On Science

(Facebook-conversations - in an answer to Jelle Versieren)

I'm not against science per-se, else I would not be a scientist myself. However, science is used within a certain kind of social context and has a certain kind of historical evolution; it is NEVER Neutral. The first thing a critical scientist should due is to acknowledge this subjective use of science. This is even the case in "hard sciences" such as physics, where the use of relativistic theory could both be applied for nuclear bombs, as well as nuclear medical technology.

Science is an important ideological pillar of capitalism/liberalism/modernism; more even in the late-capitalist/neoliberal discourse (see Fairclough). It is particularly used in post-political, depoliticizing and also in neo-colonial racist discourses; eg the use of economic science in the policies of the BW institutions to legitimize SAP's, foreign exploitation, imperialism, etc... It is exactly the same in the question of the prohibition of the headscarf in Public office. Where the "illumination"-discourse is used to reproduce the oppression and exclusion of muslim women and to impose a patriarchical, racist moral.

The use of science all depends on the context. What were once founding and emancipatory ideological weapons of a progressive bourgeois class, in a late-capitalist society, science, ratio and modernism are primary weapons of the ruling elites to oppress exploited people. One should never take the class-character of these instruments and uses out of the picture, nor the social conflict, or you are being an idealist.

It is clear that the context of the headscarf debate today is different than the struggle against clerical oppression in modern Europe. If we are speaking of today's Europe atheism/christianity are the dominant ideological forms, islam is certainly not the primary barrier for emancipation. On the contrary; it is the dominant positivist approach to religion which today plays the role of christianity at the time of Marx. Science as the opiate of the masses; the reconforting belief in some neutral objective truthfull positivist uncritical science which justifies all existing unequalities and shows some utopian, idealistic way out.

I will not go so far postmodernist who totally reject the universal character of science, and place it on the same level as other forms of knowledge systems, such as theology, tradition, etc. (Such as the ecology of knowledge approach of B. Santos). From my point of view this approach is too particularistic/individualist, and therefore it depoliticizes and loses its emancipatory possibilities. As such it is as influenced by the dominant neoliberal post-political thought-frames as the modernist scientific discourse.

In order to be critical, a scientist always has to search for the social conflict behind the use of science. The scientist has to search for the oppression within the conflict, and have an emancipatory role by choosing the side of the oppressed, as everyone should acknowledge that science is never objective. Only in this sence can science have a progressive role in contemporary neoliberal society.