Volume 49, Number 8 · May 9, 2002
The Politics of Science
By Richard C. Lewontin
Science, Truth, and Democracy
by Philip Kitcher
Oxford University Press, 214 pp., $27.50
Science, Money, and Politics:Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion
by Daniel S. Greenberg
University of Chicago Press, 530 pp., $35.00
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
by Francis Fukuyama
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pp., $25.00
No one can doubt that the production and consumption of scientific knowledge are major enterprises in the operation of the modern state and in civil society. Societies too impoverished to create their own science and technology use and feel the impact of those activities in their economic and political interactions with others, even if it is only to employ those technologies as weapons against their own creators. The penetration of science into political and civil society, however, poses a special problem for the operation of the democratic state. On the one hand the behavior of the state is supposed to reflect the popular will, as determined either by a direct appeal to the opinion of the people or through the intermediary of their elected representatives. On the other hand, the esoteric knowledge and understanding required to make rational decisions in which science and technology are critical factors lie in the possession of a small expert elite. Even within the ranks of 'scientists' only a tiny subset have the necessary expertise to make an informed decision about a particular issue. Whatever their view of my ideological biases, no one can deny my understanding of the scientific questions involved in the genetic engineering of crops, but I am incompetent to decide whether Edward Teller or his opponents among physicists were right about the possibilities of building an X-ray laser that was to be the center of the Star Wars missile defense.
Review, 4767 words
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