Science and the Public
Review by Thomas E. Dickins
If one were new to the field these chapters would serve well as an orientation. However, Potochnik also uses her essay to promote a public engagement with science model that draws in scientists, philosophers, and the public.
The Cambridge Elements series produces extended essays that provide an overview of a discipline from the author’s perspective. In this short book philosopher Angela Potochnik covers core areas of the public understanding of science (chapter 3), trust in science (chapter 4), and participation in science (chapter 5). If one were new to the field these chapters would serve well as an orientation. However, Potochnik also uses her essay to promote a public engagement with science model that draws in scientists, philosophers, and the public.
In chapter 1, Potochnik outlines the scale of investment in science, its central position in society, and the difficulty some have in accessing and engaging with it. These factors establish four relationships between science and the public: 1) the use of scientific products (e.g., medicines); 2) regulatory and normative principles derived from science (e.g., legislation based on scientific understanding); 3) knowledge of science (e.g., via formal education in the school system); and 4) participation in science (e.g., through careers in STEM). Potochnik notes the role of philosophy in discussions across all four, for example, in reference to the analysis of values and science, the discussion about how science can be used for social goods, as well as the nature of trust (and distrust) in science.
It would be easy to see these relationships as unidirectional — science is produced, and the public make of it what they will. Any such thoughts are dispelled when Potochnik turns to what science owes. Science and science education is paid for, to large extent, by the public. This is an investment obligation. There are also obligations of societal value — science creates epistemic products of use to society — and of reparation. By reparation she means that some societal problems have been caused by science, and science should act to resolve them.
Chapter 2 presents a discussion of the Vienna Circle which Potochnik uses as a model of how philosophers and scientists can operate with both epistemic and public virtues in mind. The Circle emerged during the social and political changes following World War I, also a time of shifts in science that challenged fundamental assumptions. In 1923 Moritz Schlick began to coordinate meetings of scientists and philosophers in Vienna to discuss the detail and implications of these changes. This Vienna Circle, as it was dubbed later, is most famous for its development of logical empiricism, an attempt to produce a formal method to unify science. But Potochnik focuses on two overlooked aspects of the Vienna Circle: first, the multidisciplinary nature of the group, consisting of philosophers, physicists, sociologists, mathematicians, and economists, many of whom were active in more than one field; second, the Circle’s public engagement.
The Vienna Circle collaborated with the Ernst Mach Society, founded by the socialist Austrian Freethinkers with the intention of providing science education to a broad audience. Joint talks were arranged, hosting political radicals, scientists and philosophers. Among them was Otto Neurath, a sociologist, who was involved in social housing projects for the ruling Social Democratic Workers Party and ran The Museum of Society and Economy.
The Vienna Circle’s relationship with the public was one of service. The multidisciplinary group brought new ideas to the public in novel ways. They saw their mission as laying the philosophical foundations for a modern science and equipping citizens with conceptual tools to make the most of the new science; science was seen as central to modern life.
In the final chapter (6) Potochnik advocates ‘responsive science’ in the service of the public. She asks what research scientists and their institutions should do. Two constraints are apparent — ethical and material. We need to clarify our values and make collective decisions about how to allocate limited funding. Potochnik believes that research priorities need greater foregrounding in scientific institutions and should involve the public. She also favours increasing the diversity of people involved in science.
This proposal is political and takes aim at institutional process. It is to be contrasted with ethical process approaches which attempt to manage science considering previously agreed ethical aims. The political approach manages values in the context of changing societal requirements and is in this way responsive. It also manages potential conflict between values by ensuring sufficient diversity to provide robust criticism of each idea presented.
Potochnik relies on key aspects of science as a process. Put simply, scientists will critically evaluate all ideas. Where there are few ideas, due to cultural homogeneity, then the risk of bias is high. But where cultural heterogeneity introduces many ideas and many advocates for each, then critical scrutiny will find the most useful aspects of the total presentationand conceptual hegemonies are prevented.
Potochnik sees a role for philosophers in her responsive science, to clear confusions and lay conceptual groundwork for fruitful discussion, to empower the publics who are to influence scientific priorities, as well as to enable the scientists. She gives a good critical review of her idea, and is presenting a framework for a different kind of public engagement for us to contemplate and develop.
This book is the outcome of work enabling responsive science at Potochnik’s Centre for Public Engagement with Science, University of Cincinnati, USA. The exposition is wonderfully clear, the argument well organised and with excellent cross-referencing, citations and links to external resources. I can imagine using this both as a primer for discussion with undergraduate and postgraduate students, but also with external stakeholders looking to engage with science.
Tom Dickins is professor of behavioural science at Middlesex University, UK, and a research associate at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics. He has recently co-edited (with Ben Dickins) Evolutionary Biology: Contemporary and Historical Reflections Upon Core Theory (2023).
