introduction: science, politics, philosophy and history
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Science, Politics, Philosophy and History
Patrick Petitjean
Published online: 13 June 2008
� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
In the decades following the First World War, a number of scientists making
prominent contributions to their own disciplines simultaneously turned their
attention, both theoretically and in practice, to issues of science policy and the social
and international roles of science. Several also began to focus on the history of
science and contributed to a new flourishing of interest and to new perspectives in
that field. These trends continued during the Second World War and its immediate
aftermath. Scientists at Cambridge University played an essential role in promoting
these, but many others were also involved in other scientific centres.
Scientific humanism provided a common point of reference shared by Marxists
and non-Marxists alike, and a crucial social and political role was allotted to the
history of science.
Following a first international colloquium ‘‘Engaged Biologists: Science,
History, Philosophy and History around Cambridge University in the 1930s’’ in
June 2004,1 a symposium ‘‘Politically Engaged Scientists, 1920–1950: Science,
Politics, Philosophy, History’’2 was organized during the 22nd International
Congress of History of Science (ICHS, Beijing, July 2005).
P. Petitjean (&)
REHSEIS (UMR 7596), Universite Paris 7, Campus Javelot, 2 place Jussieu,
75251 Paris Cedex 05, France
e-mail: [email protected]
P. Petitjean
REHSEIS (Recherches Epistemologiques et Historiques sur les Sciences
Exactes et les Institutions Scientifiques), CNRS, Paris, France
1 The Proceedings are to be published in 2008 by Editions Vuibert (Paris).2 The organizers were: Gregory Blue (University of Victoria), Christopher A. J. Chilvers (National
Museum of Science and Industry, London—presently at the Technical University of Denmark), Anna-K
Mayer (University of Florida—presently at NUACS, University of Bath) and Patrick Petitjean (CNRS-
Paris and University Denis Diderot). Blue and Mayer were unable to attend the sessions.
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Minerva (2008) 46:175–180
DOI 10.1007/s11024-008-9095-x
The object was to draw together discussions on the history of the involvement of
20th-century scientists in the public sphere and related historiographical questions.
This ICHS symposium aimed at highlighting the connections between these aspects
and demonstrating some of the consequences of those connections. The focus was
on scientists active in the 1930s who contributed to the construction of scientific and
ideological networks committed to politically activist approaches to burning issues
of the day. The symposium was received with great interest;3 it gave a new impetus
to these studies.
The foreseen frame (‘‘political engagement’’) appeared to be far too narrow to
account for the diversity of contributions delivered to the symposium. The
traditional views on the engagement of intellectuals have to be broadened: they
were not always a ‘‘left’’ engagement, and do not concern only classical politics
(parties, elections, etc.). Is ‘‘political’’ a helpful qualifier to understand how different
scientists chose to engage with their profession and the wider society? The classical
studies concerning the scientists’ commitments focussed on their explicitly political
activities, or on issues (gender, disciplinary boundaries, institution building) in
which the actors were all explicitly polititical.
There are many other ways through which the scientists participated in the public
sphere, though.4 There are many ways to link science and politics (in the most
general acceptance of this word) with many paths leading to and fro. Sometimes
scientists might have been forced to react to an aggressive social and political
context (Nazism for instance) and to leave an impossible ivory tower; sometimes
they might have called for science (or at least their representation of science) to
support their political and ideological aims; sometimes, they fought for public
recognition of science and rationality as value-laden.
From the 1970s we have inherited a periodic trend in the rise and decline in
political commitments. The rise in the 1930s and the 1940s (the economic crisis, the
fascisms and the War) was supposed to be followed by a decline in the 1950s and
the 1960s (the Cold War, the scientistic consensus between the East and the West
about a new scientific and technical revolution), a new upsurge in the 1970s (the
Viet Nam War and the nuclear issues), fading again in the 1980s. Such a periodic
trend was brought in from the left-leaning scientists and their particular political
engagement in Western countries. But is it still valid for an enlarged conception of
the scientists’ participation in the public sphere? For Third World countries? The
supposed ‘‘holes’’ in the 1950s and 1960s, or 1980s and 1990s, have to be
questioned: in what way are they actually holes, or transformations of the political
activity among scientists? In France, for instance, scientists were deeply involved in
the 1950s in the renewal of science policy and the development of the research
apparatus, with a worldview that was undoubtedly more technocratic than leftist.
3 The symposium brought together several generations of scholars, including Everett Mendelsohn, Gary
Werskey, and Roy MacLeod, who were politically active in the 1960s, and who remain as concerned as
ever with science and politics.4 Science popularization, institutional participation, fight against ‘‘unscientific’’ ideologies, ideological
struggle in the field of theory, political and scientific clubs, international commitment, activism in social
movements or political parties etc.
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Why this renewed interest in the political activity of scientists? The scientists and
activists of the 1970s paid great attention to their predecessors in the Social
Relations of Science Movement (SRSM); they publicly confronted some of them,
and produced a lot of analysis.5 Until now, the critical science movement of the
1970s has not given rise to many historical studies. The recent historical studies—
such as those presented during the symposium—are again more turned towards the
1930s and the 1940s than the 1970s (Nowotny and Rose 1979). It seems as if the
ghosts of Bernal (the science of science, the model of development) and Needham
(Science in China, history of science to oppose Eurocentrism) are more powerful
than their living heirs. The reason might be that this century is facing the
development of a new crisis in the social and international function of science,
related to globalization and the global ecological crisis. It brings back the question
of the social responsibility of scientists, and therefore some young scholars are
turning towards previous generations to understand how they confronted a similar
science crisis.
It also brings back Marxism, which has been the ideological frame for the most
influential engaged scientists and the frame through which the SRSM has been
studied in the 1970s,6 even if some influential figures were not Marxists, such as
Patrick M. S. Blackett or Lancelot Hogben. The SRSM itself was an alliance
between Marxists, socialists, pragmatic liberals, all shades of the Left, etc. If
Marxism was a common reference, there was a considerable distance between the
British Marxists and Gramsci (for instance), between Needham and Bernal, or
between Bohm and Rosenfeld.7 And Marxism is still a living ideology, which
escaped from fossilisation, with many descendants in the present time.
Finally, the most important issue to come out of the symposium might have been
the role of history of science, a nice reflexive question, probably inspired by the
invisible omnipresence of Joseph Needham during this Chinese ICHS. The social
and political function of history of science was intimately embedded in the political
engagement of Needham and his colleagues within UNESCO and the newly
founded International Union of History of Science (IUHS). For them, there is no
science without history of science. History of science has to be part of the social
responsibility of scientists.
But what about the social responsibility and the political engagement for the
historians of science themselves? The question remained open. For example, why
did the International Academy of History of Science consent to keep Arnold
Reymond, a Professor in Lausanne University, as its President from 1937 to 1947,
who was the main supporter of conferring an ‘‘Honoris Causa’’ Ph.D. on Benito
Mussolini in 1937? Historians of science sometimes appear to suffer amnesia about
their own political history.
5 The most known is Werskey (1988). The ‘‘British Society for Social Responsibility in Science’’ and the
‘‘Radical Science Movement’’ also published many papers celebrating the 1930s and Russian delegation
for the 2nd ICHS (London, 1931).6 Gary Werskey (2007) has recently revisited the ‘‘visible college’’ and its replications in a tribute to Bob
Young.7 See the papers by Anja Skaar Jacobsen and by Christian Forstner.
Introduction: Science, Politics, Philosophy and History 177
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Five contributions have been taken from the symposium to be published in this
volume.8 They represent a panel of the various approaches, among which some
depart from the envisaged frame. They provide a good, albeit partial image of the
symposium. Four papers are constructed around some biographical features of
physicists (Bohm, Rosenfeld, Eddington and Burgers), who had in common a desire
to link their politics or ideology with their interpretation of the ‘‘new physics’’. The
last one discusses the scientists’ networks.
Matt Stanley introduces the case of A. S. Eddington, the British astronomer and
his famous popularization of science in the 1920s. He was a Quaker, and a resolute
enemy of Marxism, of its materialism and determinism. The author selected
Eddington as an example of a political engagement with a completely different
form, and a different political agenda, than the left ones, but with a background
similar to the SRSM. Politics have to be sought in science far beyond the visible
college. Eddington encountered difficulties in having his religious worldview
coincide with his representation of science. He called for the new physics against
materialism and determinism, and, on these grounds, his popularization of science
was part of his political fight against communism. Freethinkers, such as Chapman
Cohen, fought Eddington on political and philosophical grounds. For the author, the
apparent conflict was about determinism in physics, but the actual issue was about
the political future of Great Britain.
Anja Skaar Jacobsen brings to light the role played by the theoretical physicist
Leon Rosenfeld in history and philosophy of science throughout his entire career.
His commitment to history of science in the 1930s was a political one, rooted in the
Marxist worldview which he probably gained through his friendship with Paul
Langevin, Frederic Joliot and Jacques Salomon during his stay in Paris in the late
1920s. The author develops the various aspects of Rosenfeld’s agenda in history of
science which was to produce a deeper knowledge of the scientific concepts and
theories and to understand the dual interactions between science and society.9 His
Marxist worldview conflicted with other Marxists. One result was that he supported
the complementarity argument in quantum physics, contrary to orthodox Marxists
such as David Bohm and Jean-Pierre Vigier.10 He wrote a very severe criticism of
Bernal’s Science in History, in which he accused Bernal of reducing (as Hessen did)
the origin of scientific research exclusively to the fulfilment of direct social tasks.
All Marxists, but all different.
Christian Forstner turns his interest to David Bohm, another theoretical physicist
and a Marxist, but with a weak political commitment in the public sphere. The
originality of this paper is its analysis of the intellectual trajectory, his mixing of
science and politics, through Ludwik Fleck’s ‘‘thought-collective’’ methodology. He
followed Bohm’s progressive isolation from the American physicist milieu, in
which he was at first fully integrated, on philosophical (his causal theory of hidden
8 Unfortunately, it was impossible to publish in this volume Chilvers’ important contribution on the
presence of the Russian delegation to the 1931 ICHS in London. On this subject see Chilvers (2006, pp.
179–206).9 In that, he shared much with Needham.10 See also Forstner’s paper.
178 P. Petitjean
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variables), political (his Marxism) and geographical (his Brazilian exile in October
1951) grounds. For Bohm, as for Rosenfeld at first, his main political struggle is
with the interpretation of science, and it is more important than a public
engagement. Materialism has to win in philosophy in order to later win in society,
but Bohm left the fight for materialism in society to others. Like Rosenfeld, Bohm
opposed the crude materialism of Hessen and other Russian scientists, but he also
fought Rosenfeld and Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Geert Somsen’s paper introduces the figure of the Dutch physicist Johannes M.
Burgers, whose approach shared much with Eddington’s, but the political fight was
against the Marxist Left. Burgers was far from materialist, but he was not engaged
against it. His agenda was to bring up a synthetic representation of science, to be
used by the Dutch reform movement called the ‘‘Breakthrough Movement’’. His
social function of science was based on an interpretation of science as value-laden,
not value-free, which was then able to supply the ideology needed by such a
movement. The representation of science determines its social function, but the
representation of science is not independent of its political and social context, which
called for it. Burgers is seen by the author as typical of a Dutch form of the SRSM,
and the paper pays as much attention to this movement as to Burgers as a person.
Finally, he notices that, in contrast to Eddington, Burgers did not hesitate to
cooperate with Marxist scientists within the ICSU11 Committee on Science and its
Social Relations.
Patrick Petitjean’s paper, in which Burgers and Rosenfeld also appear, goes back
to the traditional SRSM in the 1930s, which was the common origin of the WFScW
and of the Division of Natural and Exact Sciences in UNESCO. Scientists from the
pre-war Franco–British networks tried to build a new scientific internationalism
when the war was coming to its end. UNESCO and the WFScW were both
established in 1946 and conceived as complementary by their promoters. The rising
Cold War provoked political differentiation among these scientists. UNESCO and
the WFScW embodied different conceptions of scientific internationalism, which
became progressively opposed. The WFScW did not have time to give birth to a
new internationalism before being instrumentalized by the USSR (which only
joined the movement in the mid-1950s). The Science Department partially renewed
the international co-operation with Joseph Needham and Julian Huxley, but was
soon normalized when they left UNESCO. Both projects failed in trying to put the
SRSM values into practice.
The presence of many scientists in the public sphere is manifold, and different in
many ways from what appears in the general history of intellectuals. It cannot be
reduced to a political engagement, even when such a political dimension is
explicitly claimed. The papers explore some of the forms taken by this presence, as
well as the different underlying relations between science, philosophy, history, and
politics.
Quite often this presence is developed ‘‘in the name of science’’, a value-laden
science. When exploring the background and the unsaid, you find that the
representation and function of science is fundamentally different according to the
11 ICSU: International Council of Scientific Unions.
Introduction: Science, Politics, Philosophy and History 179
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contexts and to the ‘‘politics’’ professed by each scientist, or group of scientists.
Going deeper, you met a continuous stream of interactions between science and
politics. Against the Mertonian ideology of value-free, objective science, all
contributions assume that science is, in itself, a politically engaged endeavour, a
socially contextualized and value-laden activity. In that, they are in line with the
seminal works of Anna-K. Mayer (2004, pp. 41–72) and, more recently, of George
Reisch (2005).
References
Chilvers, C.A.J. 2006. La Signification historique de Boris Hessen. In Les Racines sociales eteconomiques des Principia de Newton, ed. Serge Guerout, 179–206. Paris: Editions Vuibert.
Mayer, Anna-K. 2004. Setting up a discipline II: British history of science and the ‘end of ideology’,
1931–1948. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 35: 41–72.
Nowotny, Helga, and Hilary Rose, eds. 1979. Counter-movements in the sciences: Science and anti-science. Sociology of the Sciences. A Yearbook, Vol. III. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Reisch, George A. 2005. How the Cold war transformed philosophy of science. To the Icy slopes of logic.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Werskey, Gary. 1988. The visible college. A collective biography of the British scientists and Socialists ofthe 1930s. London: Free Association Books.
Werskey, Gary. 2007. The Marxist Critique of Capitalist Science: A History in Three Movements?Science and Culture. http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/werskey.html.
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