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The way we as a society view science has changed drastically over the last few years. What was once treated as a falsifiable mode of inquiry has morphed into a form of authority that you are not allowed to question in fear of being labelled ‘anti-science’. Underpinning this scientific debate is a moral impulse to be on the ‘good side’, which as Matthew B. Crawford explains in UnHerd’s latest LockdownTV interview, started to intensify after the democratisation of information through the Internet.
According to Crawford, that anyone could challenge established scientific consensus excited our “dissident energies,” but it also created a crisis of legitimacy for these institutions. And instead responding in kind, these institutions addressed outside challenges to their authority with a “moral energy of denunciation” in order to shore up their position.
This phenomenon accelerated during the BLM protests when the “moral energy of anti-racism got harnessed to the scientific authority of public health”. This, as Matthew explains above, wedded together “technocratic scientism” and victimology in a completely unprecedented way. Have a watch above…
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