POL 381 - Science, Politics, Authority

“What do we want? Evidence-based policy! When do we want it? After peer review!” was a rallying cry against the Trump Administration’s attack on the EPA. How did this vision of science as a guide and resource for democratic politics emerge and consolidate? Does it remain compelling? If it isn’t, how can and should science serve democracy? This course investigates how science became a powerful source of political and cultural authority, how it has disgraced and redeemed itself, weathered storms and fallen into crisis. We begin with some early-modern pioneers and their instruments: Francis Bacon’s rack and Galileo Galilei’s telescope. We’ll encounter doubters and warnings: Giambattista Vico on the madness of rationality and Mary Shelley’s monsters. We’ll look at institutions and technologies of credibility, from the laboratory and the witnessing public to the origins of peer review and the footnote. At scientific selves, epistemic virtues, and the many modes of objectivity. We’ll learn how science got it’s Janus face: public and protected, open and inaccessible, a model of civility and a fortress of exclusion. We survey science gone bad (eugenics, nuclear weapons, big data surveillance) and ask about future fallout. Will AI kill us all, or just take our jobs? Is geoengineering nutty (space mirrors!) or necessary (Negative Emissions Technologies)? We’ll meet postmodern pranksters (Bruno Latour), liars (election deniers), concern trolls (vaccine skeptics), and repentant sinners (Latour, again). We’ll fret about fraud and ponder Psychology’s replication crisis. We’ll see science on stage, science at the bar, science in the streets (ACT UP), and science in retreat. This will be a wild ride through treacherous terrain. “Science is Real,” the lawn signs say. But is it authoritative? And can it be democratic?

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.