Science, Technology, Technocracy and Democracy

“One of the assumptions of the nineteenth century was that, with science, mankind could be freed from politics. Science was perceived as the reign of logic and reason, while politics was the reign of emotion and passion. Science was expected to achieve the Kingdom of Reason through different means. First, it would end poverty, and this was supposed to bring happiness and peace. Second, it would teach people how to think rationally, and this would lead to rational behavior in all spheres of activity. Third, social and political matters in themselves could be dealt with scientifically, and this would eliminate irrational disputes and produce the best of societies.

“However challenged by historical experiences and intellectual refutations, these assumptions had not faded away. They remain very much in force as myths and ideologies that justify the activities of scientists and of those that use science or its cover, for whatever goals they wish to pursue. With this view of science, politics is not suppressed in fact, but it tends to be denied as unworthy, irrational and undignified. It tends to be suppressed intellectually, and this is the way in which science and technology can become technocracy. We can understand this process better if we look closely at one of each of the means science was supposed to eliminate politics.

“One of the important realizations of the nineteen seventies is that science growth and technological development is not an endless frontier, but is approaching some limits that are already visible. These limits are being placed by the foreseeable exhaustion of natural resources and new frontiers to explore, and by the restrictions societies are starting to place in the ever-increasing expansion of the scientific and technological establishments. The decision not to produce the Super-Sonic Transport airplane in the US, the anti-climatic end of the lunar program, the campaigns against nuclear energy, the indecisions and difficulties with fusion energy, the resistance and limitations imposed in the US on the recombinant DNA research, all this represents a new trend and challenge to which science in America was not used to. In the preface to the recent issue of Daedalus dedicated to the ‘Limits of scientific inquiry,’ the present situation is compared with twenty years before, when such a concept, ‘so meaningful in the context of today's world, would seem inappropriate, even incongruous to a society overwhelmingly preoccupied with the problems created by the orbiting object called Sputnik.’ (Daedalus, 1978, 108)”

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