The post-normal science of precaution (original) (raw)
We are now losing the comforting image of science that has long been so important for the Western optimistic view of humanity's prospects. Science is undoubtedly the great driving force of modern global civilisation. In the conventional understanding of science, curiosity-driven research discovers nuggets of fact, and beneficent application then shapes them into tools that enable the conquest of nature for the improvement of human welfare. At every phase of the process, science now becomes problematic and compromised. Priorities for research are set not by scientists but by the external interests that supply funds. The research community is itself elitist; those disadvantaged by gender or otherwise (as by non-English native language) are left behind. The work of research on sentient beings raises ethical problems that cannot be answered by science alone. Control of the intellectual property embodied in the products of inquiry is increasingly expropriated, either from the scientific researchers or from the rightful owners of traditional knowledge abroad. Applications are directed to the furtherance of profit and power; issues of safety and ethics are seen as secondary. Regulation, on behalf of humanity and the environment, comes after the event, is always counted as a cost on 'growth', and is therefore characteristically too little and too late. And the degradation and destabilisation of the natural environment as a result of globalised science-based industry increasingly threatens the survival of civilisation itself. Up to now our industrial society has developed on the principle that innovations are safe until proved dangerous. Turning it round to the adoption and implementation of a 'precautionary principle' is an enormous task, which many vested interests will resist and are already resisting. But change is inevitable, for the old, secure order does not hold. When environmental and health policies involving science are debated, in place of facts we have uncertainty and even ignorance. We can no longer separate 'nature', 'science' and 'society'; the combination of lifestyles and markets drives innovation in the science-based industries, and their cumulative
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Science is not static but dynamic. A key challenge in its development is the reflection and accommodation of weaknesses, rather than just inherent strengths, both in its practices and institutional structures and settings. Pivotal to this are a range of issues including uncertainty, contextual issues, broader societal involvement, interdisciplinarity, and the enablement of reflexivity. These are not unrelated, autonomous concerns but intrinsically interdependent ones. For example extended characterisation and representation of uncertainty can facilitate integration between what have been regarded as separate: the technical and the contextual. This will require reflexive practices, often involving dialogue between scientists and the broader community. Much of this correlates with recent developments in social theory, such as conceptions of the risk society, and has significant implications for the relationship between the natural and the social sciences. This paper will identify, examine and describe these emergent changes to science and discuss their broader implications. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd By changing [sciences] self-conception and political arrangement, we must, as it were, install brakes and a steering wheel into the 'non-steering' of the racing techno-scientific development that is setting explosive powers free.' Science is fundamental to most people's perceptions of the future. These perceptions can be characterised in terms of a spectrum from 'optimistic' outlooks in which science takes centre place as a solution to our contemporary ills, to 'pessimistic' ones in which the role of science is minimised because science is regarded as being causally connected to the origin of these problems. While both these extreme positions are clearly naive and S. A. Healy may be contacted at 2/25-27 Fifth Avenue,
Afterword: On 'Sound Science', the Environment, and Political Authority
Environmental Values, 1999
The articles in this special issue of Environmental Values have a shared significance. In one way or another, all of them reflect contemporary concerns about issues of trust, risk, uncertainty, and the cultural shaping of science. These are matters of mounting significance for the politics of the environment in countries like Britain, and indeed for politics more generally, as we have seen in a succession of recent controversies. The Brent Spar oil platform farrago (1996), the hugely costly BSE-CJD upsets (1997), the continuing uproars around genetically modified (GM) plants and foods (1998/99) - central in all of these have been challenges to the political authority of official patterns of scientifically-backed reassurance, concerning the impacts of deep and open-ended trajectories of technological transformation.To understand what is likely to be at stake in such matters for the politics of industrial democracies in the 21st century, there is now an urgent need to develop richer p...
As a lock to a key? Why science is more than just an instrument to pay for nature’s services
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Scholars have argued that the success of conservation instruments such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) depends on improved scientific knowledge in linking ecosystem functioning with value-reflecting prices to optimize the production and delivery of ecosystem services (ES). While enhanced knowledge on the functioning of ecosystems is welcome, these scholars assume that greater sophistication of scientific inquiry rests on uncontroversial ES thinking, without critical recognition that the ES framework represents (and imposes) only one particular social rationality in articulating human-nature relationships. In this paper, we discuss why a singular focus on 'getting the science right' for environmental policy makes a naive abstraction of the many socio-political consequences underlying the use of ES as an 'objective' science. We argue that the process of doing science through reflection on social diversity and power dimensions can better reveal the extent to which PES interventions are perceived, debated, negotiated and strategically adapted on the ground. Introduction: Environmental policies have become increasingly inspired by market-based instruments, especially Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) which are often claimed to be more efficient and effective in achieving nature conservation objectives than alternative approaches [1,2]. The ecosystem service (ES) narrative is based upon a specific way of conceptualizing the relationship between society and nature in which ES are produced by nature for people, reproducing the logic that ecosystems are external to human beings [3]. PES, underpinned by the ES narrative, involves the negotiation of ES providers and beneficiaries through incentive-based arrangements aligning ecological processes with a single subset of human values according to a calculus of opportunity costs [2]. From this lens, nature and society are portrayed as separate entities much like a lock and a key, under the premise that the door of sustainability only opens with the right combination. The logic of human-nature relationships framed in terms of ES is increasingly adopted as stabilized knowledge, void of ongoing controversy, to produce numbers for policy
Conservation Biology, 2002
Abstract: Science and policy are both relevant to managing land. How they fit together is best understood by viewing land management as a process and by beginning the inquiry from and with that process, drawing distinctions between issues of substance and process and between the functions of describing nature and evaluating it normatively. This process-based approach and these two distinctions help isolate and clarify the various proper roles of science in the overall land-management equation. They also clarify (1) when nature can be said to possess intrinsic value; (2) why it is proper for conservation biologists to base their work on normative goals as long as they make it clear what they are doing; and (3) why arguments surrounding ecosystem management, which should focus on competing policy visions, are often diverted into less fruitful arguments about science and process. A process-based approach that employs our distinctions is particularly useful, we argue, in showing why confusion arises so easily when science-based terms such as ecological integrity are used not just for science purposes but as normative land-management goals. Using science terms in this way can strengthen the conservation cause by expanding the influence of scientists, but dangers lurk in the practice, including dangers to the integrity of science as such. On balance, a goal less overtly tied to science—such as land health—offers a better option for land management.Resumen: La ciencia y la política son pertinentes al manejo de la tierra. La manera en que se entrelazan se entiende mejor si se considera manejo de la tierra como un proceso e iniciando la búsqueda desde y con ese proceso, elaborando distinciones entre aspectos de esencia y proceso y entre las funciones de la descripción de la naturaleza y su evaluación normativa. Esta estrategia basada en los procesos y estas dos distinciones ayudan a aislar y aclarar los diferentes papeles adecuados de la ciencia en la ecuación general del manejo de la tierra. Ellos también aclaran (1) el porqué se puede decir que la naturaleza posee valores intrínsecos; (2) el porqué es adecuado para los biólogos de la conservación basar su trabajo en metas normativas siempre y cuando dejen en claro lo que están haciendo; (3) el porqué los argumentos referentesal manejo de ecosistemas, que deberían estar enfocados a las visiones políticas que compiten, frecuentemente son desviados hacia argumentos menos fructíferos sobre la ciencia y los procesos. Nosotros argumentamos que una estrategia basada en los procesos que emplea nuestras distinciones es particularmente útil para mostrar el porqué surgen confusiones tan fácilmente cuando son usados términos basados en la ciencia, como es el caso de integridad ecológica, no solo con propósitos científicos sino como metas normativas de manejo. El uso de términos científicos en esta forma puede fortalecer la causa de la conservación al extender las influencias de los científicos, pero esconde riesgos en la práctica, incluyendo los peligros de la integridad de la ciencia como tal. En balance, una meta menos claramente ligada a la ciencia, como lo es la salud de la tierra ofrece una mejor opción.Resumen: La ciencia y la política son pertinentes al manejo de la tierra. La manera en que se entrelazan se entiende mejor si se considera manejo de la tierra como un proceso e iniciando la búsqueda desde y con ese proceso, elaborando distinciones entre aspectos de esencia y proceso y entre las funciones de la descripción de la naturaleza y su evaluación normativa. Esta estrategia basada en los procesos y estas dos distinciones ayudan a aislar y aclarar los diferentes papeles adecuados de la ciencia en la ecuación general del manejo de la tierra. Ellos también aclaran (1) el porqué se puede decir que la naturaleza posee valores intrínsecos; (2) el porqué es adecuado para los biólogos de la conservación basar su trabajo en metas normativas siempre y cuando dejen en claro lo que están haciendo; (3) el porqué los argumentos referentesal manejo de ecosistemas, que deberían estar enfocados a las visiones políticas que compiten, frecuentemente son desviados hacia argumentos menos fructíferos sobre la ciencia y los procesos. Nosotros argumentamos que una estrategia basada en los procesos que emplea nuestras distinciones es particularmente útil para mostrar el porqué surgen confusiones tan fácilmente cuando son usados términos basados en la ciencia, como es el caso de integridad ecológica, no solo con propósitos científicos sino como metas normativas de manejo. El uso de términos científicos en esta forma puede fortalecer la causa de la conservación al extender las influencias de los científicos, pero esconde riesgos en la práctica, incluyendo los peligros de la integridad de la ciencia como tal. En balance, una meta menos claramente ligada a la ciencia, como lo es la salud de la tierra ofrece una mejor opción.
2017
Descartes's famous declaration, "I think therefore I am," is one of the most referenced statements from the Scientific Revolution in 16th-17th century Europe. His words mark a turning point in science by exposing a new foundation for examining the natural world. However, his words imply that those we do not perceive as having intelligence-the ability to think-are not and places humans in a role far superior to our surrounding environment. Fueled by the Scientific Revolution, this shift in perception deepened the rift between humans and nature. Despite having roots in natural theology, the Scientific Revolution also encouraged the divorce of science from religion that endures today. In this essay I show that the changes that occurred in the two relationships continue to contribute to the current environmental crisis by reflecting the patriarchal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric-"human-centered"-nature of the paradigm of modern western science constructed by the Scientific Revolution. Furthermore, the immense shift in the way the masses understood their reality that resulted from the Scientific Revolution exposes the dynamic nature of cultural thought and provides evidence of the potential for a dramatic transition within the Western worldview to occur again. While there is extensive scholarship around this time in history, including numerous critiques of Cartesian philosophy and mechanistic science, an interdisciplinary analysis of the role that the history of science plays within the current environmental discourse is lacking. In response to claims made in Dr. Carolyn Merchant's The Death of Nature, contemporary scientific theories of ecology, plant intelligence, and mycological mutualism that directly combat Descartes's statement provide an opportunity to deconstruct the scientific hierarchies and assumptions of the past, to begin constructing the framework for the next shift in environmental consciousness.
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