A Postmodern Perspective on Science

For the vast majority of those living in the developed world, science has long since supplanted religion as the source of truth about how things are in the world. It’s seemingly unstoppable march towards more and better knowledge about everything from the laws dictating matter trillions of miles away to the best way to organise institutions like schools and hospitals, it seems, has improved the lives of everyone on the planet on a scale unparalleled in history. In its naïve optimism, however, this view misses some of the insidious realities of the field’s unchallenged supremacy over modern society.

First, it is vital to recognise the flaws in the commonly held belief that throughout history, science has moved continuously in a perfect, unblemished and straight line towards ‘progress’, giving us objective truth about the world regardless of society or time. In actual fact, science both periodically undergoes complete ‘paradigm shifts’, as outlined by Thomas Kuhn, and has operated under entirely different societal ‘epistemes’, as outlined by Michel Foucault, producing a very different picture of the nature and validity of science to that which science itself generally presents.

‘Paradigm shifts’ refer to conscious scientific revolutions which occur when an issue arises in a given scientific discipline which challenges the dominant scientific model of the time, which causes another system to replace it, in the process fundamentally changing the nature of the discipline altogether. Examples include the ‘Copernican Revolution’, which replaced the dominant geocentric model of the universe with a heliocentric one, and the replacing of Newtonian gravity with Einstein’s theory of general relativity. ‘Epistemes’ refer to the broader, yet perhaps more important, unconscious biases which affect everyone, including scientists in a given age which, although they do not consider them due to the degree with which they are ingrained in society, fundamentally impact their work. An example of this might be a scientist’s decision to get dressed before going to work, a decision so automatic that they would not even entertain the possibility not to, but one which nonetheless impacts the nature of their research. Thus, it can be seen that science today is not exceptional to science in the past; just as we now see gaping flaws in the way in which science was conducted in every past society, so too is modern science subject to the arbitrary contingencies of its time.

In order to understand the true extent of the impact of this widely held but mistaken view — that science’s claims are objective, universal and incontingent — the true nature of modern power must also be understood. Most think of power, even today, as top-down and punitive in nature, something which was at its most extreme in the middle ages when all-powerful kings were able to brutally torture men for the pettiest of crimes. However, a new, far more pervasive, effective and in some ways insidious kind of power has developed since the enlightenment centred on science and its tendency to classify the world, including human beings.

This new form of power, which Foucault called ‘biopower’ is, in contrast to the traditional kind, constructive in that it uses contemporary scientific discourse and cultural norms to turn people into create willing participants in the system of power rather than using force to scare people into submission to the system. This can be seen in the way that the findings of the social sciences dictate the goals of the most important institutions in a society, such as the school, hospital or prison, as well as the method used to realise them with maximum efficiency. In the modern day this method is comprised of three vital parts — surveillance, normalisation and examination — which serve to calculate, categorise and optimise people according to the standards of science, a practice which was first implemented in prisons and asylums, but which can now be seen at all levels of society. This system is particularly effective due to its ability to make individuals believe that the impetus towards acting in the interest of the system of power stems from themselves and their communities, both of which internalise norms dictated by the sciences, and monitor themselves to conform to these norms. This might manifest itself, for example, in someone trying to reform themselves to work harder and longer for a firm because they believe it would make them ‘better’. Thus, the way in which science understands a subject, for example sexuality, is instrumental in determining people’s own self-worth, identity and, in turn, their actions. This includes whether they are deemed ‘normal’, a definition based upon the ease with which they are moulded into useful and controllable citizens. Indeed, because the very parameters, language and categories available for understanding the world are dictated by the sciences, it can become almost impossible to understand anything, even oneself, independent of the dominant narratives which exist in the sciences.

Furthermore, the implications of such a diffuse, decentralised system of power, emanating both from the thousands of scientific thought leaders entirely unaware of their impact as well as the millions of institutions complicit in normalising these leaders’ findings, becoming dominant are huge. In the past, when a people were dissatisfied with the state of their society, it was clear that the ruler was to blame and, whilst it was very difficult to do so, it was clear that deposing him would enact real change. Today, however, political institutions are just one part of an impossibly complex mechanism of biopower, inseparable even from our own conceptions of ourselves, which optimises and controls our lives according to the conclusions of the sciences, and which affects us innumerable times daily. As such, effecting real change when the system is failing is far more difficult.

Whilst this diagnosis of the power science has over society appears damning, and one might assume that its natural conclusion would be to attempt to do away with its influence altogether, this is not the case. Much like religion before it, science is simply a framework which human beings use to understand the world — destroying its influence would mean replacing it with another, potentially more harmful framework and system of power. Instead, we should aim to recognise both its contingency and its normalising power in order to control its damage in the most sensitive areas.