Epistemic Chaos: Science and Democracy in a Post-Truth World
Despite decades of academic work inspired by the goal of making it so, governance and politics are a far cry from the paragons of rationality. American bureaucracies are staffed by well-trained, credentialed, and dedicated technical experts who have at their disposal a historically unprecedented amount of peer reviewed published research, massive datasets, and extraordinary computing power. This flourishing technical capacity has done nothing to grant their work public acceptance; rather, the opposite has happened: as more science has become available to inform decisions, the more bitterly contested every administrative and regulatory decision is.
What’s going on here? Many of us have been taught to expect that science is how we achieve rational decision making. Unfortunately, unfounded assumptions permeate common understandings of what science can and do in a democracy. This presentation will present some of these misunderstandings and offer an alternative vision for science in society.
About the Speaker
Mark Neff is a Professor of Environmental Studies here at Western Washington University’s College of the Environment, where his teaching and research focus on the interfaces between the sciences and society. His work exploring opportunities to better govern scientific research in a democracy is motivated by multiple convictions: 1) that the sciences are transformative forces in our world, and it cannot be assumed that the transformations are inherently benign; 2) that the sciences can and should contribute to effective, just, and democratically-accountable decision making and innovation that serves public values; and 3) that mistaken expectations of certitude from the sciences undermine the functioning of democracy, contribute to polarization, and motivate distrust in technical experts. This last topic is the subject of a book he has been working on since the dark days of Covid-19.
Environmental Speaker Series
The Environmental Speaker Series is hosted by the College of the Environment at Western Washington University.
The Series is free and open to the public. Talks are held each Thursday at 4:30 pm in Academic Instructional Center West room 204 - AW-204. Talks will also be streamed via Zoom. Register with The Foundation for WWU & Alumni for the zoom link. Parking is available in lot C.
Learn more about the Environmental Speaker Series
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