Technocracy is a popular dirty word. It’s become fashionable to complain about a “technocratic elite” re-shaping our society, but like many other words in political discourse it’s often used pretty loosely. When words are seen to have explanatory power, I think it’s important to ask what they mean and why people use them. Let’s start with the definition: technocracy means rule by experts, and its history can be traced to 1919 when one WH Smyth argued that a complex modern society needs “a supreme National Council of Scientists to advise us how best to live”. Since then, use of the term has waxed and waned but there’s been a sharp spike since 2008, proof that it’s a contemporary concern. I think there are good reasons for this concern because it’s an increasingly accurate description of our times and the growing supervision of science over society. First, let’s look at where technocracy comes from.
New Zealanders have a lot of faith in scientists, more than in their neighbours, their government, or their media. There’s a quasi-religious tone to this faith, seen most clearly in the proliferation of those American yard signs that proclaim, “In this house, we believe science is real,” a creedal statement every bit as theological as its ecclesiastical counterparts. That old human temptation, that “ye shall be as gods,” also enlists science in its service—maybe we can achieve immortality if we can freeze our bodies or upload our minds to the cloud, or at least become a kind of demi-god by re-engineering our bodies to achieve a peak of physical perfection in defiance of natural ageing processes (at least if you’re a middle-aged multi-millionaire obsessed with being 18 again). In this new faith, science and technical expertise isn’t just one type of knowledge, it is knowledge, ideal and salvific, and experts like scientists are the priestly class who guard it. That’s why the debates over mātauranga Māori and whether or not it counts as science are so virulent. They are not technical disputes over how to define scientific method, but existential contests about which knowledge is authoritative and who will be admitted to the priesthood.
Once science becomes the supreme knowledge, it begins to distort public debate and public policy. Phrases like “trust the science” are staples of our discourse now, where they function as a kind of rhetorical slam dunk: if science is for us, who can be against us? And the scientists who create and wield this knowledge play a larger and larger role in settling social questions. Others have seen this coming. In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered a famous farewell address as he stepped down from the US presidency, best known for his warning against the dangers of “the military-industrial complex”. But Eisenhower also sounded another warning—that the twentieth century’s “technological revolution”, helmed by “task forces of scientists” funded by government contracts, created a “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite”. The “nudge” phenomenon is a good example, as governments around the world enlisted social sciences like behavioural economics to prod the populace in a particular direction. That combination of science and state power is how we tend towards technocracy.
The fundamental problem is that all this depends on a faulty understanding of science. At its best, science helps us understand how things are, but it doesn’t tell us why things are the way they are or what we should do about them. It gives us facts but not values, telling us how to split atoms but not whether to launch nukes. And science isn’t always at its best—the evidence base is usually partial and contested as theories are developed and discarded, experiments of variable and sometimes dubious quality are conducted, and contingencies like funding and prestige influence which questions are asked and which answers receive a hearing. Treating science as supreme and scientists as philosopher-kings isn’t just naïve, it smothers the “why” of moral argument and the equal contribution of other forms of knowledge, from reason to revelation.
Eisenhower’s solution was to “integrate” scientific expertise “within the principles of our democratic system”. Doing this would allow us to harness the incredible good of science alongside all the other ways we know and decide, and remove the risk of government by an unaccountable cadre of experts with arcane and unquestionable knowledge. We can avoid full-blown technocracy if we return science to its rightful place.
What's wrong with technocracy?
Yes to all of the above. Robertson Davies pointed out, a long time ago (I think it was in “The Cunning Man”) that: “Science is the new religion of the masses, who think it means tampons and toothpaste”. I also have come to the conclusion (after some 30 years as a biologist and sometime educator), that Christopher Hitchens was correct in saying that “science” is in fact a misnomer, implying as it does possession of knowledge.
“Natural philosopher” was his preferred term, and that’s a god match for Stephen Jay Gould’s take on the subject too. Science is not a sure and certain collection of knowledge, wrote Gould. It is a system with which to test theories. As such, it should not need a priesthood, but humans do tend to spawn these. Happily, we are also capable of ethical judgement.
To suggest that science should be ethical is a category error, however. Ethics and science make good partners but should not be conflated.
Meanwhile, John Ralston Saul still makes for good reading on ethics and indeed on the subject of technocracy, against which he railed at length in the 90s. “On Equilibrium” is a good recommendation to anyone who can find a copy.
Thanks Alex. You point well to the idea of sitting within the tension of the opposites. Finding ways to live with apparent dissonance until other ways arise to help us integrate diverse ways of knowing.