Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

When looking at today's scientific paradigms, one has to wonder why science in the twentieth century developed the way it did, to become primarily reductionist and materialistic. Why did laboratory psychology and behaviouristic psychology dominate university departments and not depth psychology? How did Natural Selection come to be accepted as the dominant evolutionary mechanism while alternative mechanisms such as Lamarckian were rejected? Vitalist hypotheses to explain certain biological processes also fell out of favour. Were they wrong or politically unpopular?

Jon Agar, senior lecturer at UCL, traces the history of twentieth century science, looking carefully at how and why certain developments took place. The book represents a tremendous amount of research and thoughtful analysis. It is largely free of any political agenda, exploring the hidden social forces behind scientific discovery but without placing a value on those influences.

Agar's primary thesis is that "no meaningful science has been generated without a working world origin." By the term "working world" he implies military, commercial, pharmaceutical, philanthropic or political influences that drive scientific research. Rarely do scientific discoveries come as a result of a scientist's idle, disinterested curiosity; more commonly a "working world" is behind them. During the twentieth century science was largely driven by military objectives because of two world wars, the cold war and then the war against terror. The war efforts gave us familiar hardware such as aeroplanes, radar, computers, silicon chips and GPS and the internet. Also less familiar developments resulted including quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, penicillin, artificial fertilizer, pesticides and IQ testing.

Agar criticizes the commonly held view that scientists direct their efforts in response to directives from above. More correctly the relationship between the scientist and the "working world" is a two way street. With few exceptions scientists were in the front line, pushing forward new ideas for military weapons, pressuring politicians to deploy them. During World War II, hundreds of scientists enthusiastically developed Britain's chemical and biological weapons program. The microbiologist Paul Fildes drew up a plan to target three major German cities with anthrax, killing three million civilians, a plan thankfully not carried out for political reasons. He was by no means unique in his zeal to see new, more destructive weapons deployed.

Developments in the fields of genetics, biochemistry and evolutionary biology were also largely driven by political factors. In Russia, geneticists driven by the need to develop science along the lines of dialectical materialism supported materialistic explanations for inheritance rather than vitalist. The early work of Chetverikov and Dobzhansky on the wild populations of Drosophila proved pivotal in the "evolutionary synthesis" in the 1940s where genetics, biochemistry and Darwinian evolution came together to create the picture we have today. Only then was Natural Selection accepted as the dominant mechanism of evolution.

No sooner was Mendelian genetics accepted than biologists such as Charles Davenport and Willet Hays proposed eugenic programmes to improve society's genetic stock. Genetics was seen as a cure for the mentally ill, chronically unemployed, the poor, "weak minded" and criminals. In the United States sterilization laws were introduced in 28 States. By 1939 30,000 people had been sterilized on eugenic grounds, half of them in California. Other countries such as Britain and Germany also had their eugenic programmes. The appeal of eugenics was no doubt the promise of social control by scientific means. The sterilization of the "unfit" was a theme also championed by Julian Huxley in the film, "Heredity in Man." Later, the Nazis were to take eugenics to appalling lows, sterilizing over 400,000 people and euthanising the mentally ill. In this program the medical profession led the charge.

The desire to use science to control people, to shape society and human nature was also why laboratory psychology triumphed over psychoanalytical approaches. Psychologists wanted to construct a science without considering the human being's subjective experiences --- a science that treated the human being as an object with measurable quantities such as behaviour. John Watson, chair of psychology at John Hopkins University, wrote in his 1903 paper, "Psychology as the Behaviourist sees it":

"The time seems to come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness; when it need no longer delude itself into thinking that it is making mental states the object of observation."

Even so, psychology struggled for a long time before it was accepted as a science. The first breakthrough was the definition of IQ and intelligence testing, applied to the military rank and file to find candidates for promotion. Other applications were in commercial marketing of new products. In all cases, the complex human being was approximated, reduced to measurable quantities. Behaviourism was embraced particularly in the United States because it offered tests useful in schools and asylums, in a country that was growing fast and experiencing urban pressures. Being statistical, it could be applied to masses of people.

The development of psychiatric drugs in the 1960s provided a boon to pharmaceutical companies. They also provided an opportunity to control people. A patient doped up on chlorprozamine would be too indifferent to cause trouble and could be deinstitutionalized. Obviously approaches such as psychoanalysis or other forms of therapy could not compete with the economic and political power of the pharmaceutical industry. The focus on chemical treatment of psychiatric disorders also explains how the mind (when it was finally recognised) was seen as material, resulting solely from the brain's activity.

The 1960s brought many changes to the sciences as a result of cultural and social upheavals of the times. For the first time the morality of what scientists did was questioned. Previously the application of certain discoveries was questioned but not the science per se. Scientists had led various protests against the use of nuclear weapons; the Russell-Einstein manifesto of 1955 for example. But during the 60s, scientists found themselves on the defensive. The cosy connections between Universities and military laboratories were questioned. In campus protests the value of science was questioned. Many writers recognised that physical, biological and psychological sciences played an undesirable role in undermining religious beliefs and moral codes. The result was not necessarily positive.

The growing distrust of science in the 60s was brought to the fore in the work of Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring". Because she was a biologist, well-connected with oceanographers, ornithologists and other specialists, her work on the harmful effects of DDT carried a great deal of influence. In the battles that followed her book's publication, the layman saw the squabbles between scientists who offered conflicting views, and didn't know who to believe. The commercial interests that supported the use of DDT were out in the open. The effect was overall to increase public scepticism of scientific work, doubt its value --- a legacy we see today in the debate over climate change and public scepticism of Darwinian evolution.

Overall Agar makes a persuasive case that the "working world" has been a major driver behind scientific discovery and has given us the technological world we have today, however I question his broad brush stroke. In much of today's astronomy and astrophysics I see very little connection to the "working world". Sure, the Hubble Space Telescope resulted from a close relationship between astronomers and the US Department of Defence. However studies such as cosmology, dark energy or the exploration of extra-solar planets have no foreseeable practical application on Earth. The same can be said of geophysical studies of the Earth's core. Will the discovery of the Higgs Boson lead to any practical application? I'm not holding my breath. A non-trivial amount of science is clearly not done because the results might in any way bring us new technology. The history of twentieth century science is one of great achievements in the physical, biological and medical areas. Most troubling is that moral issues as to the value of science, whether science should concern itself with human values, were left on the sidelines. Scientists developed biological weapons and eugenic programmes without any regard to their morality. This begs the question of whether that lack of concern with moral values results from the "working world" agenda. That the working world erases a sense of morality, so that all that matters to the scientist is to serve that working world. In that case should we blame the science per se for our wars? For our planet in crisis? Agar does not raise that particular question, but it certainly needs to be asked.