Breaking the Ivory Tower: On the normative model of science-politics communication

Liana A. Tukhvat­uli­na
Insti­tute of Phi­los­o­phy, Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences

Break­ing the Ivory Tow­er: On the nor­ma­tive mod­el of sci­ence-pol­i­tics com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Abstract. The author ana­lyzes the prob­lem of the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal sta­tus of expert knowl­edge. The author believes that expert knowl­edge should be con­sid­ered as a spe­cif­ic form of sci­ence-pol­i­tics com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the mod­ern world. The author con­cep­tu­al­izes the foun­da­tions of the nor­ma­tive mod­el of exper­tise, which is designed to ensure the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of sci­ence and pol­i­tics as au-tonomous social insti­tu­tions. The author uses the con­cepts of for­mal and sub­stan­tive ratio­nal­i­ty intro­duced by Max Weber to recon­struct sci­en­tif­ic ratio­nal­i­ty. The author believes that mod­ern soci­ety is inter­est­ed in main­tain­ing the sci­en­tif­ic sta­tus of expert knowl­edge, and there­fore for­mal ratio­nal­i­ty in sci­ence should not be “sub­stan­ti­at­ed.” Com­pre­hend­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of “val­ue-neu­tral” expert knowl­edge, the author pro­pos­es the con­cept of “exter­nal­ized” exper­tise. In accor­dance with this idea, trans­paren­cy becomes the reg­u­la­to­ry idea of exper­tise. Sci­en­tif­ic experts are sup­posed to aggre­gate sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge (or report its absence) regard­ing the prob­lem raised and devel­op pos­si­ble alter­na­tives to solve it. In turn, the choice of the opti­mal solu­tion and the val­ue con­sen­sus should be achieved through pub­lic dis­cus­sion. The author believes that the “exter­nal­ized” exper­tise helps to neu­tral­ize the threats of tech­nocratism and pop­ulism and con­tributes to the devel­op­ment of polit­i­cal cul­ture in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.

Key­words: exper­tise, sci­en­tif­ic ratio­nal­i­ty, M. Weber, val­ue free­dom, for­mal ratio­nal­i­ty, sub­stan­tive ratio­nal­i­ty, sci­ence and pol­i­tics, pub­lic sphere, com­mu­ni­ca­tion

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20192457

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