Why Science Matters

Trump is back and scarier than ever. As he moves to defund science research, withdraw from the World Health Organization, and roll back climate protections not even one week in, it’s never been clearer that science has become politicized by the right.

Among more pressing concerns (e.g. immigrants facing deportation, the backwards reversal of racial justice laws, trans rights at risk, abortion rights at risk, releasing Jan 6 insurrectionists, the war on D.E.I., the general rise of oligarchy), it’s hard to have too many tears left for science. But it’s curious that the right finds it so threatening. Why?

The question echos in my mind as I immerse myself in science for my job.* It echos still as I read Ed Yong’s An Immense World on my commute home.

Yong writes about ants who, driven by chemicals, will follow the scented path even if it leads to a closed loop, a death spiral that they will continue to march until they die of exhaustion. He writes:

The ants can sense no picture bigger than what’s immediately ahead. They have no coordinating force to guide them to safety. They are imprisoned by a wall of their own intuitions.

In 2020, Yong used this as a metaphor for the United State’s response to the Covid epidemic, but I think it’s bigger than that. It’s an analogy for why science matters.

No matter how smart we think we are, we are blind to the limits of our own intuition. Our intuition is great when it’s based off of experience, and it’s even great for building the early stages of a new scientific discipline. But we humans do not have an intuition for things larger than us - climate change, sustainability, the rise of fascism, political shifts, cultural shifts.

This is why science matters - it transcends the limits of our intuition. It’s how we escape the constraints of typical human experience. This can be magical, connecting us to a world much larger than ourselves, but it’s also essential if we are going to move towards a better social and political order.

Trump (like any fascist) doesn’t want you to see outside of the death spiral. He wants you to distrust science. He wants you to trust your common sense. Don’t listen! It’s all a means of control.

I feel like there’s been a cultural shift on the left away from science too, coming from the degradation of the idea of the objective. The argument is some combination of, nothing humans do can really be objective, and also, there is more to the world than what is objectively measurable.

I agree with both of these. Objectivity is a goal in science because it’s the way to escape our accidentally misguided intuitions or narratives about the world (aka the death spiral), but it is an ideal. We aim for it to the best of our ability, even if we can’t make it 100% of the way. And yes, it’s limited - there are things we are not yet able to study in a scientifically rigorous way (notably the mind and consciousness), and we should avoid the bias that these things don’t exist or don’t matter.

All this to say, I hope we don’t write off science as an important part of resisting the political nightmare of Trump’s America.

*P.S. - yes, I’ve started a new job! For the next six months I am a working as a writing fellow with Quanta Magazine.** My first piece there is slated to go live on February 7, so keep your eyes peeled!

**And maybe I should add, the opinions reflected here are my own and are not meant to represent Quanta.