by Caroline Ward
We tend to think about science as an objective study, the pursuit of natural truth. We feel science, as a process, is something estranged from us: it is discovering what is already there, not what humanity has created. All we have to do is identify the thing or the process, translate it into words, equations, theories and methods, and ‘ta-da!’ Objective understanding!
The problem is that this ‘objectivity’ is never truly objective. These natural things or processes certainly exist, but when we as humans try to translate them, we bring to that translation all of our implicit human subjectivity. Our understanding of the world, as people, comes from the time that we live in and the space that we occupy within that world. Depending on where we live, what we’ve lived through, and who we’re perceived to be and perceive others to be (like our race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, etc.), we are all a unique amalgamation of the sum of our lived experiences and the implicit assumptions (often unknown even to ourselves) developed through them. We carry these with us wherever we go, and we often unknowingly accept those assumptions in the things that we do. Beyond these, we are conditioned by the systems we exist under. Everything produced through a specific system reflects the values and ideals of that system–intentionally and unintentionally–and in turn constructs the system that produces it. It is impossible to separate that product (which spans everything between an ideology and that ideology’s manifestation) from the systems that produce it.
Science is an ideology. This can be confusing to understand if we consider science to be the objective process of discovering something that is already there. Although this definition represents a fundamental aim of science, it excludes its historicity. The European scientific tradition began with the work of Greek scholars in the classic and Hellenistic age. Medieval Islamic scholars continued to push forward scientific understanding, building upon and surpassing classical knowledge. The medieval European world was later to the game; their access to classical knowledge came about through the translations of classical texts to Latin from Arabic, and the medieval European world constructed their systems of knowledge around classical Greek philosophy. During the 16th century, the European world underwent a transformation in understanding. In 1542, Nicolas Copernicus demonstrated that the Earth was not the center of the universe, positing a novel heliocentric understanding of astronomy. This shift embodied a greater transition away from the classical assumption that had underscored scientific pursuit up until this period. The Scientific Revolution was defined by a reorienting, one away from classical philosophy, the creation of technology as a focus of science and the influence of religious assumption. It redefined science as an objective process, culturally detached and utilitarian. During the period of rapid change, the ideology of modern science as we know it was conceived.
Science changes as the systems it interacts with change, and as a method used to understand the world that creates it, it wields material power. As scientists, we are conditioned by the systems we are born into and we internalize their logics. This means we are disposed to find soundness in their most foundational premises, and if we don’t take the time to consciously consider those, we unknowingly agree to them, and we support them and legitimize them in our actions. Although there is a distinction between an individual and the system they constitute, the system cannot exist without the actioned support of the individual. The ideology of modern science has been used to legitimize harm and has benefitted from enacting the harm it’s legitimized.
In the 1800s, the pseudosciences of craniometry and polygenism attempted to categorize black Americans as biologically inferior. Despite the fact that modern audiences understand these pseudosciences to be disgustingly anti-black and wholly untrue, studies within the social sciences that look at things like imprisonment and poverty rates are often used to justify the unfounded conviction that people of color to be of lower intelligence, higher implicit criminality. Both employ fundamentally the same tactic: to cloak the bias of racist rhetoric in a fictional objectivity in the attempt to legitimize violent ideologies (and always insinuated, though rarely admitted, violent action). Here we see science as a tool to legitimize harm.
Science also benefits through the enacting of that harm. There are innumerable instances of this, and I ask that you take the time to explore resources that talk candidly about the ways your field of science has benefited from instances or systems of oppressive ideologies. I’ll point to the story of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman suffering from cervical cancer whose “immortal” cancer cells, taken without her consent or knowledge, have been used to successfully develop vaccinations for and eradicate polio, in groundbreaking cancer research in pathologies and treatments and in the research that led to the discovery that humans have 23 chromosomes; the list continues. The importance of her cells cannot be overstated, but her fundamental right to her own body was ignored and denied. A similar example is found in the creation of the field of gynecology. J. Marion Sims, commonly regarded as the “father of modern gynecology,” was a pioneer in surgical procedures and techniques in the field. His medical knowledge has been foundational in the evolution of the field and the medical care it offers. And he developed these surgeries and techniques by enslaving, operating, and experimenting on black women. He barbarically denied them anesthesia during these forced surgeries because he subscribed to the idea that black women were subhuman and could not feel pain the way a white person would; an idea still found in emergency rooms and urgent cares across the country, where black Americans are systemically and brutally under-prescribed pain medication.
Finally, we lose out on knowledge when we exclude everything that fits outside the scope of our ideology. The 19th century saw the formalization of the first naturalist inventories, which started the process of listing every observed and discovered species. We still use this system of inventorizing and hold the same goal. However, Western science is exclusionary to all except its own understandings, or “discoveries.” This means that all knowledge outside of its context, like the millennia of indigenous scholarship in naturalism, physics, astronomy, medicine, ecology, etc., is unjustly overlooked and diminished in its value. To say we “discover” a species is absurd when we understand that it might have been observed for centuries upon millenia and exist within indigenous communal knowledge.
In science, in the quest of understanding, we need to ask ourselves who and what we are excluding, and ask it often. Nothing is capital ‘o’ Objective, but that doesn’t mean nothing is real and true. It simply means that each truth is as real as the next, and when we devalue a truth we harm our ability to understand the world around us as it exists and to represent it honestly in our research.