The "Sphere of Science Communication"

In the words from the hit theme song of my favorite childhood show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, “Science Rules!” Who says science is dull, boring, and downright hard to understand? Bill asks complex questions about the world and gives me full access to the answers. Thanks to Bill I feel like I have a better understanding of the world, of the laws of nature, of our past and future. Not only is science true, but it’s fun too! “Yes,” I thought to myself while zany images of dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes darted across the screen, “science does rule!”

And in this way, I was converted. Science, I thought, was the best lens through which one should understand the world because it’s unbiased, rational, and well, fun! But how does one gain access to this knowledge? How does one contribute to its cause? As it turns out, it’s kind of an exclusive club. One needs to become a scientist, involving years of often expensive education. But if that’s not for you then there’s another way. Enter Bill Nye and public science communication. A guy like Bill is convinced that science is the answer. It produces true - or at least probabilistically accurate - knowledge and the public ought to have access to it because it’s in their own best interest. But there exists a massive knowledge divide between science and the public. And science communication attempts to bridge that gap on behalf of and in the interest of the public. Or at least that’s what it claims. This leads to an important question I’ll consider here: whose interests does science communication actually represent?

To begin examining this question, I’ll start with an exploration of a word used by Jurgen Habermas to describe the current relationship between the state, the public, and the private realms; “refeudalization”.

First, we begin by examining the structure of this word. The first part, “re-” represents a going back to or engaging in again. “Feudalization” is the process of establishing feudal relationships, or the system we now know as feudalism. To Habermas, feudalism represented a historic baseline against which he could compare the modern societal state and public relations (Thomassen, 2010). The ‘public’ here “referred to the ruler or aristocracy who would represent themselves before – often literally in front of – the people, their subjects” (Thomassen, 2010). Here the right to rule came from higher up and the public were mere passive subjects. During the 18th century, however, a new form of economy and a new class or “third estate” emerged (Habermas et al., 1974). These have come to be known as the Bourgeoises who “undercut the principle on which existing rule was based” (Habermas et al., 1974). Thus bringing about a slow end to the feudal system and the subsequent rise of capitalism. During this time, Enlightenment ideals - liberty, solidarity, and equality - also emerged and with them rose a new ‘public sphere’ (Thomassen, 2010). This ‘Bourgeois public sphere’ was distinguished from many other spheres such as the sphere of the market or the ‘sphere of intimacy’ - familial relations - in that it was in opposition not just to the private realm but the state as well (Thomassen, 2010). In fact, Habermas argues that the right to rule now came, not from higher sovereign rulers, but from this new Bourgeois public sphere.

This new Bourgeois public sphere, which I will simply call the ‘public sphere’, was guided above all else by the public use of reason (Thomassen, 2010). This public reason was lived out through a particular form of discourse throughout its institutional bases, the “press in its different forms (newsletters, periodicals, books and so on)” and “the coffeehouses (in Britain), salons (in France) and table societies (in Germany)” (Thomassen, 2010). Habermas saw within this process of public reason the “idea that both philosophy and society are better off relying on the forceless force of the better argument” (Thomassen, 2010). It was through language and communication that we could come to know the intersubjective reality.

Much like the other critical theorists and members of the Frankfurt School, Habermas was critical of contemporary late capitalist society, including its “rational organization of human activity” (Thomassen, 2010). But unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, he does not condemn rationality in its totality, but merely a type of rationality, ‘instrumental rationality’ (Thomassen, 2010). ‘Communicative rationality’ is a rationality that occurs through discourse of individuals communicating in good faith with the aims of achieving some intersubjective truth or mutually agreed-upon consensus. This communicative reason provided Habermas with an “ideal of freedom and equality, [which] can form the basis of critique” (Thomassen, 2010). This is what I find to be so attractive about his critical approach. He essentially says that there is an ‘ideal speech situation’ in which every participating individual engages in equal and free exchange and thus has a truly democratic role in forming society, reaching “a universal, unconstrained consensus”, and holding the state to account (Thomassen, 2010). We can use this ideal as a marker against which we can measure our contemporary society and give it a ‘freedom’ grade as it were. Of course, this ‘ideal speech situation’ is just an ideal, an unrealistic and I’d say unattainable goal at best. But, if it is an unattainable goal, is it even worth striving for? I’m torn. On one hand, there is no way to judge reality but against an ideal or norm. Even if we judge current social realities against history, our historic ‘reality’ is still just an ideal. It is narrative creation. But, on the other hand, maybe trying to judge social realities against an ideal is a fruitless activity since it could never resemble the ideal anyways. Maybe one should simply live it out. Again, I’m not convinced either way.

Let’s now examine the contemporary state of the public sphere as Habermas saw it. The Enlightenment ideals, which were the very foundation of the public sphere and its communicative rationality, were in a sense paradoxical, even hypocritical. There is no better illustration of this that I know of than in the Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America of 1776. In its second paragraph is states

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Of course, the founding fathers saw some people as more equal than others. Or that by “men” they meant white land-owning literate men. Women did not receive a citizen’s rights, nor did black slaves, nor “Indians”, nor any others. Habermas saw the rise of the welfare state in the 1870s as a direct result of this conflict. The unjust exclusion of most other citizens from the public sphere necessitated the ‘socialization of the state’ in which the state would now engage in private affairs so as to represent the competing interests of others (Thomassen, 2010). Thus, the ‘decomposition’ of the public sphere began. Since the state and various representative organizations would negotiate the interests of the average citizen, and very few citizens were now producers, they became consumers. Not just of things but of information and ideas. Much like in the feudal era, the public sphere again “functions merely to acclaim the authority of particular opinions and pieces of information”, a passive and hollow legitimization (Thomassen, 2010). This is the “refeudalization”.

This sounds eerily similar to what is called, in the world of science communication, the ‘knowledge deficit model’. This is the idea that “ignorance is the basis of a lack of societal support for various issues in science and technology” (Simis et al., 2016). In order to ‘fix’ this ignorance, all that is needed is to fill the deficit - commonly referred to as ‘scientific illiteracy’ - with scientific information through the public communication of science. This “assumes that scientific knowledge communicated to publics stands alone to encourage understanding and support of science” (Simis et al., 2016). There is a clear distinction in this language between the scientific sphere, which produces the knowledge, and the public sphere, which consumes it.

In the decades before the French Revolution, the salons were a place where the “nobility met with the "intellectuals" on an equal footing” and even, according to Habermas, the “fashionable ladies” would engage in discussion (Jürgen Habermas, 1964). Indeed, “the salon held the monopoly of first publication: a new work, even a musical one, had to legitimate itself first in this forum” (Jürgen Habermas, 1964). While not every walk of life was represented in this process, it is a far cry away from the modern scientist who produces their knowledge with little to no consultation with the public. Ethics boards, universities, and funding organizations serve to regulate the activities of the scientist. But the average citizen is not directly involved.

Now back to the original question of whose interests does science communication actually represent? Habermas would likely paint a bleak picture of the situation. Science communication represents the interests of institutionalized science or what could be called the scientific sphere, which, with positivist aims, it is “secretly committed to the values of efficiency and economy” or capitalism (Thomassen, 2010). And I probably wouldn’t disagree with Habermas on this. In fact, I think this is a proposition that the scientific sphere, especially the ‘sphere of science communication’ (it’s fun making up terms!) must grapple with. It must be honest about its interests. I think the propensity for the sphere of science communication - the sphere that mediates between the public and scientific spheres - to assume a value-neutral, disinterested stance is irresponsible and ineffective. This is not to say that the knowledge the scientific sphere produces without any public legitimization is only self-interested or that it is not also in the actual interest of the public sphere. It very well may be, though this is a different yet important line of inquiry which I hope to explore further. But only when the sphere of science communication takes an honest look at its own interests, will it have any success at achieving them.

References

Habermas, Jürgen. (1964). Social Structures of the Public Sphere. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 26–56.

Habermas, Jurgen, Lennox, S., & Lennox, F. (1974). The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964). New German Critique, 3(3), 49. https://doi.org/10.2307/487737

Simis, M. J., Madden, H., Cacciatore, M. A., & Yeo, S. K. (2016). The lure of rationality: Why does the deficit model persist in science communication? Public Understanding of Science, 25(4), 400–414. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662516629749

Thomassen, L. (2010). Habermas : A Guide for the Perplexed. In Habermas : A Guide for the Perplexed (1st ed.). Continuum. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472546616