"Fighting Fragmentation or Choosing your Own Realism: The Challenge of Social Sciences after the Rise of Economists"

HEREDIA, MARIANA

Ciudad de Buenos Aires

Conferencia; Knowledge as a Challenge of Life; 2019

Centro de Herméneutica

In secular societies, science dethroned God?s authority. But the continuity of the singular is misleading. Unlike monotheism, scientific knowledge is a deity of many heads, she becomes strong in specialization, her expansion implies an endless division of subjects and skills. We face then, as Max Weber warned, a heartbreaking paradox: the advancement of knowledge in modern societies is concomitant to the increase of its members? ignorance. In the light of medicine or transportation?s history, fragmentation does not matter: it is enough to celebrate science as a technical tool for the progress of humanity. But comparing Science to God and embracing one of the many scientific realisms in dispute can lead to a disaster. If one science pretend to monopolize the truth and society and nature are seen as malleable materials, human knowledge can cause destructive and irreversible effects. One of the latest examples of this selective realismwas the rise of economics and the adoption of drastic market reforms in Latin America. Critically inspired, the other social and human sciences asserted themselves against economists. But, beyond the contents of their diagnoses and proposals, the forms of public and political participation of economists can also be replicated by other idea producers. This contribution draws some lessons from the experience of economists as intellectuals and policy makers by stating that they can illuminate the challenges of science engagement in social transformation. This review will be an occasion to consider the relationships between knowledge, criticism and politics and the role of scientifics and their ideas (which can function as weapons or bridges) in increasingly fragmented and ignorant societies.