Science, public research and universities are facing attacks in the United States and Argentina, as well as in other countries including France, although through different forms, according to Sébastien Dutreuil, a CNRS research fellow in philosophy.
In a contribution published by Le Monde, Dutreuil says these offensives differ from earlier challenges to research. They are no longer limited to the commercialization of knowledge associated with neoliberal policies since the 1980s, nor do they resemble the campaigns by industrial lobbies that manufacture doubt to delay legislation. Instead, he argues, the institutions and powers that originally commissioned science are now turning against it.
Dutreuil links this shift to what he describes as science’s failure to fulfill a promise made to the military, the state and capital. That promise included producing reliable knowledge about the world, increasing control over nature, supporting abundance and health, reaching universal understanding and emancipating people from arbitrary authority.
Environmental sciences are central to this conflict. Dutreuil notes that global environmental disciplines developed during the Cold War under military sponsorship, when satellite observation, oceanography and meteorology served submarines, nuclear surveillance, aviation and missile guidance.
By monitoring the planet, however, researchers increasingly identified the effects of human activity. During the 1970s, these military-linked fields began to evolve into sciences intended to raise public alarms about environmental damage and the consequences of political and economic decisions.
Dutreuil presents this transformation as a change in science’s relationship with powerful institutions: from defense secrecy to public warning, from promoting abundance and power to documenting damage and considering limits, and from scientists aligned with established powers to scientists challenging them. He also contrasts the earlier ideals of progress and control with a focus on catastrophe and care.
Sources: Le Monde Sciences.