THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY

As Alex Gomez-Marin notes above, AN Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World was published 100 years ago. My own copy is dated August 1979 and was originally purchased by Geoffrey Faber – the founder of Faber Publishing - in 1929. This book by Russell was published in 1952, while his earlier works The Scientific Outlook and Education and the Social Order (both in my library in Scotland) were published in 1931 and 1932 respectively – contemporary with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. As some readers will be aware, Whitehead and Russell were both Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, and worked together on Principia Mathematica. A further relevant background piece of information is that technocracy – scientific social management – was developed at Columbia University during the 1930s, and industry was already influenced by Taylor’s mechanistic management theory in which workers were cogs in a machine to be optimised in terms of efficiency.

The reason for revisiting this book at this time – I first read it in 1974 – is that much of what it forecast is now happening, and follows the Fabian Society blueprint of social control and cultural engineering – see my review of The Vice of Kings by Jason Horsley in the previous issue, p. 69. Quotes from these books (pp. 75, 77) sent me back to Russell’s Impact of Science on Society when I spent some time in my library in Scotland in January. In one passage, he highlights the prospect of two different forms of education, one for the elite, and one for the rest, who will be trained into conformity, and any insubordination will be severely censured; he also mentions the prospect of scientific breeding within the elite class, which will further widen the gap. In the other passage, he advocates the whole human race becoming one cooperative unit if scientific civilisation is to survive and reason is to prevail over extinction. This, in his view, necessitates the establishment of a world state and a worldwide system of education to produce loyalty to this state. This in turn entails authority and a degree of coercion. Mass psychology allied to propaganda techniques pervasive in mass media has become an effective means of social control through perception management and behavioural nudging. (pp. 32, 49)

In Whitehead’s final chapter on requisites for social progress, he notes that the watchwords of the 19th century have been ‘struggle for existence, competition, class warfare, commercial antagonism between nations, military warfare. The struggle for existence has been construed into a gospel of hate.’ (p. 256) This theme is also taken up by Russell, who argues (pp. 29 ff.) that ‘war has been, throughout history, the chief source of social cohesion; and since science began, it has been the strongest incentive to technical progress.’ Moreover, he notes that communications – initially the telegraph - enable more effective control from the centre, all the more so with digitisation and the development of brain computer interfaces. He adds that the passions that inspire our feeling of unity are hate and fear, and depend on the existence of an enemy. We see this in the generalised process of demonisation and projection of the shadow, whether against Islamic terrorism in the wake of 9/11 – also Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi - or Russophobia in contemporary Europe that sets aside any understanding of the geopolitical historical background to the Ukraine conflict.

The seven chapters of Russell's book cover science and tradition, general effects of scientific technique, scientific technique as an oligarchy, democracy and scientific technique, science,and war, science and values, and the prospects for a stable scientific society. He argues that the effects of science are respectively intellectual, technical and sociopolitical in terms of potential control. A key question relates to authority – science initially challenged the authority of the Church, developing a mechanistic outlook in the process, but now mainstream science itself has become a canonical authority exerting both epistemological and ontological influence on our conceptions of reality through an ideology of scientism. By excluding final causes (for understandable reasons), it has also excluded purpose, and its (19th century) deterministic outlook dispenses with free will and agency, leading to a moral vacuum and nihilism.

Russell’s observations on oligarchy and democracy are very pertinent to our times. He notes the pervasive nature of the lust for power, arguing that a scientific oligarchy (technocracy) is bound to become totalitarian, whereby all important forms of power will become a monopoly of the state – the recent EU directive can stand as a textbook example. Russell identifies the important pattern that progressive elites define themselves as wise and good, hence anyone who disagrees with their views is by definition irrational and immoral. This cannot be tolerated, as no one is permitted to question the moral authority of the government, which has a right to suppress alternative opinions by force (p. 45) It follows ‘that there cannot be freedom of the press, freedom of discussion, or freedom of book publication.’ There must be an organ of government to pronounce on what is orthodox, and to punish heresy. (p. 46) The result is ‘a new tyranny, more drastic than any previously known.’

Russell suggests that there are three ways of regarding the individual, corresponding to three political philosophies: as a common person, as a hero, and as a cog in the machine. He thinks that science has increased the proportion of our lives in which we are cogs. This must be guarded against by affirming mental/neurocognitive liberty, individual initiative and opportunity, and a sense of being useful – this is threatened by the prospect of large-scale job replacement by AI, where elites cynically suggest that we (useless eaters) can spend our time on drugs and entertainment. The chapter on science and values is also important (Whitehead writes eloquently about this in his chapter on science and religion).

Russell sees science as a double-edged sword that can enhance human happiness but also intensify the ancient evils of tyranny and war. Interestingly, he is almost embarrassed to mention the importance of love and compassion, and specifies certain conditions for common well-being: the abolition of war, even distribution of ultimate power, and the limitation of the growth of population (this would require a further essay…p. 95). He asks if we can overcome the chief causes of large-scale violence: love of power, competition, hate and fear in a world where knowledge is power, but it is power for evil just as much as for good. He is surely right to conclude that the road to peaceful and cooperative societies is long, and that it depends centrally on human attitudes, values and priorities – as Russell, Einstein, and Schweitzer affirmed in the 1950s, it is time to remember our (common) humanity and forget the rest. I would add, as also argued by Carl Jung and Charles Eisenstein, that we must overcome pathological forms of othering and especially of projecting individual and collective shadows onto an enemy as a means of fostering unity.