The relation between science and politics, knowledge and power, may sound like an arcane and abstract issue, a concern for eggheads and wonks. But, as events across many university campuses at the tail end of 2023 showed, it is very far being a dry and specialist issue. Rather how these two major elements of modern society are understood to be related – not least by society’s custodians of higher learning – directly shapes such central matters as the parameters of acceptable speech and action in public, and even what specifically is to be celebrated or condemned. Responding to the problems of the Anthropocene, which are the focus of this podcast, will also need careful navigation through the parallel and inseparable challenges of potential breakdowns in civilisation; and this will not be possible if science itself is a lead protagonist in the latter. Recorded in December 2023, in episode 15 we pick up these key issues for a Science for the Anthropocene (S4A); or rather, we pick them up again and specifically, in order to clarify and distinguish the argument underpinning this podcast
– regarding the importance of rethinking the relations of science and politics, and the shift to strategic ethical wisdom (or ‘phronesis’) – from seemingly similar positions – regarding the conflation of knowledge and power – that have unsurprisingly received renewed and energised criticism following those recent events. Science today, on the one hand, needs to engage much more concertedly with its political context and implications; but it must also, on the other, not negate the crucial and precious distinction between science and politics, on pain of destruction not only of itself, but also of truthful and civilized public spheres. How can both of these be true? And how can science, and the institutions of higher education, walk this tightrope to be part of the ‘solution’, not a major part of the problem?
