SCIENCE: A BIGGER PICTURE
Science can no longer claim to be free of the kinds of values that affect other fields of knowledge. Lyn Carter and Caroline Smith challenge science educators to take up the new perspectives of science posited in recent studies and to engage their students in science for a sustainable future.
Contemporary critiques of science
Science in today's world is Janus-faced. While it has provided powerful and reliable knowledge enabling much human development, it has also been the progenitor of nuclear weapons and chemical and biological warfare. In spite of this, science has managed to portray itself as an entity in itself—objective, value free and universal, somehow disconnected from its creators and users.
In the last few decades postmodern thinking has begun to undermine these claims (see Carter & Smith, 2003). The resulting battles over the nature of science have given rise to the so-called 'Science Wars' (Ross, 1996). The critiques gather together in an emerging field known as 'Science Studies' which argues that we can only know nature through a cultural lens that is always accompanied by 'baggage'—institutional structures, interests, values and cultural norms (Turnbull, 2000). One spin-off has been to refer to science more accurately as 'Western science' in acknowledgement of its nature as a cultural product. In a well-known study, Latour and Woolgar (1986) showed that, behind the scenes, the laboratory production of scientific knowledge is characterised by the same messy and conflicting individual values, protection of reputations and assumptions as any other knowledge field. Another facet of Science Studies, postcolonial science studies, has exposed how scientific and cultural traditions from other cultures have been subsumed into Western science with little acknowledgement of their origins. This has revealed links between the development of Western science and European colonialism.
These and other facets of Science Studies challenge science's mythological status as universal, value free and objective, and refract it through the prism of culture. The laws of thermodynamics, for example, far from being 'discovered' by disinterested scientists with nothing better to do, were instead the product of business investments needed to improve the efficiency of mechanical machinery within the developing context of the industrial revolution. In the 19th and 20th centuries, chemical knowledge was produced because it was needed to guide the growth of the chemical industry, with its present day spin-offs of pesticides and fertilisers. Today, the extent of biotechnology and nanotechnology knowledge is a result of high levels of funding being poured into these industries. Compare this with the relatively poor level of understanding of ecosystem processes and their relationship to agricultural production‹a result of poor funding and commitment. In other words, how and what science is produced depends on the cultural, economic and power interests of the day. Maximising shareholder value has far greater effect on the production of scientific knowledge than does the mythical, objective, disinterested scientist.
Sustainability science
A key issue facing this century and beyond is the complex question of how to manage the transition towards a sustainable future. While the meaning of sustainability is contentious and complex, the fact that humans have fundamentally altered and continue to endanger conditions for life on the planet is beyond question. The energy sciences of the 19th and 20th centuries provided the means to harness fossil fuels upon which the high-energy phase of human development has been built, diverting science and technology towards the production of, among others, consumer goods, communications technologies and military hardware. Kates et al (2001) consider that by the late 1980s and early '90s, much of the science and technology community had become estranged from the processes (mainly sociocultural and political) that had begun to shape the sustainable development agenda. Now, as the global social and natural environment continues to deteriorate, there is a growing voice for an explicit sustainability science to emerge.
In October 2000, some two dozen scientists from around the world, including Australia's Ian Lowe, convened at Sweden's Friibergh Manor. Their deliberations resulted in the 'Statement of the Friibergh Workshop on Sustainability Science' (Kates et al, 2001). A sustainability science would include building on the work of the environmental sciences. It would include evidence from social and development studies that take into account environmental influences on human wellbeing. Central to this is an acceptance of ecological systems theory, or network science, which emphasises patterns, systems and relationships as well as the more familiar reductionist approach that emphasises building blocks.
The Statement poses profound challenges to the way in which much of science is currently practised. Firstly, the familiar methodologies of hypothesis formulating and testing are inadequate for the understanding of complex systems that are not linear, and where there are timelags between actions and consequences. Secondly, it explicitly recognises that humans cannot be considered as separate from the system within which they operate. Thirdly, as sustainability scientists will work alongside community groups, activists, students and others with a commitment to sustainability, social learning will be a necessary parallel to scientific inquiry (Kates et al, 2001). For example, the inclusion of indigenous knowledge of a local setting and other ways of thinking about land use would be an integral part of a consideration of what sustainability might mean. It is through such new networks that science might find its relevance to people's lives and be seen as a tool for everyone's benefit.
This is a science of hope. Thinking about science in this way poses exciting challenges to science education, and has the potential to involve young people in the creation of a science that is directly concerned with their interests.
Science education for a sustainable future
As Sterling (2001) puts it, the difference between a sustainable and chaotic future is learning. Science education must enable young people to actively participate in the creation of their own futures. Sustainability science represents a vehicle for science education to do just this. It requires, for the most part, a very differently imagined science education from the conceptual, abstract curricula of today, which many students find irrelevant and boring (Carter & Smith, 2003). An approach to science education based on the insights from science studies and including a substantial amount of both the content and processes described by sustainability science represents an authentic science that has the potential to engage and empower young people. The elements of such a science education would include an understanding of systems, ecological knowledge, energy studies and permaculture design within which more traditional elements and concepts of science (chemistry, physics, biology, earth science) can be integrated. But it would also include indigenous knowledge of a local setting, other ways of thinking about land use and a critique of science's influence on, for example, the development of modern agriculture.
By working with a network of community groups, activists and committed scientists, students can become engaged in solving real science-based problems that might be located locally. They might work with others in the cyber community or alongside scientists who have an interest in promoting social learning through their projects. This is very far from the disengaged textbook-based and teacher-directed science 'education' that is still common practice in some schools. Its success would require significant organisation and collaboration. But if we are to undergo the kind of deep social change and learning that sustainability demands, a re-imagined science education responding to the challenges of the Friibergh Statement has the capacity to be at its forefront.
References
Carter, L & Smith, C (2003). 'Re-visioning science education from a science studies and futures perspective', Journal of Futures Studies, 7(4), 4554.
Kates, RW et al (2001). 'Environment and development: sustainability Science', Science, Vol 292, Issue 5517, 6412.
Latour, B & Woolgar, S (1986). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Ross, A (1996). Science Wars, Duke Press, London.
Sterling, S (2001). Sustainable Education, Green Books, UK.
Turnbull, D (2000). Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers, Harwood Academic Publishers, London.
Lyn Carter lectures in science and technology education to undergraduate primary and secondary education students.
Caroline Smith is senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University.
EQ Spring 2004 © Curriculum Corporation