(3089/898) Science and dissent in China

2096) "Science" and "dissent" [...] turn out to have some intrinsic connections. Sensing as much, Chinese authorities have always been leery of science, especially "pure" science; the spread of scientific ideas among the Chinese public could make authoritarian rule more difficult. [...] What is it about science that makes Chinese scientists think about democracy? [...] [S]cientific thinking seems to involve some premises that naturally pull a person toward democratic assumptions. [...]

1. Science begins with doubt. In order to make a scientific advance, one must begin by wondering about the received version of things. But this is also called "dissent." [...] Even an elementary course in physics takes up the problems of error. Students are taught that the only defense against error lies in the scientists willingness always to question [...] From assumptions like these, it is hard to swallow an authoritarian's command to "believe X and don't ask why" [...]



2. Scientific doubt leads to individual independence. [...]



3. Science is egalitarian. Objective scientific truth is something that lies beyond the variety of subjective views; statements of objective truth are formed only by a consensus of many observers, and are confirmed by independently repeating experimental results. No single observer is privileged; anyone may form hypothesis, and any hypothesis has to be tested by others before "truth" emerges. [...]



4. Science needs free exchange of information. [...]



5. Science is universal. Scholars of Chinese literature normally think of themselves as working in a different field from colleagues who work on Indian or French literature. The same generally holds for fields of history, philosophy, or art. But there is no such thing as Chinese or Indian science - or, as the Nazis once seriously claimed, "German science." [...]

Li Xingman, the plain-speaking editor at the Bulletin of Natural Dialectics [...] has taken considerable risks when he argues that scientists tend to approach human values similarly to the ways in which they search for truth in nature. And serious inquiry, Li argued in 1990, begins with individual "independence" and "tolerance." Then:

From these basic premises [...] arise step by step a series of values: dissent, freedom of thought and speech, impartiality, honor, and human dignity and self-worth. These are human values that science embodies, and people who espouse them promote both the development of science and the progress of society.

Fang Lizhi and Perry Link
"The Hope for China"
New York Review of Books (10/17/1996)
[review of, and quoting from, Science and Dissent
in Post-Mao China: The Politics of Knowledge by
H. Lyman Miller]