Learning from Error: An Autopsy of Bernalism

摘要

Gary Werskey offers many astute observations about the failure of the British scientific Left, despite its unquestioned intellectual brilliance and political efforts, to bring about a socialist Utopia in the twentieth century. On most points, he is certainly correct: the Cold War division of the Allies into 'Liberals' and 'Communists' produced two competing scientific Lefts with universalist aspirations that spent the second half of the last century squandering enormous financial and intellectual capital on campaigns of mutual suspicion that verged on 'mutually assured destruction', when they should have been focussing on where they agreed to relieve global misery. The result, to which we bear witness today, is an overall shift to the Right in the centre of political gravity that casts aspersions on much of what both sides of the Cold War stood for, not least the idea of science as an emancipatory force. Moreover, I agree that much of our 'postmodern condition', including the ideological cast of science and technology studies, can be understood in these terms. I also agree that the 'subaltern' forms of knowledge championed by postmodernists may complement, but not replace, historically 'Western' science in addressing global problems.