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Magic vs. Modernity

By Thomas R. DeGregori
In the European Enlightenment, the belief was that science and reason would soon sweep myth and magic into oblivion. For some, myth included religion while others operated in terms of some variant of Deism or even Theism, believing that there was an unknown power beyond what was known and knowable to humans. In fact, many scientists, then and now, could fully exercise their religious convictions and interpret them in such a way as not to allow them to interfere with scientific understanding. For those for whom there was no conflict between science and religion, it was because particular statements or religious beliefs about the way the things work always gave way to emerging facts and theories of scientific inquiry. Science and reason became the basis for advancing human understanding and enlightenment.

By the time that I was an undergraduate, the enlightenment ideal was well established in my University. The opposition to evolution was thought to have been laid to rest in the 1920s; the religious groups that continued to oppose Darwin were small and marginal; their beliefs were expected to fade away as their children studied biology and other sciences in school. The various romantic reactions in literature and in such areas as the various arts and crafts movements, organic agriculture or homeopathy were likewise considered to be minor and relatively harmless. The literature professors who railed against science and materialism had ways of life not all that different from their colleagues in the sciences.

More violent reactions to science and reason such as the Nazis were explained as reactions by those who had been harmed by the transition to modernity and signaled a dying gasp and not an indicator of anything to follow. In any case, this reaction had been permanently laid to rest in May 1945. In the emerging post-colonial world, students were flocking to Europe and North America for education, and newly minted countries were establishing Universities with science, technology and engineering programs modeled on those of their former colonial masters. Contrary to post-modernist and other critics, few of us believed that Western Culture was a universal model for all to follow without question, but many of us believed that science and techno-engineering understandings transcended cultural boundaries and created a global discourse and mechanisms for advancing the human endeavor.

Six decades after World War II, now into the 21st century, the area of basic human understanding of the world around us has greatly expanded and yet the enlightenment vision seems farther away than ever in my lifetime. The extent and horizons of modern knowledge are beyond the comprehension of earlier generations. And this knowledge and understanding is far more than merely being "theories" in the pejorative misuse of the term theory. Modern knowledge has pragmatically proved itself in helping us to live much longer, healthier lives and enjoy amenities undreamed of by our progenitors.

It has to be one of the great paradoxes of our time that as our knowledge has expanded in recent decades, the opposition to it has become more assertive and politically potent. One of the crowning ironies of the anti-science brigades is that groups that are largely contemptuous of each other often frame their anti-science rhetoric in essentially the same terms. My colleagues in the Humanities cluck piously about those ignorant rednecks who oppose Darwin and promote ‘‘intelligent design,’’ yet they in their own way hold anti-science ideas no less absurd. One strains to find any difference, significant or minor, between the argument of intelligent design that there is in life an "irreducible complexity" and the post-modernist critique of modern science as being "reductionist" and not "holistic." To both in their particular crusades, the species barrier is immutable, or at least should be.

Clearly there must be considerable frustration among scientists as organized groups oppose various forms of science education or scientific research. One recent article included in its title "why scientists are angry" and spoke about the anger that grips scientists when demonstrably false statements are paraded as facts and influence public policy. As an economist with a layman's knowledge of the natural sciences, I understand these frustrations. I am a member of various newsgroups involved in agricultural biotechnology, most of whose contributors are in the sciences. This piece was inspired by a recent extended discussion on the difficulty of combating absurd phobias about transgenic food crops that anti-biotechnology activists have so carefully disseminated. (Unfortunately, other writing commitments prevented me from being other than a passive participant at the time.) Each time one scare is seemingly laid to rest, another rises, as one scientist described it, like a hare from nowhere. Even those fears that are massively refuted never die, but seem to be in some Sargasso Sea of cyber space awaiting a new current to set them afloat again as part of the litany of horrors of genetic modification of plants.

There were discussions about being proactive, but the question becomes how can one be proactive against opponents who may be ignorant of science but who lack nothing in imagination and talent for fear-mongering? On a typical day, a scientist awakens and is concerned with ongoing research . An activist wakes up thinking about what the next campaign should be or whom they should they contact in the local media and whose friendship they should cultivate. Some even have focus groups to help them select the scare terms that would be most effective. Like the multi-national corporations that they attack, some of the activist groups begin promoting one cause, then morph into all-purpose NGOs with a diverse agenda of causes with which to garner publicity and raise money. An anti-science agenda links the dangers of biotechnology to the evils of multi-national corporations along with destruction of the environment and cultural and biological diversity; all turn into lucrative sources for fund raising and membership recruitment.

It is difficult to be proactive when you are dealing with carefully calculated rational irrationality. When one is confronting claims of transgenic bacteria that could destroy all life on earth or similar unscientific nonsense, one is responding to a kind of irrationality that is impossible to predict and therefore to be prepared to respond to in advance, let alone educate the public on the subject. However irrational various anti-science proclamations may be, their advocates are supremely rational in the sense of being very skilled at crafting their propaganda so as to win public support and influence policy. Some groups are so good at driving public opinion to support their anti-science agenda, some of us wonder whether their leaders may be dealing from the bottom of the deck to their own members as well as to the public.

The media may often put an obvious pejorative like "Franken food" in quotation marks, but too often the media routinely accept the terminology of the activists, even though the habit introduces biases which violate professional journalistic standards. Pollen drift from transgenic plants is almost always referred to, tendentiously, as "contamination" even though there is no evidence of harm. Similarly, "organic" agriculture is described as "sustainable" and "earth-friendly" while their food crops are said to be better tasting, fresher and healthier, without a shred of evidence for any such claims. In Houston, the food writers for the main paper have become unwitting propagandists for "organic" agriculture, as has happened in many other large and small circulation newspapers.

The 24 hour news cycle has led to a reverse feeding frenzy, with activist groups all too ready to conjure up a scandal, inflating a statistically insignificant variation in a clinical study to a threat to the human endeavor or even to the planet, and to label a defense as part of a corporate cover-up. Scientists attempt to respond to these scare stories on a case by case basis, trying to explain the nature of the scientific inquiry involved and the way it is used to interpret experimental results. That is how scientists work, and the only way to wear down the opposition to scientific reasoning.

Countering falsehoods with facts is a necessary condition to promote better understanding of issues involving science, but unfortunately, it is not a sufficient condition. Scientists present their evidence with appropriate qualifications, and with recognition that there are no absolute truths. The anti-science ideologues have no problem with absolutes and certainties. The scientists’ answer to the often asked rhetorical question - can you guarantee that no harm will ever come from transgenic crops - is obviously no. The activist now moves in for the kill, making it difficult for a scientist to explain that one cannot give such a guarantee for any phenomenon. There is a blatant but unstated falsehood in the rhetorical question, in that it implies that there are alternative actions that carry a zero risk on into the indefinite future. That transgenic plant breeding may possibly be the most precise, predictable form of plant breeding yet devised by humans is simply lost in the rhetoric of fear.

A further problem is that editors and other news professionals are rarely educated in science and have little understanding of the scientific method. My experience has been that newspapers hate to make substantive corrections to a major story. One case involved a major story of two columns with picture on the front page of the Sunday edition and over one full page inside. In this case (in which I was involved), a group of scientists wrote in and pointed out some of the many errors in the story. Even though the writer had traveled to Mexico to do a story on transgenic maize in the company of anti-biotechnology activists, the newspaper's ombudsman defended the objectivity of her reporting. Not only were there errors in the story, but the institutions and individuals that were not interviewed, as well as those that were, made it clear that the activists were more than just good traveling companions. In an extended exchange with the ombudsman, it was admitted that the author did not even know of the existence of the world's leading experts and the research and development institutions on maize and on the issues raised in the story that were available in Mexico and Texas to be interviewed. I have compared it to going to Rome to do story on a controversy in Roman Catholicism and not knowing about either the Pope or the Vatican.

Had the writer traveled to Mexico in the company of employees of a biotechnology firm, we would never have heard the end of it and anything written would have been dismissed simply on this basis alone without the necessity of any factual refutation. A widely shared characteristic of anti-science groups across the political spectrum is a Manichaean view of the complete corruption of those they oppose, and the purity of their own cause.

In many respects the problem is more complicated and therefore more difficult for scientists to address. It is becoming increasingly obvious that no matter how clear and meticulous in fact and scientific reason one may be in presenting a scientific theory or refuting pseudo-scientific falsehoods, a large portion of the public is simply not receptive. The question is why and what can be done about it? The why is easier to address than is what can be done about it.

The very human curiosity that leads to scientific inquiry makes us creatures who wish to have answers and make use of these answers to navigate the world around us. I have often quoted, from John Dewey's The Quest for Certainty (Dewey, 1929, p. 3):

Man who lives in a world of hazards is compelled to seek for security. He has sought to attain it in two ways. One of them began with an attempt to propitiate the powers which environ him and determine his destiny. ... The other course is to invent arts and by their means turn the powers of nature to account; man constructs a fortress out of the very conditions and forces which threaten him. ... This is the method of changing the world through action, as the other is the method of changing the self in emotion and ideas.
In many ways myth and science are two sides of the same coin as attempts to explain the world around us. It is thus understandable that some of us have believed that, as the realm of what could be understood is expanded, the realm of myth would give way and contract. What we failed to realize is that we essentially inherit the myths: we grow up with them as a part of our everyday culture, so it requires little effort in subscribing to them. Much basic science has become a part of this package, so people have no problem in believing in many cause and effect relationships. What takes effort is to learn of the larger dimensions of science that have been progressively displacing myth or simply superseding a lack of knowledge in a number of areas. It is far easier to cling to inherited ways of thought then it is to engage in a process of learning new things.

Though many seek to cling to the old beliefs in a pure form, science and technology have transformed our world in ways that are too obvious to be totally ignored. There are a variety of pseudo-science beliefs that are an extension of traditional mythology and purport to be compatible with modern science, or better still, they purport to be science in a purer and less corrupted form. On this view intelligent design is better science than what is being offered by biologists, whose views are distorted by their secular ideologies. On the other side of the spectrum, beliefs in a natural harmony that is violated by biotechnology is superior science to that of scientists who have been bought off by large corporations (whether or not they have ever received any funding from them). Any argument that the conflict over the teaching of evolution or genetic modification is one of science vs. anti-science is vehemently rejected.

The ease of mastering the rhetoric of contemporary pseudo-science is part of its appeal. "Training sessions" in which the pseudo-science vocabulary can be learned have become part of the activists' agenda. The appeal of these beliefs, in addition to their flowing seamlessly from what one has already learned, is that a few simple beliefs seemingly can explain everything - which to a scientist means that they in fact explain nothing.

The world of contemporary knowledge is so vast that it is beyond the comprehension of any individual to master even the smallest part of it. It is far easier to accept an all encompassing pseudo-scientific formula. This worries those of us who wish to create a world where questions of fact are explored and resolved, at least provisionally, by science and reason. This does not preclude differing moral and ethical considerations, but it does mean that morals and ethics can not be based on factual claims that are demonstrably false. An anti-biotechnology referendum that was passed in a California county, defined DNA as a complex protein found in every cell of the body. This egregious error in basic biology seriously undermines the credibility of its proponents - except in the eyes of the believers.

The fact is that we can navigate the world intelligently without the need for myths and pseudo-science. The immensity of knowledge may in some respects be a problem for each of us, but in more important respects, the way in which this knowledge was created provides us with a roadmap. Just because I am in a newsgroup in which scientists exchange ideas, explain issues and counter the errors of the anti-scientists, does not mean that I as an economist, have anything more than a superficial understanding of their explanations. What reinforces my acceptance of what is said is my trust in the scientific method, peer review, and the larger body of scientific practices. Part of my trust is simply that these methods are an integral part of my own work as an economist. It is what allows me to select between competing ideas and navigate my way through the world. And it is the success of this method in transforming our lives for the better that it gives it a moral and ethical dimension.

In my judgment, the scientific method and the democratic ideal are integral to one another. Both scientific inquiry and democracy are self-correcting methods, one is correction by ongoing inquiry in which prior beliefs no longer stand the test of experimental inquiry and new more verifiable propositions supersede them. Democracies can correct this election's errors in the next election or the one after that; both are a work-in-progress.

Being self-correcting is an implicit recognition of possibly being wrong. Whatever the possibility of being wrong may be, the very self-correcting aspect of the process is one more factor that makes the outcomes of science or democracy more likely to be right today than any other way, and even more likely to be right tomorrow than any other form of inquiry. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government except for all others. Given the possibility of error, both science and the democratic ideal reject absolutism of all sorts, including those that entitle one to trample on the rights of others such as destroying a field of transgenic crops in the name of saving the planet. Tolerance is a key idea.

In science, there is or should be a continued re-examination of the validity of the method as it is practiced. In recent days there have been articles in prestigious journals concerning the way in which biases are creeping into scientific research such as clinical tests for pharmaceuticals, and suggestions for ways of overcoming them. The activists will point to these studies, not as a strength of scientific inquiry, but as evidence of its corruption. However, when is the last time that any of the groups pushing a pseudo-science agenda stopped to question the validity of their beliefs or whether their actions were helping or harming humankind? A thriving democracy should always be involved in internal debate concerning its ideals and practices. Both science and democracy require freedom of thought and freedom of exchange of ideas for their effective functioning. Participating actively and intelligently in a democracy provides the same barriers as being knowledgeable about science; it takes concerted effort and is far more complicated than simply following the dictates of a peerless leader or a totalizing ideology. The widespread acceptance of the basic principles of democracy means that like science, many more claim to be adhering to it than is the case in practice.

Evidence-based knowledge derived from experimental scientific inquiry allows policy formation on every level from the personal to the public, to be dynamic and respond to changing circumstances. Ideologically driven policy is almost by definition binding and static, capable of obstruction but not progress. John Dewey spoke about a "warranted assertion." However ignorant each of us may be about other areas of science, technology, and engineering, we can each accept their findings as being both provisional as all knowledge is, and at the same time to be warranted assertions as a basis for action until better ideas come along. In other words, instead of the blind faith of believers, we can simultaneously have trust and still retain a measure of reservation and skepticism. This requires that all inquiry be kept open and that vigorous dissent be encouraged.

It has often been noted that the critics of genetically modified food crops, who frame their opposition both as pseudo-science and as opposition to corporate dominance of agriculture, have had a perverse impact on the industry exactly opposite to what they claim to be their intent. By attacking the science of transgenic modification, they make it difficult to get the kind of public research funding for it that would give farmers public and private sources for the kinds of crop improvement that biotechnology makes possible. Not only do the protests reduce public research funding for agricultural biotechnology, but the cumbersome, expensive regulations that frightened politicians are imposing make it virtually impossible for small firms to afford them, which then leads to the kind of industry concentration that the critics claim to be fighting.

The "precautionary principle" and other alleged safety concerns that have been driving up the cost of getting new crops marketed, have also had other perverse impacts. As I argued above, our trust in the scientific inquiry that provides us with the evidence for the most warranted actions, including considerations of safety, is predicated upon an open process, including dissenting views. In a kind of Gresham's law of public attention span, bad criticism drives out good. Scientists are rightfully hesitant to voice criticism when it might identify them with anti-science activists. Further, there have been too many instances where research that raises a legitimate safety or environmental concern is seized and grossly distorted or publicized before a final analysis can be made. Scientists who seek to withold their findings until the research is completed, or who offer a more benign interpretation of their results than those of sensationalized media coverage, will have their integrity questioned and be charged with a cover-up.

Technology Review had a recent set of postings where Stewart Brand suggested that critics not oppose nuclear power but embrace it and be involved as critics who want to see it done right rather than simply opposing it. Needless to say, his wise suggestion was less than enthusiastically accepted by those ideologically opposed to nuclear power. The major criticism against activist groups is that they are obstructing the introduction of new technology and new improved ways of doing things for human betterment and opposing the science that can continue this process. In my judgment, equally as deleterious, is their stifling of the critical component of the dynamics of scientific inquiry that appropriately restrains technophiles such as this author and makes the use of it safer, fairer and more intelligent and beneficial to the human endeavor.

What has been happening is that scientists have been winning the battles but still managing to lose the war. The message here is that scientists have to operate at two levels, continually countering the pseudo-science of false fears and ideological driven beliefs, but at the same time working to bring about a fundamental transformation in the public's understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry, and allowing scientists to operate within it.

Scientists have to recognize that when they are countering a demonstrably false idea, they may well be entering a conflict with the total worldview of those who hold them. To the family in Kansas that rejects evolution, the biology teacher at the local school is doing far more than merely teaching science. The science teacher is in effect entering their home and family and undercutting beliefs upon which their family and sense of community is based. Is it any wonder that they feel like victims? To many activists, the plant bio-technologist is contaminating and polluting the planet as part of a corporate plot to dominate the global economy. Is it any wonder that they also feel like victims? To the absolutist mindset, breeching a principle is the same as abandoning it, and therefore any concession to differing views amounts to total surrender. This helps to explain why many disillusioned ex-communists became radical conservatives, why activists' opposition to transgenic food crops is total, and why the scientific research use of embryonic stem cells is defined as taking a human life.

As the new millennium was approaching, there were many candidates for the greatest achievement of the past 1,000 years; one such candidate was the development of the scientific method. That candidate has my vote. If we work at it, one of the greatest achievements of this new millennium could be the continued refinement of the scientific method, its integration into the beliefs and practices of everyday life for the greater part of humankind, and the continuous improvement in the quality of life of earth's inhabitants that could be realized as a result.

REFERENCE

Dewey, John. 1929. The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action. 1980 reprint, New York: Capricorn Books, G.P. Putnam & Sons.