The Intersection Between Politics and Science.

The way modern societies have been formed allows for a growth of thought and expression that seems to be glossed over in quite a lot of circles. Most of the time scientific discovery comes from a place of freedom. It erodes out of the chance opportunity that inspiration is all around you. It comes in the most unlikely places, like an apple falling on your head(although this story is probably bullcrap). But the standard thought process behind this is simple: the social establishment informs the political establishment, which in turn allows science to flourish, and infect or intertwine with the others.

The value our modern world has placed on scientific progress, at least in the societal impression of that progress, is mostly positive. However, the inherent crutch that conspiracy theories and political pawns have given science is something I believe needs to be examined further. 

In 1616 the Catholic Church declared Galileo a heretic for claiming the universe was helio-centric, rather than geo-centric. I think to unpack this idea we need to understand exactly what the Catholic Church was at this time. 

Think of it like this - Catholicism was challenged by protestantism. Not in the way it informed some countries' decisions or their actions, but in how the church acted. We began to see the world split along ideological and social lines more so than we had in the previous hundred years. In 1616 the Catholic Church was held in high esteem in the political sphere simply because of how much money they held and the influence people like the Pope would have on the Kings of the time. Although this explanation is a very dieted version of the story, it serves the purpose of getting a point across that is needed to understand something about this intersection of “idea” itself. 

This might make more sense like this - 

Catholic Church = Political Influence

Galileo = Idea that challenged a preconceived notion about the world = Catholic Church MAD.

Simply, the Catholic Church held power and attempted to use that power in order to sway or push out an idea that really wasn’t that crazy in the grand scheme of Christianity, but for some reason a challenge to a thought held before was a challenge against the church itself. It was kind of like Martin Luther, but in science. 

This creation of the past can easily inform our modern view of how we interpret science. The political establishment is so used to holding influence of thought in the populous’ eyes that it almost always creates a system where science suffers when politics hold cracks, and the political establishment can suffer when science bends over in the face of controversy. 

Luckily Galileo didn’t bend over in the face of controversy whenever he assembled his model of the planets. But, our modern science has started to show cracks in how they bring thought into the world of discussion. 

I’m not going to try and argue that science is not helpful for furthering our society, even if it holds cracks. That argument is simply stupid. But, what I am going to say is that the ideas of a past experience should inform how our scientific establishment moves forward on certain ideas. I’m not going to try and bash or say one idea is right and another wrong, but I am going to question why certain ideas are there and others are not.

I’m going to ask some questions about some recent occurrences whenever the intersection between science,politics, and societal ideals crash head first into each other, and then ask why one idea emerged and another flamed out.

Why did it take Donald Trump being voted out of office for the mainstream scientific establishment to say that Covid-19 did, in fact, originate from a lab?

Why is it deemed “homophobic” or “transphobic” to ask questions about a newer phenomenon within the human psyche in the cultural sense?

Why does there always seem to be an all-or-nothing approach to dealing with climate change?

  Let’s unpack these ideas.

The first question deals with the government and mainstream scientists' response to Covid-19. I asked the question to gauge where you, the reader, stand in opposition to the idea presented, or in unity with it. Did science ever back Covid-19 originating from a market from an animal that never appeared in that market in the time frame presented? Or would it be entirely plausible that the science backed a different idea, that it was a lab leak? I think most at this point are in agreement with that idea, that Covid-19 originated from a lab leak, but where we might differ, or agree, is in why it took so long to come to that conclusion or consensus as a populous. Was it simply because the scientific establishment saw President Donald Trump as a threat to furthering scientific goals? I could see that being the case as he cut funding for certain programs. Or, is there a more sinister political plot in play here? I’m not going to rail off conspiracy theories, but the fact remains that the scientific consensus was not that a lab leak occurred until after Trump left office. Is that just a coincidence or a sign of a deeper underpinning of a threat seen by the scientific establishment? Or was it the political establishment wanting Trump out of office and seeing an opportunity to use science’s flaws as a group in order to move their own ideology forward?

The second question might seem more “social” in its topic, but I find that assumption to be exactly why it's worth exploring. Countless figures in politics and media have been “canceled” for speaking out or writing about bending over and agreeing with an idea such as transgenderism that is somewhat new in its cultural significance. I think the problem I see here isn’t about whether or not someone being transgender is “right”, I think that’s a different conversation, but in why it is deemed transphobic to ask quetions about why something is happening. I want to know, as someone who asks questions about the world, why are people so much more inclined now than ever to say they were born in the wrong body and then attempt to say they are something other than the sex assinged to them at birth. The underpinning here is so astronomically interesting to me that it burns my soul when I see people being canceled for asking these questions. I don’t understand it, and I think the societal pressure to always be “nice” is something that needs to change within how science is interpreted in our modern world. 

As the world gravitates towards a proclivity to look at science as something that is informed by the social climate of the world then science loses its credibility in most people's eyes. I don’t know if this situation is more up to the political establishment or the scientific establishment, but it seems to me that it’s just one being scared of the social climate in effect rather than chasing something that could change how we think about the human mind itself. That to me is why we need to question things like transgenderism or even any other aspect of LGBTQ+ ideology and thought. Not because we should deem them wrong, again, that’s another argument, but because it's a societal standard that seems not to be questioned at the present moment. And that’s exactly what science stands against. 

Now, Climate Change.

I grew up being told to take care of the world God provided. I’ve always been amazed by nature and it pains me when I see statistics about how the world might end in 50 years if we don’t switch to solar power or wind or geothermal energy. Not because I’m inclined to hate the idea of something like climate change, but because I want our world to prosper in beauty, rather than suffering in heat from a place we could have created. But, with that being said, it doesn’t make sense to me why we can’t question climate change’s causes, while still switching to more renewable energy sources and cleaner sources of energy. If our world is going to thrive, wouldn’t it make sense, even in the futuristic world, to have a place that thrives on a source of energy that isn’t going to die for a while. At least until the Sun blows up. That seems like an option we should pursue. However, looking at carbon emissions and saying that humans are the root cause of that seems to be a hasty generalization that, although some science backs it up, there really isn’t enough, at least in what i’ve seen, to claim that the world is going to die in 50 years if we don’t switch 20 years ago to cleaner energy. 

It might just be me viewing humans too optimistically that we couldn’t do something that disastrous to our world, but I’d like to think we aren’t terrible enough that we would destroy our world and then destroy the social fabric of connection along with the world as well. I could go on for ages about how climate change is something to be worried about, but the benefit of simply switching to a more renewable and cleaner energy source affords us much more opportunity in the future than staying stuck in our ways and prioritizing short-term monetary gain in favor of long-term monetary prosperity. As well as a better way of living.

The ideas in this essay are ideas I’ve been thinking about for a while. And although aesthetically and logistically it isn’t the most sound essay I could have written, I wanted to put these ideas to paper before something else came along. I might revisit the concepts in this essay before long, but in order to gain an insight into that aspect of the world I needed to encounter the initial thought before diving deeper into the nooks and crannies of these ideas.

The intersection between science and politics and culture is always going to be an intersection that needs to be examined. In the 1600s our world ran into politics attempting to cause science to suffer. And now we have started to see that intersection suffer in both areas, politically and scientifically. Quite possibly, it was just going both ways this whole time. 

Science can’t suffer because people say it’s wrong. But then again, culture and politics can’t suffer because science decides to keep something in the shadows. 

Transparency is what needs to happen. Both ways, and in all situations regarding science and politics. 

They both intersect, one informs the other and the other informs the one. 

We can’t sacrifice progress because someone says it's mean, and we can’t sacrifice progress because someone says it's wrong. 

Progress is only available whenever we allow it to be. And that’s exactly what this essay was attempting to do. Ask, is science and politics to be, or not to be?

By - Titus Brown