Today sees the launch of The Science Party, a new political party led by bestselling author and New Scientist consultant Dr Michael Brooks. Brooks is standing for the party in the general election in the East Midlands constituency of Bosworth.
Brooks will launch The Science Party, whose slogan is “Because Science Matters”, at a Skeptics event in Leicester on Tuesday evening.
“Science is not just an indulgence for the curious, but is vital to British life, culture and economic well-being,” Brooks says. “Science-based healthcare has made all of our lives immeasurably better. It contributes more to Britain’s GDP than the insurance, banking and financial services sector combined. It also seeds future economic stability.”
For Brooks, this campaign will be about what kinds of qualification we want our MPs to have. Do we want only politics and economics graduates making the decisions? Or do we want MPs who are qualified to deal with scientific and technological questions, and able to analyse a problem using a skillset that has proved the most powerful tool we have: rational, scientifically-based thinking?
Brooks hopes his stand for Parliament will get people across the country talking about what kind of MP they want. “In a scientific age we need MPs who understand science: what it is, what it does and why it matters,” he says.
“Hopefully we can populate the House of Commons with people who understand what makes the world go round – literally and metaphorically. If we are to secure the future of science and engineering research, and thus secure the future of Britain’s economy, we need to make sure that our MPs will not ignore and undermine the scientific traditions on which this country is built.”
Dr. Roger Highfield, editor of New Scientist magazine, composed the Science Party’s manifesto, Because Science Matters. He fully supports Brooks’s stand.
“I back Michael’s campaign because he is helping to draw attention to an important way we can drag Britain out of recession,” he says. “We need to put more faith – and money – in science. Every major political party accepts that Britain can’t compete in international markets with cheap labour, only with our brains, ingenuity and innovation. Now Britain looks like it will be left behind as countries such as France, Germany, China and America increase their investment in research.”
A rational candidate, what a remarkable idea. There are far to many worthless cranks and legal types in the house of commons its about time the most valuable members of our society were represented.
METHOD FOR GENERATING RAPID ECONOMIC GROWTH The UK could levy a Required Investment Fee (RIF). The RIF would be levied on all retail sales, and proceeds would by put into special bonds which could only be cashed to build new industrial facilities in the UK. The no interest RIF bonds would be given to the companies which manufactured the products, but could be sold by companies which did not want to build a new industrial facility in the UK to companies which did, no doubt at a discount. Since every pound from the RIF would go to industrial expansion, it would be more efficient than indirect methods. Since the RIF would be levied equally on both domestic and foreign goods, it would not violate the trade treaties. Companies which did build industrial facilities would no doubt choose kinds manufacturing which would adequately compete with that of other nations. James F. Newell, Ph.D. U. Washington, Seattle
Dear Mr. Brooks,
I like the idea of a fringe party that isn’t racist. I might even vote for you. But I would like to hear what you have to say about some cautions somebody with a philosophical education – me – might propose in the interest of open and friendly rational discussion.
The start-point is the idea that, as you put it, “in a scientific age we need MPs who understand science: what it is, what it does and why it matters”. I have a bit of a gripe about this when combined with some of your other ideas. The three embedded “what”s don’t actually imply any scientific knowledge at all, just second-order reflective knowledge *about* science. You might be aware that Plato considered this sort of knowledge ‘political’ because – and this is my gloss – specialist forms of knowledge need to be balanced by wise rulers in the interests of civilisation. Other philosophers have thought about political wisdom in terms of *historical* judgement, which again must balance all the factors of civilisation, including science, to keep our polis going (even if the idea of absolute progress is a bit naive). I have in mind Herbert Butterfield, Michael Oakshott, and R. G. Collingwood. Most recently Amartya Sen has needed to appeal to a similar kind of raw political or historical judgement in his ‘The Idea of Justice’, despite his competence in technical subjects. The weighing-up of science might well need some first-order scientific knowledge, but that doesn’t mean that political questions can be reduced to science.
With this in mind I find your rhetoric a bit hot towards science to the exclusion of other things. I have two cautionary thoughts.
First, I take it that your championing of science is best thought of in relation to a potential policy with lots of scientific content. Your answer is to have a science graduate to ‘analyse [the] problem’. But science alone will rarely solve a political policy question, precisely because political questions are second-order questions of balance. Perhaps this is shown in the need for people like Tom Baldwin and Onora O’Neill – not scientists – in helping with ethico-scientifc questions. I just can’t see how politics assimilates to a set of discreet ‘problems’ soluable by specialist knowledge. I sort of agree that I don’t just want politics and economics graduates in power – especially some that I’ve seen learning their trade. But that doesn’t make a pure scientist a good replacement.
I might also add that you talk a great deal about ‘science’, but in all my time in university I’ve never met a science graduate, only physics, chemistry, natural sciences, and a few old moral scientists. ‘Science’ stops being a subject in about year 9 at school, which I think is approximately where the majority of the electorate stop developing their thinking. And what about the major socio-religious questions? Shouldn’t you prefer a theology grad. over a natural scientist? Remember that ‘science’, from the latin, usually just means ‘ordered knowledge’, and doesn’t imply a subject matter.
My second, related, caution is shorter. You want to champion science in education as well as politics. If you really mean this you must think science is more important for our civilisation than, say, literature. I wonder about this. I wonder whether some of the softer things – morality, standards of behaviour, manners, creativity, persistence of effort – might not be encouraged better by literature. Tell me, would you rather face the future with someone who takes Shakespeare or Conrad seriously, or someone who has bouts of high mathematics between episodes of a more general idiocy?
The bottom line is that if you are as scientifically skeptical as you claim to be, then you’d better be skeptical about science as well. It’s really easy to say ‘SCIENCE’ as a stand-alone rhetorical argument with today’s popular scientific ideology, and I want an MP who can manage the public’s ridiculous simplification of man’s intellectual achievements. I agree with a great deal of what you say, but – simply – there’s more to it. Say something serious about this and you might get my vote. Good luck in general though!
Yours sincerely,
Dan Fairbrother
BA (York), First Class; MPhil (Cambridge), King’s College – for the record.