Science In A Better World

Webster’s Dictionary defines science as “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines science as “a branch of study which is concerned with a body of demonstrated truths or observed facts, systematically classified by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truths within its own domain.” Seventy-two Nobel Laureates agreed on the following definition: “Science is devoted to formulating and testing naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. It is a process for systematically collecting and recording data about the physical world, then categorizing and studying the collected data in an effort to infer the principles of nature that best explain the observed phenomena.” 

Richard Feynman, one of the foremost physicists of the 20th century, pithily sums up the whole picture: “During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas— which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science.” 

Science Motives 

W e can say with confidence that the type of economy a society has can affect science by affecting the information that is collected and the claims about it that are explored, the means and procedures utilized in the collection and exploration, and who is in position to participate in these processes or, for that matter, even to know about and be enlightened by science’s accomplishments. 

There are at least two individual and two social motives that propel science. First there is pure curiosity, the human predilection to ask questions and seek their answers. 

• Why is the sky blue? 
• What happens if you run at the speed of light next to a burst of light?  
• What is time and why does it seem to go only one way? 
• What is the smallest piece of matter and tiniest conveyor of force? 
• How do pieces of matter and conveyors of force operate? 
• What is the universe, its shape, its development? 
• What is life, a species, an organism? 
• How do species form, persist, get replaced? 
• When people socialize, what is an economy, how does it work, and what is a polity, culture, family, and how do they work?
  

Inquiring minds want to know these things even if there is nothing material to be gained from that knowledge. 

A second personal motive for science is individual or collective self interest. Knowledge of the components of reality and their interconnections sufficient to predict outcomes and even to impact what happens can not only assuage our curiosity, it can increase the longevity, scope, range, and quality of life. What is the cause and cure for polio or cancer? How do birds fly? How does gravity work? 

Curiosity causes us to open the door to the unknown with gigantic desire and energy; but we drive whole huge caravans through the doors of science in part because of the benefits we gain. The benefits can come from the implications of the knowledge itself, but also from remuneration for scientific labors or achievements. There can be material rewards for gathering information and for proposing or testing hypotheses about reality. Pursuit of these rewards is also a motive for doing science. Likewise, the benefits to be had beyond the satisfaction of fulfilling one’s curiosity are not confined to material payment. One can attain status or fame, and doing science is often at least in part driven by pursuit of the social prizes, notoriety, stature, and admiration that accompany discovery. 

Science and Economics 

A n economy can increase, diminish, or push people’s curiosity in one direction or another. It can affect as well the ways that scientific knowledge can directly benefit people, and, of course, the remuneration and other material rewards bestowed on people for doing science, as well as the social rewards they garner. 

In the U.S., science has become ubiquitous revealing the inner secrets of materials, space, time, bodies, and even, to a very limited extent as yet, minds. But science has also become, in various degrees and respects, an agent of capital. Distortion arises when the different methods and problems scientists utilize are biased by motives other than scientific inquiry undertaken for its own sake. 

British journalist George Monbiot reports that “34 percent of the lead authors of articles in scientific journals are compromised by their sources of funding, only 16 percent of scientific journals have a policy on conflicts of interest, and only 0.5 percent of the papers published have authors who disclose such conflicts.” 

In the pharmaceutical industry we find that “87 percent of the scientists writing clinical guidelines have financial ties to drug companies.”

More subtly, commercial funding and ownership affect what questions are raised and what projects are pursued. If patent prospects are good, money flows. If they are bad, even when reasons of general curiosity or improving human welfare warrant a line of inquiry, funding is hard to come by. 

At the most extreme, citizens may wind up “guinea pigs as in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment between 1932 and 1972, or in experiments between 1950 and 1969 in which the government tested drugs, chemical, biological, and radioactive materials on unsuspecting U.S. citizens; or [as in] the deliberate contamination of 8,000 square miles around Hanford, Washington, to assess the effects of dispersed plutonium.” On a larger scale, in the U.S. the Pentagon now controls about half the annual $75 billion federal research and development budget with obvious repercussions for the militarization of priorities. 

I recently sat on an airplane next to an MIT biologist interested in human biological functions and dysfunctions. He was not at all political or ideological, but he had no confusions about the way things work. “What we do, what we can do, even what we can think of doing,” he told me, “is overwhelmingly biased by the need for funding, which, nowadays, means the need for corporate funding or, if government, then a government that is beholden overwhelmingly to corporations or to militarism. More, the corporations plan on a very short time horizon. If you can’t make a very strong case for short run profits, forget about it. Find something else to pursue, unless you can convince the government your efforts will increase killing capacities.” 

Good Society Science 

W hat would be different about science in a good society, one with a participatory economy, say, rather than with capitalism? Four primary structural things would change, which in turn have many implications.

• Each future scientist would work at a balanced job complex, having a mix of responsibilities balanced for empowerment and quality of life effects, like everyone else, rather than occupying a higher or lower position in a pecking order of power. 
• Each future scientist would be remunerated for duration, intensity, and, to the extent relevant, difficulty of their work, not for power or output, much less for property. 
• Each future scientist, with other workers in his or her scientific institution—whether it’s a lab, university, research center, or other venue—would influence decisions in proportion as he or she is affected by them. 
• The level of resources that future scientists will be allotted to engage in their pursuits will be determined by the overall economic system via participatory planning, with self management.
  

Will there be huge expenditures on tools for advancing our knowledge of the 15th decimal point of nuclear interactions or the 14 billionth light year distant galaxy even before we have figured out how to reduce the hardships of mining coal or containing or reversing its impact on the ecology or before we develop alternative energy sources? Will research be undertaken on grounds of military applications instead of on grounds of implications for knowing our place in a complex universe? 

These are questions that will arise and be answered only when we have a new society. What commitment to a future vision tells us is the broad procedure people will follow, not the specific outcomes that people will choose, though we can certainly make intelligent guesses about the latter, as well. 

When the latest and greatest particle accelerator project was being debated in the U.S., a congressperson asked a noted scientist who was arguing for allocating funds to the super collider, what its military benefits would be. The scientist replied it would have no implications for weaponry, but it would help make our society worth defending. The scientist’s motivations and perceptions failed to impress Congress, which voted against the project. 

Do we know that a future society would have allotted the billions required? No. We don’t know one way or the other. But we do know that the final decision would be based not on the project’s military benefits, but rather on how the project would contribute to making society a more desirable and wiser place. 

So a desirable post-capitalist economy would in no way inhibit scientific impulses. Instead it would greatly enhance them both due to having an educational system that seeks full participation and creativity from everyone and due to allotting to science what a free and informed populace agrees to. Science, in the sense of creatively expanding the range and depth of our comprehension of the world, depends on real freedom—which is to say real control over our lives to pursue what we desire.