22/09/2024
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS : THINK TANKS, WHITE PAPERS AND THE SOCIAL COMPLEXITY OF SCIENCE dear Friends and Fellows, in the agenda of the 12th WCSA conference whose
CALL online is here https://www.wcsaglobal.org/12th-conference-conference-program/
I am designing and proposing this PANEL.if you wish to be a panelist please send me( [email protected]) a 300 word abstract( title included) and, not included in the 300 words, your full name, last name and affiliation within November 30th 2024 either in the email text or as a DOC file. No pdf considered. In the email subject : WCSA PRESIDENTIAL PANEL . Thanks and best Andrea
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS for the PANEL: THINK TANKS, WHITE PAPERS AND THE SOCIAL COMPLEXITY OF SCIENCE: The Case for "Decolonization" . This panel is focused on the ambivalent connection between science and society: on one side, these connections are unavoidable and Loet Leydesdorff multiple helix clarified it neatly. Science produces( through research) valid knowledge and spreads it through public engagement to other self referential systems , structurally coupled with the science system, such as the economical system, the political one the religious one ecc. It is taken for granted each system works out the scientific system findings according to the specific self reference of each system . Examples : the economic system will work out how to turn scientific findings into business value, the political one will work out scientific findings to generate political consent and votes, the religious system will work out the scientific findings maybe framing them into some kind of "holy writings" to show that science develops fast but is running to go where religion is sitting waiting from ages( as in a quote of Dr Creator's movie). These self referential codings are systemically obvious and the manifest side of the ambivalent bifurcation between science and society. The latent side begins when other systems pretend to thenatize their communications according to what they, and not science,consider scientific nevertheless, economics can set what is profitable,politics can set what is more effective to win the elections, religion can set what is the correct behavior of whatever believer in whatever confession holy writings. None of them can set what is scientific. Statements like" our new detergent is ecological, green and sustainable" is just a marketing announcement if no evidence from the science system is provided . A political campaign such as " we will make our country more sustainable" means nothing without evidence coming from the science system ecc ecc. The manifest and latent sides of the bifurcation differ from a key perspective: in the manifest one science is the transparent systemic source and evidence( which are not eternal as Popper's falsification epistemology taught us and science evolve through research, no other evolutionary way) , in the latent one " science is thematized by another system but the sources, methodological design ecc are hidden or very nebulous so that the final output data might be apparently interpreted by the economical system, the political system.ecc. which have no internal self reference for this kind of operation. Think tanks and white papers are systemic shapes( not systems of course!) to be in a way ranked from the most scientifically independent " manifest "ones to the most latent ones in which science is just a thematization of a different system pretending to define what is science based while the internal.reference of that system does not allow to it this kind of operation. Decolonization might be an interesting laboratory about this . Science( political-social science, in this case) is not providing the evidence decolonization is a good idea for sustainable development , for example. Nevertheless, politics and religion are trying to state this before science speaks and then the most amazing creative, absurd interpretations emerge, for example: animism as a potential good way to ecology and a new harmony between man and environment( most all animistic societies disappeared or were dramatically downsized by the Malthus trap, science and technology saved non animistic societies from,instead) or the idea of a personified god or goddess of nature as if nature had a will ( the ambiguity of ecosystems,whose existence Luhmann strongly denied since its 1984 book Ecological
Communicationas they would generate a political or religious categorization of"would be science") . The totally absurd vicious loop and drift of this supposed "natural will" ( or even more systemically risky mood of inventing a political will of nature) would be the re-entry of beliefs and codings( not knowledge! ) framed according to a communication pattern already obsolete at Francis Bacon New Organ( 1620) time , re-entrying a new " idola doctrine".what's the shape of this obsolete
communication frame or pattern ? Is the guilty focused and not remedy focused one. The guilty focused communication pattern is especially useful for politics getting votes without responsibility in goal attainment. Examples: communists plead capitalists guilty for pollution &Co as capitalism is greedy and evil. Capitalists plead the communists guilty as they are still spamming the planet with obsolete and polluting technologies to fight against innovation, clean, sustainable market expansion.
Fascists plead both communists and capitalists guilty as they do not allow fascism to apply a severe nationalistic autarchy( which always lead to Mathus trap or great poverty such as in Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain or African and Latin America Military Dictatorships of Argentina and Brazil). Thus everybody is pleading everybody else guilty and nobody provides or can provide remedies. That is why,whatever the problem, politics has no remedy. The binary code of politics is government /opposition no other or further game. Featuring the political system This panel welcomes abstracts researching the science and society multiple helix and abstracts
strategically focused on how to let think tanks and white papers be functional shapes of a more effective manifest side of the bifurcation”.
Climate change, bullet-proof financial system, pandemic challenges are just a few of the examples linked to recent crises. And they have all one thing in common: despite our extended research centres and highly ranked universities, none of the crises has been forecasted in due time. Contradictory, e...
