Radical Science and Its Enemies

Abstract

In the 1972 Socialist Register we analysed the development of the radical science movement from its birth in the struggle against. the genocidal science rained upon the peoples of Indochina to its often halting and uneven attempts to develop theory. Although we called that paper 'The Radicalization of Science', it actually spoke of the double process by which science which had been seen as socially and technically progressive was increasingly recognized as incorporated within the state, and the radicalization of scientists in opposition to this process. As part of that movement, we saw its task as the winning and transformation of the scientific knowledge itself, the making of a science for the people. Whilst it was easy to see the immediate tasks of opposition to the development and uses of particular science and technologies, the theoretical task the movement set itself was more fundamental. Was science a timeless, autonomous intellectual system which stood apart from and above social conflict, or was it part of that conflict, and, if so, how? Whilst the movement had few clear theoretical formulations, it had, in common with the rest of the New Left, certain sharp insights, primarily that the understanding of the social functions of science would be forged out of the contradictions of experience; theory could not be developed from within an ivory tower, even if Marxism was inscribed in gold over the entrance. The May 1968 events, the cultural revolution and the Tet offensive were part of a revolutionary optimism, shared by the radical science movement, of the realizable prospect of human liberation.