Modem science describes the world in terms that refer only to itself. “Perhaps The Modem Physicist’s View o f Nature can be summed up as this faith: that there is
indeed a profound harmony between mathematics and the workings of the natural world” (Penrose 1992). This self referentiality has first to define nature as object - and not as a whole object - and the analysis takes place at the level of the smallest describable part. In this way nature can be seen as separate firom society and analysed reductively to render parts of it available for consumption. The microworld of the laboratory can be interpreted as an arena of constructed systems within which the objects of scientific research “are made to stand out clearly from the background of other objects and events around them, to appear in new forms, and to be manipulated in new ways” (Rouse 1987:220). Science is primarily a utilitarian approach, which seeks to increase complexity and division. But modem science is not only a
reductionist method of analysis, it always was and remains a central part of the Westem economic, political and social apparatus. The positivist scientific conception of nature is that of an object removed from fhe social world. For modem science nature is separate from the science that represents it “the technical mastery of an objectified nature is metaphorically connected to centralized social hierarchy and control” (Scott 1996:74). In establishing the definition and context of something, its relationship to other things is revealed. If nature is an object that is outside society, then nature, as an object, is seen in its relational field in ways that reinforce the scientific system of understanding. Science is a social institution (Restivo 1994), and although knowledge is different in different scientific disciplines and may use
differing definitions, the system of positivist science remains detached from the object of study.
The doctrine of modem science that only empirically based knowledge is valid, and that only this should form the basis for action, echoes Bacon’s advocacy of the
scientific method. The rationalism of modern science achieves domination of nature by objectification, “a science which analyses by taking things apart and re-composing these parts in different ways is attractive to capital and is likely to be invested in. After all, many of these parts can all be owned” (Dickens 1996:46). The constitution of the object of inquiry is linked to the division of labour and elitism - especially in the case of scientific expertise - and the division of the sciences reflects an attitude to nature which emphasises the boundaries between things. “Modem science
demarcates itself, not by reconstituting the object, but by defining rationality in a specific way” (Aronowitz 1988:8). If science is the embodiment of enlightenment philosophical constructions of rationality, truth, and progress, as these are ideological constructions, science is also part of the same ideology. As Aronowitz (1988:12) states that at the very core of science is an ideological position “ At issue is the claim of enlightenment science to certainty and its refusal to acknowledge its own discourse as a form of ideology”.
After the 1940’s, with the systematic application of science based technology, science became part of the organisation of the production of knowledge at the interface between science and industry. Science becomes universal, a factor of production and integral to that production and all economic activity; so science and politics become indistinguishable, and nature understood as a system of
transformations. The relationships betweoi science and industry are not just the linkages of innovative techniques of production, or the research and development of new products. Science is embedded in the production process and in the
reinforcement of the ideology of which it is part. This process is explicit in the case of the relationship between the military and science in Cold War politics (Dickson
1988).
Science is so deeply embedded in westem culture that it becomes impossible to separate the one fi*om the other. But, the public perception of science is of a tmth-
seeking inquiry, and a legitimating force and source of authority; yet what is being understood is the ideology of science. There may be crises in the public acceptance of the authority of science but this is never truly compromised, as the divisions of
science protect the whole from criticism. Essentially, the Westem worldview is scientific, so there is no generally accepted alternative to science that can carry the same legitimatory status. Alternative thought is branded ‘unscientific’ or ‘irrational’ i.e. a self referential criticism. In considering alternatives to science, the very
definition of science is elusive, which creates a problem in the formulation of something that is not science. Atkinson (1991) argues that science is the primary interpretation of nature in modem society, and holistic altematives are successfully marginalised.
Theoretical physics breaks with traditional science in the elaboration of theory for which data and observable phenomena do not exist. In quantum frames of reference there is a relationship between the observed and observer, in that the observer influences the observed, and the more precisely an object is located the less precise any measurement or observation can be. The conception of an atomistic world composed of smaller and smaller describable particles is challenged by the idea of matter as waves. These developments imply that science must be reflexive i.e. must recognise its own presuppositions and interests. But whether such theoretical assumptions can be called holistic and linked directly to an environmental approach (Matthews 1994) is questionable. But this approach does carry implications for conceptualisation of nature. Man is envisaged to be continuous with nature, and both are changed by the interaction. The ‘reality’ of nature becomes relative; people can never ‘know’ nature as they are part of nature and, by being part of it, cause change by their very existence. The observation of nature then becomes impossible without altering it, and as nature cannot be known before the observation, any changes cannot be known. Such theoretical approaches are confined to physics and mathematics; other disciplines adhere to a more traditional scientific conception of nature.
The Westem metaphors of nature reflect the dominant scientific ideology and its construction of the world. Science, although seen by some as the antithesis of myth and cosmology, expresses socio-political interests, cultural themes and metaphors (Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay 1983), and produces signs to reveal the characteristics of things (Hacking 1981), with the ‘power to n^me the world’ (Latour and Woolgar
1979). Lévi-Strauss (1966,1973) argues that the reasoning structures in myth and magic are not fundamentally different from science, as in science and alternative conceptions of nature myths and metaphors serve the same purpose. The metaphors of science: the web of life; the survival of the fittest; natural selection; the struggle with nature, all denote a relationship to nature that concerns production, distribution and consumption, and become conventionalised to the extent that their use is
unquestioned “So it is we may be largely unconscious of the metaphysical paradigms that underlie our own understanding of the world, while those of other knowledge traditions strike us as exotic, improbable, even “superstitious” (Scott 1996:72). All scientific theories or ‘myths’ support the idea of a nature as object, with use value and outside the human, unlike, for instance, the pre-industrial Japanese non-dualistic framework (Simmons 1993) which regardecj society and nature as inseparable, or the Buddhist and Hindu conception of everything in nature as an interconnecting web.
Although Westem science is the dominant conception of the world, it is not the only valid approach. The theory, method, form of result, field of inquiry and the norms that govem science are constructions, They define the world in line with a worldview that was created by a conjunction of philosophies and needs, constructed over time by political, social, and economic factors to become the Westem
worldview. Science created a worldview that demarcated nature as separate from society and for society’s use. This constmction raises questions about the
consequences of a nature/society divide, definitions of science and the implications of the social constmction of science.