Science Scepticism, from Left to Right

A few days ago, Chris Dillow asked a question: 'There was a time when scepticism about science was mainly a lefty thing (in the 60s, inspired by Feyerabend?) The psychohistory of how it became a rightist theme needs telling.' It's an interesting question, one which I'm sure more learned people could probably offer a good response to. But sheer ignorance has never stopped me from propounding on a subject, and it isn't going to do so now!

I think the intriguing difference between these two forms of scepticism is that the Left scepticism centred around the method and authority of science, whereas the Right scepticism centres around the results.

What Kuhn was doing, in responding to Popper's notion of falsificationism, was to point to how the methodology of science doesn't stack up with the reality. We are all, after all, taught about the scientific method: make a hypothesis, perform an experiment, see what the result is. The Left scepticism centred around questioning this.

That is, whilst the claim may be that scientists follow a methodology that provides objective results, the actual criteria for what counts as 'truth' 'a result' is often based on other criteria. Hence the paradigms: systems of knowledge that the studies exist in and are used to explain them. Contrary to the image portrayed 'proving' something as true, or falsifying something, doesn't automatically negate the previous knowledge, it's just adapted until a new paradigm is ready. Feyerabend is slightly more extreme in arguing that this is no real method; what decides a result as true is based on other criteria beyond 'the scientific method'.

This is what was being challenged, in essence. We have, even now, a cultural idea that science is an absolute authority: what it says is true is true, because of the power of the method. But this can be dangerous for all sorts of reasons. There may well be lots of biases that are going on in the reasonings but the result is still treated as 'the truth'. I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that this emerges in the 1960s and 70s, where post-colonialism, civil rights movements and second-wave feminism were questioning a lot of the hierarchies and assumptions of the world, and particularly sciences' role in granting these hierarchies and assumptions authority. The target is often physics, I imagine, because if you can prove that even the greatest and most successful of the sciences suffers from cultural and social biases then more malleable ones like biology and the social sciences certainly do.

This is still present in the Left, in challenging uses of statistics and how they're used on, for example, questions of poverty reduction and what the marker should be for that and, perennially, questions around IQ and measurements of intelligence and 'races'. I think it has, fallen away a bit, however, largely as a fear of how questioning science might be used to undermine responses to climate change.

For the Right sceptics, however, centres on the results - that is what they question is not the method, which is perfect, but rather the people who are using the method and the purpose. You see this quite a lot: the authority of science is appealed to to prove that there are only two genders/sexes, that climate change is just a naturally occurring phenomenon etc. That scientists are saying something different is because they are not using the method properly; they've been corrupted because they're closet communists, or social justice warriors or homosexuals (and God knows what else). The argument here is that if the method was just used properly and wasn't infected by personal beliefs then it would produce the 'correct' results.

In the end then, the shift to Right scepticism is probably part and parcel of the same phenomenon’s that characterise, e.g. incel movements. Science is now challenging a lot of pre-existing hierarchies that favoured dominant groups: men are more logical/rational than women; white people are naturally more intelligent; there are set gender roles that stem from biology; Western civilisation is the superior civilisation because of the people's genius; climate change is just a natural happening and it's just bad luck it's going to impact on the Global South hardest. All of these are things that science, precisely down to a greater understanding of how the method can be affected by social and cultural assumptions, is now challenging. This, consequently, sees a lot of people move to the Right, which politically is largely about preserving status quos and maintaining social hierarchies.

What the Right sceptics of science are after, then, is much the same as Rightists who hate video games because they don't chain mail bikinis, or Star Wars because it has woman Jedi and so on: to go back to a world where everything was fit around them. Because if the 'method' of science was followed properly, that's what it would show.

Herd Immunity and Social Darwinism

One of the interesting things that has come out of Boris Johnson having to go into intensive care is the number of Conservatives, Johnson included, who seem to think that this is a display of terrible weakness.

A choice of quotations:

"He [Johnson] has obviously worked like mad to try and get through this but it's not good enough so far." (Ian Duncan Smith)

"His [Johnson] outlook on the world is that illness is for weak people." (Sonia Purnell, Johnson's biographer)

In both of these quotations the indication is pretty clear - being ill is for the weak; the strong do not get ill. Being ill, then, is a lack of will, effort or moral character.

And this, it seems to me, goes along with the logic of that bizarre current of thought known as social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism (1) is not entirely aptly named: the main currents of the idea predate Darwin and actually originate with Herbert Spencer. The famous phrase that guides the belief 'survival of the fittest' was actually coined by Spencer some ten years before On the Origin of Species was published. Indeed, the constant conflation between Spencer's ideas and Darwin's was something that annoyed Spencer immensely in his own lifetime.

The phrase is, however, a good summary of what social Darwinism is: the essential notion is that life is a competition, the survivors of which are the 'strongest' or 'fittest' as they come through the challenges of life. This is why, of course, those who held this view opposed any programmes of poor relief - to provide aide to the 'weakest' would distort the workings of nature.

Fitness, let it be said, is a technical term in biology and basically means nothing more than the ability of an entity to leave progeny. The more it can produce the 'fitter' it is. Noticeably this doesn't tell us anything about the characteristics of the entity, or which ones are making it more fitter than others. And it is also not divorceable from the environment: obviously an entity that is the fittest in, for example, an ocean environment might not be so good in a forested environment. Fins on a fish, for example, are probably a contributing factor to its ability to leave progeny, as it helps the fish to navigate the water environment. You cannot, however, say that fins are unambiguously 'good', 'adaptive' 'fitness enhancing' as if you stuck them on a monkey it would add precisely nothing to the monkey's ability to leave progeny and could even actively harm it.

This obviously is not what the social Darwinist conception means by 'fittest'; though what exactly is meant is hard to determine. The definition is tautological: the fittest are those who survive; how do we know this? Because they have survived! But in that case fitness has little to do with any quality in the individual, but more to do with background and wealth. There are, after all, hordes of wealthy people (many of them in government) who have no conceivable talents or abilities but will 'survive'; just as their are loads of people who are very gifted, but who will struggle to develop this due to poor nutrition, lack of support in education and the various other ills associated with the misfortune of being born poor.

What is interesting here though is the way in which this believe in 'the strong survive' may well have coloured the government's Coronavirus response, particularly in the herd immunity strategy. This was, for a long time, the government's purported aim: infect a large chunk of the population as a way of building up the immunity. It seems to be premised on the very logic that social Darwinism runs with: everyone gets infected and then those that die are simply too 'weak'. This is seemingly what is to be drawn from Dominic Cummings (alleged) comment of 'herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad'.

The herd immunity strategy seems to then derive from the social Darwinist assumptions: the only ones who will be effected are those to weak, so it will thin out the population of the undesirables and so ultimately improve the country and economy. Those that die have simply not tried hard enough. Which has a certain resemblance with the Conservatives approach to welfare benefits and the economy. This seems to be what lies behind Johnson's turning up at hospitals and shaking hand with everyone, as well as the press's initial disdain for anyone challening the herd immunity strategy: A belief that their strength means they will not catch it.

Noticeably we have now changed track after Johnson, Hancock and Cummings all came down with it, with there even being denials that was ever a herd immunity strategy. Somehow it seems the 'survival of the fittest' becomes a less attractive strategy when you have the realization that you are not, actually, excluded from the general struggle to survive. And with that comes the realization that the 'strength' so coveted by the Conservatives is based less on anything real, than simply being able to be outside of difficulty. 

It is, after all, easy to survive when you have vast arrays of wealth and support to fall back on.

(1) There is a question as to whether social Darwinism as a definable programme ever existed: Robert Bannister's Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought presents this argument. Whether it did or didn't though, I think currents of its thought certainly influence contemporary thinking.

The Political Philosophy of Centrism

Centrism, for good or ill, has been one of the defining political movements of the last decades five years. And yet, for all of that, it remains something that's curiously hard to define. It's often very easy to get a sense of what they are not, as it's in opposition to (generally speaking) the 'extremes' and there's much about opposition to 'populism' (whatever that means), but there isn't a lot about what they are for. Indeed the only definitive position is that calling them by their self-chosen name is a form of abuse.

So Glen O'Hara is brave in taking a crack at it. The picture that emerges, however, is murky. The suggestion seems to be that centrism is about working collaboratively, bringing people together in order to achieve effective change in legislation. There is a style element to it: it's about appealing to people in a manner they are comfortable with, a softly approach. In this way, by being involved in the mechanics and minute, more can be achieved than by the fiery and 'empty' rhetoric of 'outriders'. Centrism then is about competent, sympathetic people doing the hard work.

There's probably a lot in there that's true. Style does matter there's no doubt and being able to convince people you're trustworthy and believable is a big part of the job. As ever the role of media, in communicating an image, goes without mention because it would be rather hard to reconcile with the idea of this all being a politicians control. And being aware of technical detail and being able to collaborate with others to pass legislation is also important.

And yet there's an awful lot in there that doesn't ring true.

Take for instance, an example Glen proffers on gay marriage. The way he depicts this it's down to David Cameron being able to face down his own party and ally with Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP in order to pass the legislation. It's not the result of 'one wing...driving it hard'. But that's backwards. Gay marriage, or the minimum wage his other example, was not a bountiful gift given by the wise politician to grateful nation. It had to be fought for many years of activists and groups making these arguments repeatedly, often at their own risk, in the face of opposition from politicians among others. Precisely the actions of people that Glen dismisses as 'outriders'.

As for being against empty rhetoric, well the effective Centrist parties in the UK, the Liberal Democrats and Change UK the Independent group, were precisely characterised by having little more than empty rhetoric. 'Bollocks to Brexit' for instance, without ever really spelling out how exactly this will be achieved. And as for collaborating with others you disagree with; well they refused to support Corbyn to become Prime Minister and potentially get a EU Referendum, and they're also the reason the Customs Union Amendment didn't pass and so condemning us to a hard Brexit.

Mastery of technical detail indeed.

What emerges from this, then, seems to be that it is ultimately the style that matters more. Centrism is about a particular way of doing politics and about a particular type of person who gets to do it. Stray from that and you're into the extremes. It is the belief that arguments should be about where to draw the line on which children qualify for free school means; not on whether there should be a line at all.

It is, ultimately, the philosophy that politics should be kept out of politics.