A Brief  History of Value Neutrality

             The concept of divine indifference, like all metaphysical concepts, is a complex of human projections and needs upon an intellectual or mythological construction. It reflects realities, but is not itself real. The indifference of the divinity is a reflection of human cruelties, motives, and detachments. It is a dream of non-suffering, an impossible dream that is essentially cruel in its denials, unfeeling in its non-attachment, superior in its condescension; subtlely despising in its transcendent and paradoxical embrace of non-involvement.

            The concept of the value neutrality of science probably has its origin in the Judeo-Christian concept of apatheia, or 'divine indifference'. There are Greek sources also,  as in Plato's use of Socratic "ignorance" and dialectic as a search for disinterested truth. Socrates is a supposedly 'neutral' foil for Plato's advocacy of strict caste hierarchy and eugenic practices not very different from what the Nazis ended up trying to institute. Indeed, there appears to be a relation between Plato's theory of  'pure' knowledge and his concept of caste 'purity'.

              In both Plato and Christianity the concept of divine or human neutrality served the interests of power.  Steve Heims observes that science is built on "two pillars", namely  the "myth of value neutrality and the article of faith most conducive to the growth of scientific bureaucracy, namely, that scientific innovations ('progress') and science based technological inventions are a priori beneficial".  The second myth, the myth of scientific progress, is a theory of history, which I will discuss in the next few sections. Here my concern is the notion of neutrality.

             Steve Heims observes what could be inferred from the origin of value neutrality in Christian and Greek concepts of apatheia and Socratic ignorance.  Socratic "ignorance" was not an admission of weakness, but a tool for Plato to advocate total centralized power. Socrates claims to be ignorant "in obedience to God's command given in oracles and dreams",[1]  which is to say that god has given divine sanction to Socrates- and Plato, to project what they will on the neutral screen of Socratic ignorance. The claim to ignorance seems humble and modest on its face. but it is anything but: Socrates is claiming the ultimate favor of the divinity. He is claiming truth and the universe speaks out of, or through, his ignorance. The neutrality is a ploy, a cipher, a mirror through which a claim to universal power and truth asserts itself.  The ignorance of Socrates is empty and "neutral" and this makes it a perfect medium, a vacuum, through which Plato's totalitarian ideology can be advocated.

             The function of scientific neutrality mirrors the function of Socrates' claim to divine ignorance. It is a ploy for power through knowledge. Socrates' claim to know nothing hides the will to power that desires possession of all knowledge. Heims observes that science, after its institutional establishment in the Royal Society of England in the 17th century, "needed and wanted the support of the theological and political powers, and this support could be most easily obtained if science in no way challenged religious or political authority". Moreover, "being value neutral, the scientists posed no threat", and this put them in favor with the Kings and property owners who were enriched and strengthened military and economically by discoveries. The scientific pose of ignorance is precisely what opened it to alliances with elite powers.

             Science, since Descartes and Newton, was above all a mode of consciousness, a claim to superior perception, and a way to fame and wealth. The pose of disinterest cloaked the inevitable alliance of scientists with the upper classes and the merchants. The scientists had a pretense to neutrality, but the neutrality was really only a matter of presentation, a method of talking and expressing interests behind abstract or mathematical reasoning. The pretense to neutrality was a pretense to a consciousness, but the consciousness cloaked an unconscious drive to immortality or fame, priority and status. The status that scientists sought depended on the sucess of their discoveries and the discoveries inevitably served elite powers, wealth, property and conquest.  Steam engines were not invented to help ordinary men, but to help move heavy materials like coal over long distances, to facilitate factory production of commodites like steel. Mathematics helped create better guns and cannons that killed more people. Engines were created to increase speed and thus change over time and this maximized profits. Science grew in alliance with capitalism and the industrial revolution and depended on the art of war and trade to further 'progress' and empire. Going to the moon was not only about extending the myth of the "frontier" beyond the earth, but about increasing the scope and territory of corporate/government control on earth, and getting taxpayers to pay for furthering the network of military, corporate and government power.  By the 20th century, Heims observes, the concept of value neutrality has tended "to hide the fact that scientific work has directly or indirectly strengthened the hand of the already dominant centers of economic and political power", which includes both governments and private corporations.

              But I would extend Heims analysis and suggest that the concept of scientific objectivity or value neutrality has replaced the god concept, out of which it develops. Science and religion were only opposed systems so long as science and the mercantile interests it served were a threat to the growing capitalist powers. Once science had triumphed, and religious values withdrew into mere private conscience and concern, science become the ultimate interpreter of the meaning of the world, as religion had once been. The idea of value neutrality replaced the idea of god, and 'divine indifference' became the indifference of scientists and the powers they served. The idea of value neutrality served to deflect questions regarding the long standing alliance between science and unjust powers, just as the god idea had deflected blame from religion.

             The god concept was never fully defined, and this indefinable concept made the god concept enormously useful. The god concept represented a series of antinomial contradictions, and this allowed political, religious and institutional powers to justify its purposes in the name of god. The antinomial and contradictory definitions of god, Tao, or 'nothingness', reflected the dual and paradoxical nature of power. God looked equally on all benefits and all punishments, he was indifferent, like the King: merciful and wrathful by turns. The god concept, like the concept of scientific neutrality embodied the paradoxes of  the ruling consciousness of those who had power and enforced the claims of authority and knowledge.  The history of religion in Europe, as well as in China and elsewhere, for the most part, is the history of the wealthy ruling classes. Marx, was right about this much, I think.

            For religion, objectivity is determined by an abstract and transcendent god. For science, objectivity is determined by abstract mathematics and useful results. In both cases there is a tendency to eliminate "subjects" from the analysis, and thereby to sublimate an ideological system behind the pose of neutrality. God is said to be merciful and wrathful by turns, and science, analogously, is beneficial or destructive by turns, yet both are supposed to transcend these oppositions and embody a higher, disinterested principle.  For science, as for religion, "subjects', that is people, are expendable, what matters are 'truths' which are objective, impersonal, and often anti-human. This indicates again, that the history of value neutrality and objectivity in science is traceable back to religious conception of disinterest and abstraction from the everyday world.

            I do not believe in an "objective" history, indeed, this study has taught me that the very notion of 'objectivity' grows out of the Greek and medieval instituions of kings and gods. Kings, gods and their ministers were "objective", everyone else was a "subject' of the king and the gods and must conform and submit to them. The Lord of the Manor was the judge, and he alone was 'objective'. Everyone else was a 'subject'.  'Objectivity' has largely served power interests, and now these are corporate and state interests rather than the interests of kings and gods.. To question power interests requires becoming 'subjective', that is, one identifies with the basic fact of existing as a human being on earth, at a certain time and place, in history. My purpose in this book is to uphold the rights of 'subjects' and human beings against powerful systems of knowledge.

            The notion of value neutrality or 'pure science' has acted, historically, in a way similar to the god concept: it excuses and deflects responsibility, and allows for the unhindered and magnified pursuit of purposes whose nature is dissembled behind the pose of objectivity.  Value neutrality is a screen behind which purposes can be hidden. The neutrality of science allows it to be used by those who desire power, wealth or dominion, because they alone can afford it and push forward their concerns. Science is not determined by the poor, the ordinary or the neglected. It is not determined by a concern for human and natural rights. It is determined by wealthy corporate or national interests and research centers or universities that gather knowledge to further these interests.

            Heims concludes his brief history of the idea of value neutrality by noting that "the conviction that knowledge based on scientific methodologies... [has] an absolute character as truth, has no rational foundation. Nor is the belief that it is the only acceptable kind of truth anything but 'obscurantism' or "scientific chauvinism".[2] One could add that the ethic of scientific neutrality also acts to prevent asking uncomfortable questions about  the ethics or lack of ethics in science. Science is a system that advocates questioning everything except itself.   So far as I know there is no scientific study of science itself. The results would very likely be quite devastating. In any case, if no one may question the system that enjoins obligatory inquiry, then science itself is adopting a transcendental station or position as the godlike and infallible judge. Just as god did not question god, science does not question itself. This is dangerous because it puts science beyond conscience, responsibility and blame. Nothing, neither god nor science is so pure. Science, as well as the universities that serve it, have bloody hands,  Science, and by 'science' I mean both what is discovered by scientists and what is done with these discoveries, seeks to increase consciousness in order to increase knowledge and create power. But the blind spot in science is its unconsciousness about itself, and this unconsciousness derives from the illusion of scientific neutrality and purity.. This is a very dangerous flaw, because it virtually insures that science will be organized and run by concerns that have power or wealth, rather than human and natural rights, as their ultimate goal.

            The relationship of imperialism to science derives from the nature of scientific knowledge itself, which claims infallibility, and to the degree that it can, totality. This is no doubt why so much time is spent on unifying physical theories which can explain all of science from a single set of axioms. Such a theory, like the god concept, would serve to increase centralized benefits to the few and spread out further deprivations for the many. Because the ultimate goal of science has been control of nature through mechanistic explanations, it naturally allied itself with imperial regimes or corporate entities that seek the same goal in their own interests.

            In medieval times, even until and beyond the Renaissance, the concept of the 'profane' was opposed to the sacred. The profane were those who were lesser, lower, baser, heathen and ordinary people who did not understand religion. With the rise of science, the sacred people, usually higher class or caste, are replaced by men of knowledge and property, aristocrats and merchants. "Pure science" replaces religion as the primary interest of the powerful classes. The idea of impurity and ignorance come to  replace the idea of the 'profane'.  'Uncivilized',  and "savage" were pejorative terms for Africans or Native Americans whose land the Europeans wanted to steal or whose people were sold into slavery. The "pure" were those who had knowledge and knowledge meant both power and scientific supremacy. "pure science" served race superiority.

            More recently the terms 'backward' and 'undeveloped' or 'developing' have come to serve similar imperial functions. Science comes to represent the superior and the civilized and seeks, sure of its purity, to impose civilization on the face of the earth. Science was an aid in the conquest and complicitious in most of the atrocities that resulted. "Civilization" was science and the march of science was the march of history and history, science and civilization, acting though agents that had means and power, killed and killed and killed.

            The claim of science to be neutral and impartial is largely spurious: throughout the centuries science has largely served  Kings, merchants or elite powers in government, academic and corporate environments, who provide the funding and direct the aims of inquiry.  Research creates new means to change the world, to create profits and find new ways to power and control. It maximizes change and thus benefits some while hurting others. No doubt science, in some of its medical and food producing applications, has served human rights interests. No doubt science could be directed to help the cause of human rights rather than undermine it. But this has rarely occurred and has been actively prevented from occurring. Science has primarily served elite state and corporate powers.

            Some scientists have begun to doubt its claim to total objectivity. Schrodinger said somewhere that "the reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego appears nowhere within the scientific world picture can be easily indicated in seven words: because it is itself is that world picture".[3] But this is not a simple statement. It is positive in that it admits that human purposes are involved in science, and thus the capacity for objectivity is limited and questionable, since human purposes cannot be escaped.  But on the other hand, this idea, that the thinking ego is the scientific truth about the universe, is a metaphysical claim, and rather a pretentious one. It implies that truth is a construction and evolves toward higher truths that fulfill more fully the drives of human purpose.  It implies that the ultimate goal of science is for man to see his own omniscience and omnipotence reflected in the universe. The belief that science is the mirror of nature is a metaphysical claim to power and legitimacy. It is essentially a religious idea, similar to the Hindu metaphysical statement "thou art that". (see pg 52-53) Schrodinger's comment appears to be merely an admission of the will to power of science through knowledge. It also indicates something of science's origin out of religious and metaphysical self-reflective paradoxes.

             But nothing is said of the nature of the purpose of science in Schrodinger's comment. Science has nothing to say about purpose, but only about the drive for greater knowledge and the greater power over nature that results: purpose and motives are always cloaked and hidden.  Science is a mirror of the motivations of those served by science. Not enough people ask, and there is no social mechanism for asking, if the scientific world picture is a just or an ethical picture or if it helps people suffer less, undergo fewer wars or helps end poverty.  Werner Hiesenberg, while not admitting this much, admitted that "science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in this interplay  between man and nature"[4] But how many scientists in the name of "objectivity", refuse to serve the powerful and the wealthy? Very few.  But this is not surprising. The "interplay between man and nature", in scientific terms, is primarily the interplay between knowledge and power. 

             The subject of history is all men and women, not merely  the imperial objectivity of elites. The "objectivity" of the Western elites is a civil religion that subjects all those who believe differently to an Inquisition and a conquest,  I do not mean here to indict Western science entirely, but to judge its results in accord with human rights and advocate for a science circumscribed by human rights[5]. I wish to ask the question of the degree to which science itself must be implicated in the atrocities that follow upon the European World Invasion? Is science "pure", or somehow detached from what is done with it? In my view, as will be seen, "Science" is equivalent in practice to the concepts, "God" and "History". These are abstractions  and enabling symbols, not realities.  The concept "Science" does not exist, but is merely a myth by which serves the interests of power and knowledge.  To believe otherwise is to practice what Alfred North Whitehead called the fallacy of "misplaced concreteness". Which is the fallacy of believing that science is a thing in itself, like rocks, rain and leaves. Science is a cultural procedure and an abstraction, like god.  Experiments, in contrast, are not abstractions, but something concrete that can be judged useful or harmful to nature or to humans, according to their purpose or the motives that inspired them.. Human rights is also something concrete. Yet experiments in science and the applied results of these experiments  often violate both human, animal or ecological rights. What what must be questioned is the motives that hide behind the research.

            Scientism is virtually a dogma, and attempts to question science and its methodology, even if done in a scientific manner, are vigorously resisted. Up until the 1960's it was virtually impossible to question science, because science alone, with the support of the imperial state and the explorations of conquerors, had the right to ask questions. Rarely were questions asked of the role of science in the drive for world conquest and hegemony. The virtual dogma of scientific amoralism and neutrality deflected any such questions, and science could hide behind its assumed "purity", even while it involved itself in genocidal, environmental and cultural acts of destruction.

            It is clear  that the disinterested observer, since Francis Bacon equated knowledge with power, and Descartes described the universe as a machine, has had in view the creation of a body of knowledge that would generate greater power and dominion. The history of the supremacy of the scientific intellect should be questioned as much as the history of the idea of the impersonal god, and evidently there is a relation between these histories. The consensus of scientists has too often merely reflected the consensus of state and corporate powers. Paul Feyerabend,  a philosopher and historian of science, but much hated by those who want their science to be a dogmatic and orthodox justification of ruling elites, has summarized the need of democratic control of science very well:           

[Science] is a collage, not a system. Moreover, both historical experience and democratic   principles suggest that science be kept under public control. Scientific institutions are not "objective": neither confront people like a rock or a star. They often merge with other traditions, are affected by them, affect them in turn. Decisive scientific movements were inspired by philosophical and religious (or theological) sentiments...[6]           

 The question of the role of the observer in science is the question of who is the knower, why this knowledge is desired and what purpose the knowledge will eventually serve. These are social and philosophical questions as well as historical ones. The scientific world picture tends to leave individuals out of its calculations. It eliminates the subject from its calculations.  It is not a very far step from the elimination of the subject from a system of knowledge to the elimination of subjects, that is real people, from history. It is this that gives science the flavor of inhumanity and cold heartedness, a fear that is popularly expressed in cultural productions from the Faust legend, to Frankenstein and science fiction and horror movies depicting scientific involvement in atrocities. The fear of science, the corporation and institutions is not unjustified, for clearly, individuals create, profit from or are harmed by these and other systems or conclusions of knowledge.  The question is: how are individuals related to systems of knowledge/power and how both systems of knowledge/power and individuals are related to history. And further how history and knowledge can be turned to serve human and natural rights instead of unjust powers.

             Rather, after Hispanola and Nagasaki, the convenient divisions of church and state, faith and disbelief are no longer cogent.  The definition of what a religion is, is hopelessly shallow.  Not that I have any interest in justifying religion with exalted definitions. Rather, I think the critique of religion should be extended to belief systems of all kinds, including the one I am writing. [7] Capitalism and science have become reigning religions, but the continued presumption that they are not religions, but 'value free' or 'neutral', hides them from the censure of the First Amendment, which should prevent the establishment of any single system of belief, even if it is belief in money, the corporation and 'free research', that is usually anything but free. Even science can become a superstition that creates an atmosphere, as during the Inquisition, of 'them versus us".  I would suggest that the  Constitution be changed. The First Amendment should read  not "Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion and the free exercise thereof", but rather:

Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religions, sciences, histories,   businesses or any ideology or system of knowledge, power or belief, nor prohibit the free exercise thereof, provided that, with such liberties insured, human rights as defined by the    United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, shall not be violated.  

            This expansion of the First Amendment would eliminate the corruption of the lobby system, separate business and the state, separate business and foreign policy, eliminate the campaign financing system, eliminate subsidies and welfare to corporations, remove the status of corporations as legal individuals, prevent government and private arms sales to other nations and prevent the government bankrolling of scientific research in all areas that threatened human or natural life, from atomic weapons, to genetics. It would also, if interpreted according to its meaning, force all companies and citizens of the US working or owning interests overseas to obey all American Constitutional, civil, criminal, environmental and labor laws. This would prevent American atrocities in other countries, such as have occurred in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Hawaii, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq and East Timor, as well as elsewhere. [8]

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