of cognition identified by Brandom, beyond simple labeling, descriptive inference,

and conditional inference, is the philosophical practice of logical concept-analysis itself, the practice that

simply attempts to make more explicit the formal logical and the normative inferential conditions, the

syntactic and the semantic conditions, giving intelligible shape to all the previous sorts of cognitions.

This is consonant with Hegel’s concept of philosophy, that despite desires to the contrary it cannot

change the world, or resurrect previous ‘forms of life’ (in Wittgenstein’s phrase), but only understand

them (Hegel & White, 2002, p. 10).

This helps makes clearer the systematic relationship between the acquisition of propositional

knowledge about the world and the capacity for normative self-legislation. From this account we are

entitled to infer that the basic skill of normative inference is the genus from which theory and practice,

scientific cognition and action-taking, are both species.

Neurobiology and Philosophy of Right

In view of the above account of how we come to acquire and express agency, we now turn to look

at Churchland’s proposal for a neurobiology of the moral virtues (2010). Churchland’s project promises

to provide empirical, scientific support to philosophical accounts of morality, and it appears particularly

compatible with Hegel’s approach to the latter. Churchland shares with Hegel a concept of human

subjects as thoroughly embodied, socially situated, and self-constituted by normative challenges, i.e.,

learning processes, in how to think and how to act vis-à-vis their environment and each other. Such a

concept can help resolve the modern ethical paradox described earlier by enabling us to think of

ourselves as free in the act of negating or affirming norms, i.e., as self-legislators, setting rules from our

own nature, in contrast to the entities ruled only by external laws that we study in the natural sciences.

This move would also seem to provide a further step toward completely secularizing morality, although

that remains unclear.

To Churchland’s credit, he formulates his neurological proposal in explicitly non-reductionist

terms. He urges that “[w]hat we are contemplating here is no imperialistic takeover of the moral by the

neural” (p. 147). In his view humanists and philosophers need not fear the mutual informing of moral

theory and cognitive neurobiology on the assumption that it would threaten to deduce normative

conclusions from purely factual premises. To justify this claim he illustrates by way of analogous

conclusions following from his earlier work in philosophy of science:

Cognitive neurobiology is also in the process of throwing major illumination on the philosophy

of science—by way of revealing the several forms of neural representation that underlie

scientific cognition, and the several forms of neural activity that underlie learning and

conceptual change … And yet, substantive science itself will still have to be done by scientists,

according to the various methods by which we make scientific progress. An adequate theory of

the brain, plainly, would not constitute a theory of stellar evolution or a theory of the underlying

structure of the periodic table (p. 147).

The inference we are to draw is that no matter how detailed the empirical description of the morally

engaged brain, substantive practice, negotiation, assent and dissent about societal norms will still have to

be done. A theory of the brain could not constitute Hippocrates’ oath to ‘first do no harm’, or the

Christian injunction (as translated in the King James Bible) to ‘not do to thy neighbor what is hateful to

thyself’, or the American celebration of the admonition (attributed to Patrick Henry) to ‘give me liberty

or give me death.’ An empirical science of the brain would not replace the motive, the desire for a

Malcom X in 1965 to publicly express that

We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human

being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we

intend to bring into existence by any means necessary (X, 1992).

What an empirical science of the brain could do, by giving us detailed correlations between subject

moral cognitions and patterns of neural activity, is to help us infer more (and perhaps more interesting)

connections between various sorts of moral cognitions. Such a science would not necessarily threaten to

undermine, but could enrich what we understand about being human through introspection.

Churchland undertakes to reconstruct moral cognitive phenomena in cognitive neurobiological

terms. This follows on a model developed during earlier work aimed at reconstructing the epistemology

of the natural sciences in neural-network terms. He now aims to “draw out the central theoretical claims,

within the domain of metaethics, to which a neural-network model of cognition commits us”

(Churchland, 2010). This is consonant with Hegel’s general philosophical project in the Phenomenology

of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right to reconstruct and justify the historical appearance of rational-

normative propositions and claims to right on the basis of a more concrete comprehension of their

experiential and social conditions (Hegel & White, 2002, p. viii). Hegel’s project is also meta-

epistemological and meta-ethical in the sense that it aims to draw the theoretical claims, which follow

from situating first-order epistemological and ethical claims in socio-historical context.

Churchland begins with an account of how “to teach or train any neural network to embody a

specific cognitive capacity is gradually to impose a specific function onto its input-output behavior”

(Churchland, 2010). We’re dealing here with the sort of cognition Brandom described earlier in the

parrot who we can train to say “That’s red” (Brandom, 2009, p. 204). The “input” is our flashing a red

thing for the parrot to perceive and the “output” is the activity of the motor or muscle-driving neurons

that should empirically correlate with the parrot’s consistent utterance of the label “red.”

The parrot re-described as a neural network of sensory and muscle-driving neurons “thus acquires

the ability to respond, in various but systematic ways, to a wide variety of potential sensory inputs” on

Churchland’s account. This ability to respond to external stimuli can also account for some of what

Brandom identifies in his second stage of cognition outlined above, the first he recognizes as genuinely

conceptual, since it requires the ability to draw meaningful and practical inferential consequences: when

Peter cries “wolf” it means ‘something fearsome looms…’ and it means ‘one ought to run for safety’.

Churchland continues to account for various types of moral cognitive phenomena in terms of the

human neural network learning and acquiring “a sophisticated family of perceptual or recognitional

skills” (p. 150). He uses the model of an artificial network trained to discriminate human faces from

non-faces, male faces from female faces, as well as some named individuals. Churchland posits “an

intricately configured matrix of synaptic connections, which … also partition an abstract conceptual

space, at some proprietary neuronal layer of the human brain” (Churchland, 2010, p. 152). This is

precisely where the description becomes questionable in seeming to attribute subject agency to “the

configured matrix of synaptic connections” which are said to do the active partitioning that creates “a

hierarchical set of categories” such as ‘morally significant’ versus ‘morally non-significant’ actions, and

with the significant category ‘morally bad’ and ‘morally praiseworthy’ actions. But Churchland is saved

by his prudent initial disavowal of reductionism, the description can stand as empirically justified

without necessarily attributing the essential agency to the observed neurons instead of the person.

From Brandom’s logical and Hegelian perspective, such skills provide at best a background of

common conditions, structured inferential practices, without which it does not seem possible that the

idea of individuality and moral autonomy could appear as a variation or difference-from-the norm. This

would require individual distancing, differentiating, creating the ability to freely endorse or not endorse

normative judgments. This is described by Brandom as part of the third cognitive stage of where the

conditional inference is grasped. What if Peter was lying about the wolf? What then? What would it say

about me that I was so gullible and reacted immediately? Might others then infer from my immediate

reflexive action at the “wolf” alarm that I am easily manipulated? What should we infer then about

Peter’s character, if he was lying? Only skill at conditional reasoning and speculative inference can

make possible such thoughts and the individual freedom from immediate, conditioned practical reflex

that such thoughts imply. Further, this shows how a social context, language, normative inference, and

discriminating conditional inference are all necessary ingredients for arriving at self-conscious agency,

at the skill of being able to count oneself as the individual doer of a particular deed in the world or the

individual thinker of a particular thought about the world.

Churchland indicates how his neurobiological model can support this line of reasoning. In terms of

this framework he defines that

[A situation is] morally ambiguous [when] it is problematic by reason of its tendency [its pattern

of external stimuli to the sensory neurons] to activate more than one moral prototype [more than

one possible motor neuron response], prototypes that invite two incompatible or mutually

exclusive subsequent courses of action (Churchland, p. 155).

In Hegel’s historical analysis of the emergence of the concept of right, he describes how

Among the Greeks, the ethical was in the form of [universal] ethos more determinately than is

possible in modern times, because [individual] reflection was not as developed in the Greeks as

it is in us; the ancients knew nothing of conscience. They acted on the basis of ethos; they were

thus ethical without being moral (Hegel & White, p. 126).

What both of these statements point to is that the distinctly modern sense of the individual

conscience emerges in the difference between equally reasonable but incompatible traditional or

practical inferences. Modern self-hood is contradictory.

Some technical clarification of terminological differences may be required here. Whereas

Churchland seems to use the term “moral” more generally (to describe any moral or ethical behavior),

Hegel uses the term “ethical” as the more general description, and “moral” to identify the particularly

modern species of ethical genus that invokes rights of individual conscience in distinction from the

universal or common ethos.

Terminological issues need not obscure what is clearly a great deal of agreement. The two accounts

dovetail to support the substantive point that it is the event of “incompatible or mutually exclusive

subsequent courses of action” (Churchland, p. 156), an increasingly ubiquitous experience in modern

life following socio-economic globalization, which results in both painful social alienation but also the

emergence of the individual conscience with its claims to autonomy.

Individual vs. Community

This preceding explains why Churchland positions his neurobiological proposal in respect of but in

contrast to contemporary virtue ethicist criticisms of liberal modernity and their arguments for

communitarian solutions. Churchland again echoes Hegel’s position when he says of Alistair MacIntyre

(2007) that “he hankers after the lost innocence of pre-Enlightenment human communities, which were

much more tightly knit by a close fabric of shared social practices” (Churchland, p. 166).

It is often mistakenly assumed in Anglophone intellectual circles that Hegel is one such Romantic

‘hankering after the lost innocence of pre-Enlightenment community.’ A notable case is Karl Popper’s

mistaken view that Hegel’s political philosophy justified (or even could justify) Nazism in Germany

(Popper, 1945; Stewart, 1996). The preceding argument should show it is precisely the opposite; Hegel

was arguably the first to recognize the complexity of the problems created by conflicting commitments

in modern life between science and freedom; his sensitivity to this conflict between modern

commitments just makes him easy to misread.

If one recognizes how concrete normative conditions are required before individual freedom can be

realized, one may appear a postmodernist/anti-Enlightenment thinker through increased sensitivity to

tradition. But such increased sensitivity to historical context and tradition is not ‘merely sentimental,’ it

is grounded in a rational judgment—following logically from both Churchland’s and Hegel’s meta-

ethical theories (Pippin, 2008). What Churchland and Hegel do share with MacIntyre is a rejection of the

concept of man we inherit from the British Enlightenment. In Churchland’s words:

Homo economicus … a hedonic calculator almost completely free of any interest in or resources

for evaluating the very desires that drive his calculations (Churchland, p. 167).

Following this model described by Churchland, Hegel in 1817 finds a correlation with the fact that

“in England, six-year-olds clean narrow chimneys … in industrial cities, in England and elsewhere,

quite small children must work” (Hegel & White, pp. §175, note 105). English philosopher Herbert

Spencer’s application of the principal of the survival of the fittest to human social thought was to follow

just a few decades after Hegel’s observation. To Hegel’s assertion then that “in such cases the state has

the duty of insisting that the children be educated,” one still today does not find many well-developed

rational inferences as to what that could mean. We shouldn’t be surprised then when it is revealed that

contemporary beloved icons of industrial science and technology such as Apple and Steve Jobs are still

producing our gadgets at the cost of inhuman factory conditions, situations bad enough to motivate

suicide, and managerially enforced pledges from workers to stop killing themselves (Moore, 2012).

Yet despite this significant problem with modernity Hegel and Churchland do not turn against it but

search for solutions within it. The problem with the increasingly common communitarian sentiments,

among disenchanted liberals who turn to radical collectivism or postmodernist pessimism, and among

frustrated conservatives who turn to radical religious fundamentalism, is that they threaten to throw the

baby out with the bathwater. That is, they threaten to sacrifice the fragile ideal of individual self-

determination by sacrificing the modern culture that also makes it possible.

It would not be inaccurate to say that Hegel’s seemingly obscure but central concept of “spirit” just

refers to the modern form of life in which the individual is universally respected. Protection of

individual freedom of conscience is more important than the findings of science.

A “phenomenology of spirit” is then a philosophically justifying account of how civilization has

appeared historically and collectively arrived through trial-and-error at this modern ethical

determination; and a philosophy of right is then needed to provide the understanding necessary for

adequate appreciation, preservation, and support of that ideal in a modern society.

I hope to have made clearer how scientific reductionist approaches no less than religious

fundamentalist approaches are equally unacceptable to the modern ethical question of human agency.

The former would submerge the individual under the notion of universal sensory-motor complexes

subservient to the rules of exclusively natural needs, whereas the latter would return the individual to

subordination under the notion of universal metaphysical rules.

Thus modern individual freedom can be threatened by both science and religion. Churchland’s

project for a neurobiology of the moral virtues provides a promising direction for scientific and

humanistic voices to find common ethical ground. Among proponents of science on ethical matters in

the public sphere, including Dawkins and Harris, Churchland’s more nuanced appreciation for modern

ethical problems is admirable for its rarity in recognizing that empirical science is truncated without

philosophical insight and reason.

Chapters 1 to 5 have been intended as a contribution to the scholarly discourse within PUS. These

chapters help identify the parameters of appropriate general or liberal science learning that the public

needs today. They are aimed at science teachers, education policy makers, communicators, historians,

sociologists, and philosophers of science. Thus, in Chapter 6, I outline a proposal, in the critical light of

the preceding investigations, for a non-specialized, liberal science education for non-majoring students

and adult citizens. This follows from Kuhn’s view that the historicism of history and philosophy of

science is not a necessary part of traditional, pre-professional science education or training for

specialized sciences; but it is a necessary part of general or liberal science education, needed for critical

appreciation of science by citizens. It is especially important to prioritize and develop liberal science

educational programs for non-majoring students and adult citizens, as they will be among various parties

to increasingly complex, science-related public debates in the 21st century. A curriculum for the public

must be broad enough to address various communities within the United States. Therefore the outline in

Chapter 6 emphasizes science as a method and the conclusions of historical and contemporary science

not as dogmas but as conclusions standing for free minds to test. Final judgments of absolute truth are

suspended, so that learners can appreciate how scientific theories can be freely entertained, considered,

examined, non-coercively, by free minds.

CHAPTER 6

SCIENCE FOR THE PUBLIC: OUTLINE FOR A CURRICULUM

The term liberal as used here in reference to the development of a liberal science curriculum, does

not refer to the currently popular usage in American media to refer to left-wing politics as opposed to

right-wing politics. Rather, it refers to the traditional meaning from which the notion of a liberal arts

curriculum derives, which is related to the classical liberal political tradition in the West. In the United

States, today’s right-leaning libertarian conservative and left-leaning liberal progressive sensibilities are

both offshoots of this classical liberal tradition; despite superficial appearances, each basically adhere to

the principle of individual right as outlined in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

This concealment of similarity behind differences is clearer to European observers, going back to Alexis

de Tocqueville. For such observers, the alternatives of aristocratic traditionalism and radical socialism, a

communitarian right and a collectivist left respectively, give much clearer definition to liberal in

contrast. In the Western tradition preceding the United States, the word derives from the Latin liber,

meaning “free”: Thus, a liberal education, as the term is applied traditionally to liberal arts curricula,

means a system or course of education suitable for the cultivation of a free individual human being.

The purpose of the kind of curriculum outlined here is to give non-majoring students, or adult

citizens in a continuing-education situation, enough of the criteria and vocabulary, i.e., general literacy,

needed to (1) enrich their own intellectual appreciation of science through enlarged interpretive ability,

and (2) be equipped as a citizen to make reasonably knowledgeable inferences from publicly

disseminated information and from expert judgments about science and technology issues.

This will require sensitivity to those intersections where scientific claims seem to conflict with

traditional beliefs. So for example, Darwinism should be introduced to audiences as an intellectual

achievement of the human mind within the parameters of scientific explanation, showing how it works

by adhering to the rule of methodological naturalism, i.e., being self-limited to natural or physical

mechanisms for explaining empirical phenomena. Creativity in various domains requires such

limitations or parameters, and methodological naturalism functions as such in science. This provides an

excellent lesson in how to distinguish (a) the parameter of methodological naturalism from (b)

philosophical or metaphysical naturalism, a belief about absolute reality that remains open to

philosophical question.

Audience

The curriculum outline is drawn mainly with the informal education of a general audience of high

school age or older in mind. An appropriate context for the units would be a series of free or low-cost

public seminars, or alternately a single, longer public seminar in which each unit is edited to fit within

the allotted time.

Rationale

The rationale for this kind of education is akin to the rationale for teaching art appreciation. While

it is true that anyone can form an immediate aesthetic judgment or private opinion of a work of art, it is

not true that anyone can in the same manner access the public reasons or criteria that enable experts in

the field to engage in critical appreciation, discussion, and interpretation of a work, weighing its merits

in comparison with other, similar works. Experts do this by considering historical background, shared

disciplinary criteria, methods and techniques, as well as the particular situation or context from which an

individual work was produced. The goal of a short-term, informal education program in art appreciation

for the layperson cannot be the depth of knowledge that experts acquire over the greater parts of their

lifetimes. The modest goal is to give the layperson enough of the criteria and vocabulary, i.e., general

literacy, needed to (1) enrich their own aesthetic and intellectual appreciation of a work through

enlarged interpretive ability, and (2) make sense of publicly disseminated information and of expert

judgments about a work.

Now clearly this analogy breaks down when we consider the weightier issues at stake in the

formation of lay public judgments about science and technology. An informal education curriculum

aimed at enabling critical appreciation of science for citizens must take into account the most pressing

issues of the day and their possible consequences. Thus this curriculum outline conjoins the teaching of

core concepts in scientific inquiry with the discussion of contemporary issues like environmental risks,

the relationship between science and religion, and the increasing commercialization of science. The

latter is of particular concern in regard to biotechnology. A trend toward private, industrial funding and

patenting of biotechnological knowledge calls perhaps more clearly than any other issue for wider and

more informed public deliberation, judgment, and participation in deciding policies for governing the

direction of scientific research and technological development (Brown, 2001, p. xi).

Nevertheless, to plant a germ capable of bearing life-long interest for the non-specialist in science,

the educational experience should go beyond emphasis upon pertinent social issues, dangers, or utilities

of science. Thus the curriculum outlined should aim to exhibit for non-specialists the meaning behind

Werner Heisenberg’s statement that “in the exact sciences, no less than in the arts, beauty is the most

important source of illumination and clarity” (Barr, 2006, p. 64). That is to say, such curricula should

show adult learners how understanding science can be a rewarding intellectual achievement in itself,

specifically in regard to the grasp of theories elegantly honed to fit the observable phenomena they seek

to explain. It can be argued that the great theoretical achievements in science contribute to and constitute

part of the cultural heritage we cherish in the humanities.

The style may thus be described as humanistic science education, in contrast to the traditional

format of high school general science education in the 20th century that had been geared to preparing

students for eventual specialized training in the scientific world. While this curriculum outline does, like

the traditional approach, appeal to canonical science, the central emphasis is on personal and social

context and relevance. Thus, while a unit may introduce science concepts, the teacher’s goal is to ensure

the material is connected to the particular, individual audience of participants. The affective outcome of

learning is important, i.e., how the participants feel about science, how it impacts their lives, and what

they can do to solve science-related social issues. The cognitive outcome sought is not that of specialist

depth but of generalist familiarity with a broad area. The humanistic approach takes heed of the

principle finding of hermeneutic phenomenology: all understanding requires conceptual criteria and

skills for interpreting phenomena. In this case the phenomena is that of science as it is encountered in

our public life. The cognitive outcome that should be sought is a generalist competency to discuss and

critically inquire further about public science issues.

Overall Goal

Each member of the audience should walk away with an enriched ability to situate, interpret, and

appreciate the science they encounter in public life. The goal of a short-term, informal education

program in science appreciation for the layperson cannot be the depth of knowledge that experts acquire

over the greater parts of their lifetimes. Nevertheless, a realistic goal is to give the layperson enough of

the criteria and vocabulary, i.e., general literacy, needed to (1) enrich their own intellectual appreciation

of science through enlarged interpretive ability, and (2) be equipped as a citizen to make reasonably

knowledgeable inferences from publicly disseminated information and from expert judgments about

science and technology issues, especially when faced with differing expert judgments.

1st Unit: What is Science?

Objective: Know the basic outline of science history. Know the basic criteria commonly used to

demarcate scientific from pseudoscientific claims. Materials: Presentation slides with illustrations on the

history of science.

This unit opens with questioning as a way to arouse genuine intellectual curiosity about science. To

that end we need to challenge ordinary assumptions. We are all likely to be already in possession of the

vague intuition that astrology is not a real science while astronomy is, but why precisely is this taken to

be so? What makes science special? Can proper science always be clearly distinguished from pseudo-

science? Were pre-modern people irrational? Brief historical lesson on the difference between ancient

and modern ideas of science, i.e., looking at Aristotle’s idea of physics and Ptolemaic earth-centered

astronomy in comparison with the modern theories of Newton, Einstein, and Darwin on the other hand.

This will require sensitivity to those intersections where scientific claims seem to conflict with

traditional beliefs. So for example, Darwinism is introduced to audiences as one of the great intellectual

achievements by the human mind in the realm of scientific explanation; it is shown how it works by

adhering to the rule of methodological naturalism, i.e., being self-limited to natural or physical

mechanisms for explaining empirical phenomena. Creativity in various domains requires such

limitations or parameters, and methodological naturalism functions as such in science. This provides an

excellent lesson in how to distinguish (a) the parameter of methodological naturalism from (b)

philosophical or metaphysical naturalism, a belief about absolute reality that remains open to

philosophical question. We’ll consider the logical positivist criterion of empirical verifiability for

knowledge claims; Popper’s alternative hypothetico-deductive model and criterion of falsifiability;

following Kuhn we’ll look at some historical case studies in science, like Pasteur’s development of germ

theory, which show evidence against adherence to the falsification criterion in cases of good science. So

even natural science can be more complicated than we ordinarily assume after deeper consideration, but

what about social science? Can anthropology, psychology, or economics be regarded as legitimate

sciences if they do not appear to be governed by laws like the natural phenomena of classical

(Newtonian) physics? Having aroused the spirit of intellectual inquiry, the next unit brings science down

to earth.

2nd Unit: Scientific Methods

Objective: Experience hands-on science. Understand scientific methods through engaging, hands-

on activities that provide direct, memorable experiences with physical, earth, chemistry, and life science

materials. Materials: Activity 1: electromagnet, nails, magnetic wire, batteries, sandpaper, iron filings,

plates; Activity 2: weather vane, farmer’s almanac, slides for weather forecast, weather map; Activity 3:

microscopes, elodea specimens; Activity 4: cleaning liquids, vinegar, salt, tarnished copper pennies.

This unit is intended to remind those for whom science often signifies a remote, abstract discipline,

removed from ordinary concerns, of its embodied basis in material experience. We look at the empirical

approach to knowledge. Using direct observation to obtain knowledge. Is everyday, direct observation of

individuals or objects of interest the same as scientific observation? No. Empirical research in science is

motivated by a question, hunch, or theory (inference, hypothesis) and then entails planning by

researchers of what, who, how, and when to observe against the hypothesis. We will use hands-on

activities common from high-school level science.

Activity 1: Physical science: Electromagnetism: Hands-on experimentation, observation, and

description of characteristics of electromagnets. Involves assembling, disassembling, and making

changes to a working electromagnet. Materials include nails, magnetic wire, batteries, sandpaper, bags

of iron filings, and plates on which to work.

Activity 2: Earth science: Weather forecasting: Traces history of human weather forecasting from

ancient observation, experimentation, and prediction using the simple weathervane, to the Farmers’

Almanac, to modern meteorology and computer simulations. Activity includes interpretation of a

modern weather map. Materials include visual slides for presentation.

Activity 3: Life science: Observe live elodea plant specimen under the microscope. Examine the

cell wall and the chloroplast. Learn about differences between plant cells and animal cells.

Activity 4: Chemistry: Experiment using a variety of liquids to attempt removal of tarnish from old

copper pennies, discovering in the process that vinegar and salt will dissolve the tarnish. What explains

this effect? Learn established theories about three types of chemical reaction, which explain what we

have observed. But how precisely did chemistry arrive at these laws of chemical reaction? What is a

scientific law? This question leads us to Unit 3 on scientific explanation.

3rd Unit: Scientific Reasoning

Objective: Critically differentiate empirical observation claims from reasoning about what was

observed. Understand the central role of mathematics in modern scientific theories. Understand how

theories acquire their status in science. Materials: Presentation slides with illustrations to assist in

showing the calculus of acceleration as developed in the work of Newton and Leibniz.

When C.P. Snow criticized literary culture in his famous essay on the “two cultures” of the sciences

and the humanities (Gregory & Miller, 1998, pp. 46-51), Michael Yudkin responded in defense that “to

read Dickens, or hear Mozart, or to see a Titian can be in itself a rewarding activity, but to find out what

is meant by acceleration is to gain a piece of factual information which in itself has no value” (Leavis &

Yudkin, 1962, p. 35). This module shows how such statements miss something about science as an

intellectual and cultural activity valuable in itself.

Using precisely the example cited by Yudkin, this module looks at the scientific conception of

“acceleration” as hard won in the work of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. Using a visual model,

we’ll consider the distinction between (a) measure of velocity and (b) measure of changes in velocity;

the role of mathematics in modern physics; the development of calculus by Newton and Leibniz to

measure changes; understand “force” inferred to causally explain the phenomena; consider Newton’s

reasoning process when addressing the normative question whether his explanatory laws should be said

to infer, posit, or describe unobservable causal forces (metaphysical realism about theoretical entities)

behind our empirical phenomena of measured changes in velocity, or whether we should say that our

explanatory laws are limited to empirical adequacy for us (pragmatism), i.e., only requiring that they

adequately describe and predict the empirical regularities we humans do in fact observe on each specific

occasion. These are vital concepts not only for specialists in philosophy of science; they can help elevate

the level of public discourse, humbling all parties, when cultural conflicts about science, religion, and

reason arise.

We will also look at the tradition of thought experiments in science from Aristotle to Galileo to

Einstein, including Einstein’s “moving train” thought experiment, essential to the development of his

theory of space-time relativity. This module is thus intended to show, contrary to Yudkin, how scientific

understanding can indeed yield intellectual delight and value in itself.

4th Unit: Social Science

Objective: Understand the differences between natural and social sciences, including

methodological issues. Know essential concepts of statistics, including different averages, distribution,

deviation, correlation (versus causation), and inferential statistics like margin-of-error that appear often

in polls claiming to represent public opinion. Materials: Presentation slides on social sciences,

presentation slides on concepts in statistics.

Examination of the growth and development of social sciences such as sociology, anthropology,

psychoanalysis, psychology, political science, and economics from the Enlightenment to the present.

Innovators devised these fields to provide new, scientific ways to gain insight into age-old philosophical

and religious questions, such as, What is the nature of the ‘self’ or the ‘soul’? What binds human beings

to one another? What is free will? What are the limits of social control, behavioral engineering, and the

possible reach of techniques for adjustment and manipulation?

Are social sciences sciences in the same sense as what we have been studying in the last two units?

Can anthropology, psychology, or economics be regarded as legitimate sciences if they do not appear to

be governed by laws like the natural phenomena of classical (Newtonian) physics? The question whether

they are genuine instances of science turns on their methods in comparison with the methods of physical

sciences. If the object of social science is humankind, can the same methods we’ve been covering in

units 3 and 4 apply? Is the human being a thing in the same sense as the things studied by physics? In

this unit we compare a variety of factors in science and how they differ between physical and social

science: (1) experiment; (2) generalization; (3) complexity of phenomena; (4) prediction; (5) objectivity;

(6) individualism versus holism; (7) interpretation.

This unit will also address knowledge of elementary statistics. Social statistics are encountered with

increasing frequency in our information-saturated environment. It is thus critical to know how to

interpret statistical claims. Basic concepts will be covered including the descriptive statistics of mean,

median, mode, bell curve distribution, and standard deviation, plus key concepts of correlation (versus

causation), and inferential statistics like “margin of error” which appear frequently in political polls

claiming to represent public opinion.

5th Unit: Science, Technology, and Risk

Objective: Understand the need and elements for improved communication in science and public

risk assessment in light of recent case studies. Materials: Presentation slides and video showing

historical media coverage of Cumbrian nuclear-contamination incident. Presentation slides with

illustrations on emerging biotech innovations.

This unit looks at public risk and risk perception issues. Do we normally understand “risk” in the

statistical sense of professional risk assessors? Sociologist Brian Wynne argues that it is problematic for

science risk assessors to expect the public to understand the mathematics of risk. It is a complex,

technical matter, properly the job of experts. Citizens must nevertheless make evaluations of risk.

Wynne argues the public must do this on the grounds of trust that one can reasonably place in the

authorities making the risk assessments. How might we rationally judge the trustworthiness of the

institutions and people making the risk assessment? Is there a difference between trust levels for science

in general (which surveys show remains high) and trust levels when we are confronted with specific,

local risks potentially affecting us directly?

We'll look at Wynne's classic case study, in which he analyzed the experience of the Cumbrian

sheep-farming community in the UK with expert technical advice following the Chernobyl nuclear

reactor accident of May 1986. The incident led to caesium isotope fallout on upland Cumbrian pastures,

which found its way quickly into the wool and flesh of grazing sheep, making them unfit for human

consumption. Early scientific advice suggested the long-term risks from this fallout were low and would

disappear in a matter of weeks. But in practice it persisted for months and in some cases years. Local

conditions were such that fallout predictions based on laboratory experiments did not apply. It took time

for scientists to work out what was going on and make a more accurate assessment (that the risk was

long term and persistent), and they also did not make use of local expertise, which might have led either

to the answer more quickly, or to formulating more useful advice about processing livestock tailored to

local circumstances. The incident offers a general lesson for science and public communication. It brings

to light the need for mutual accommodation between the culture of increasingly specialized scientific

institutions and publics potentially affected by risks.

An area likely to see rising need for public attention is biotechnology. A trend toward private,

industrial funding and patenting of biotechnological knowledge calls perhaps more clearly than any

other issue for wider and more informed public deliberation, judgment, and participation in deciding

policies for governing the direction of scientific research and technological development (Brown, 2001,

p. xi). But the issues that arise when we consider biotechnology show us the limits of science. For

example, it is factually informative to be told that a scientist in the United States claims to have cloned

or biotechnologically enhanced an organism. We will be provided with knowledge if we are told how

cloning or a bio-enhancement is done, and how soon we may expect applications to arrive for humans.

But in order to evaluate the act of cloning or bio-enhancement as such we need more than factual

information or even knowledge. Science itself cannot help us on this question. Science can tell us how it

works. What can tell us whether we should be happy or sad about this? What can tell us if there are

policies that need to be developed to control such a process? What can tell us if this is progress or

regress? To begin to think at all about such questions, we would have to be referred to things like the

bodies of historical, humanistic knowledge we call religion, moral philosophy, political history,

sociology, etc. (Postman, 1999, p. 95). Knowledge cannot judge itself. Recognizing that knowledge

must be judged by other knowledge may point us to a meaningful distinction to be drawn between

knowledge and wisdom.

6th Unit: Science and Religion in Society

Objective: Understand how the historical relationship between science and religious tradition is

more complex than partisans make it out to be. Know a variety of ethical approaches available for

handling conflicts between science and religious tradition when issues arise. Materials: Presentation

slides with historical illustrations.

The lessons of the last unit should help to show why the relationship between science and religion

is more complex than the partisan voices in recent public clashes have tended to represent it. This unit

needs to investigate historical details about the relationship between science and religious tradition; how

our modern, secular, liberal political order—in which science has grown and flourished—has its

historical roots in religious beliefs regarding individual freedom of conscience; how extra-scientific,

religious belief in a universe ordered by “reason” motivated figures indispensible to the historical

development of science like Newton. If the latter notion is no longer tenable within science, it

nevertheless remains important for the public understanding of science as significantly indebted to

religion.

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