Science In Democracy

Political controversies over scientific issues ranging from global warming to biotechnology demonstrate how closely politics today is intertwined with science. The traditional view of the relationship between science and politics--in which politics provides the money and science provides the knowled [...]
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Political controversies over scientific issues ranging from global warming to biotechnology demonstrate how closely politics today is intertwined with science. The traditional view of the relationship between science and politics--in which politics provides the money and science provides the knowledge--seems increasingly untenable and outdated. In "Science in Democracy, " Mark Brown draws on the history of political thought, science studies, and democratic theory for insights into how to democratize science without undermining its potential contribution to society. Brown enlists such canonical and contemporary thinkers as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Dewey, and Latour to conceptualize a more effective and legitimate role for science in democracy. After outlining the origins of the liberal-rationalist dichotomy between politics and science, showing how it parallels a similar dichotomy between direct democracy and representative government, Brown develops an alternate perspective based on the mutual shaping of participation and representation in both science and politics. He illustrates his argument with examples from different types of advisory bodies, including bioethics councils and various lay forums. Different institutional venues, he shows, mediate different elements of democratic representation. If we understand democracy as an institutionally differentiated system of collective representation that articulates and transforms both lay knowledge and technical expertise, Brown argues, then the best way to respond to politicized science is to democratize it. Simply put, this book shows how scientific and political representation can improve democracy.