Science Policy in Canada
Scientific research and innovation are the foundation that underpins wealth creation in the 21st century. Canadians’ health, economic prosperity, global competitiveness, and high standard of living are intimately linked to the continued strength and productivity of the nation’s scientific research engine. In turn, the success of this research engine depends on the formulation of sound policies governing science and innovation – a process that requires the exchange of ideas among all stakeholders, including university researchers, industry, and government.
In a post-modern society, the complexity and interconnectedness of science and society makes it critical for researchers, policy-makers, industry, and the general public to be working in tandem to integrate their goals and efforts seamlessly and effectively.
In Canada, the importance of science policy has not been adequately acknowledged – consequently, the field suffers from shortcomings in infrastructure that need imminently to be addressed. To this end, Canada should establish a national research centre dedicated to science policy, and foster a national forum and media in which stakeholders and experts can discuss for a general audience the direction of Canadian science. The Canadian Science Policy Conference is a step in this direction, and I hope this page will serve as a national medium for this important conversation.
These steps are crucial to the advancement of the Canadian scientific enterprise, and therefore to all Canadians and to the socio-economic health of our country in the decades to come.
I would like to thank all the contributors to this forum and invite others to engage in this dynamic and exciting dialogue.
The Science of Peace
by Ramin Jahanbegloo
Philosopher; Professor and Research Fellow, Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto.
- First Posted: Oct 16 2009 16:25 PM
- Updated: 11 months ago
Our tendency to accept violence and destruction as a necessary consequence of science is blind and must be challenged.
Albert Einstein used to say that “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” We can also add that: “Science without democracy is arbitrary, as democracy without science is ignorant.” The interface between democracy and science has always been a complex and problematic one, which, to be properly understood, must be situated in relation to a third concept, which is nonviolence.
Viewed from this perspective, democratic theory continues to challenge scientists in particular and science in general to rethink and reconceptualize science as a way of reducing violence in our world. However, it goes without saying that democracy is also in great need of science promoting effective choices. Science provides the forms of reasoning that make democracy work. Such reasoning allows individuals to weigh options and make decisions as to the best option offered in political choice.
This form of scientific reasoning is one of the major assets to democracy in terms of achieving a peaceful global civil society. Scientific developments aimed directly at achieving nonviolence are the most valued by democratic experience. Science today offers much support for nonviolence as an inherited but largely undeveloped capacity of human nature. But scientific inventions alone would not be able to bring the desired change in the world if science does not include nonviolence as a goal.
Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has propelled a predatory attitude towards Nature, which made room not only for ecological disasters but also for the destruction of human relationships with the natural world. To put it simply, the problem is not with modern science and its methods, but with the ideology of science, an ideology that asserts that scientific truth and a nonviolent approach to Man and Nature are incompatible.
Gandhi, among others, was deeply concerned about the impact this ideology had had, and was still having, on human civilization. It was promoting, he felt, a culture devoid of spirituality in the name of positivistic reason. Gandhi did not condemn the scientific temper of the West, but he objected to the use of scientific discoveries against humanity. According to Gandhi, the scientific enterprise, therefore, must be informed by a deep awareness of the potential impact of the values that it is out to create.
Gandhi did not oppose science blindly. Rather, he believed that science should be democratized, meaning that it should be in the control of ordinary people and not the corporate elite and the governments that serve them. As such, Gandhi challenged the major feature of modern science that Francis Bacon stressed, that of science being a true and hence uniquely valid representation of reality. It is not accidental that Thomas Hobbes (who was at one time secretary to Bacon), while expanding Baconian ideas into the political domain, comes to the conclusion in his Leviathan that no individual has the right to challenge the absolute authority and the absolute truthfulness of the existing powers.
In a way, the exercise continues today; the Baconian sciences and corresponding social norms continue to make deep incursions into all other knowledge systems and societies. Gandhi's perception of a democratized science echoes the truth that a techno-scientific attitude that ignores the doctrine of nonviolence will continue to damage the world.
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